It’s funny the way the world works.

America has finally found itself in the position to have an elected President who’s skin is a different color then the walls of the house he lives in, yet he is also the first to get grilled whenever anything goes wrong.

Barack Obama, for those of you who don’t understand parables, is a very unique person. As the first elected black president, he has the unparalleled opportunity to make changes, not just for American citizens, but also specifically for black people.

But if you ask black people what he has done for them in his first nine months as president, they will not have much to report. After all, the president was invited to speak at a wide range of black colleges for commencement, but they were all turned down.

It would seem strange, seeing as he won the election thanks to the good graces of such institutions.

Maybe he didn’t receive all the invitations directly; he does receive over 100,000 letters a day, and there is just no way he could read them all.

His staff does it for him, and selects about 10 letters for him to read each day.Instead he chose to speak at three PWI’s (predominately white institutions), one of which would not give him an honorary degree because he had not “done enough in his life yet” to earn one. Another of the three schools he spoke at didn’t even necessarily want him there, and many students boycotted the commencement.

Why do I say all this, you ask? Don’t worry, I do have a point.

You see, last week, on Monday, August 31, 2009 to be exact, this same president did do something for black people. Didn’t you hear about it?

Just ask someone that goes to a black school. Surely they must know, right?

No? Well, they probably wouldn’t know because no one told them about it. It wasn’t on the news. 

CNN neglected to mention that Obama wrote a proclamation last Monday, dedicating the week as National Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week.

I didn’t hear about it on ABC, CBS, NBC, or even FOX.

In fact, the only way I found out was through a small, but informative article, which was featured on blackcollegewire.org at the very bottom corner of the page.

If I hadn’t looked twice, I probably never would have known.

While Obama may not have spoken at an HBCU for commencement, or gone to one for his collegiate experience, and even though he may not have chosen one to have a town hall meeting, he most certainly hasn’t forgotten about them since he got elected.

I’m not excusing the fact that he has ended one of the HBCU funding programs that George H.W. Bush started, and moved the money somewhere else, nor am I saying that it’s ok that he has yet to specifically address the needs of HBCU’s.

But what I am saying is this; why did something so important just slip under the radar?

Everyone is always complaining about how the black society never gets anything, or how all the special programs aren’t really created for them, yet no one even bothered to look up when Obama dedicated a week calling for all people in the nation to honor and pay homage to the institution of black education.

It may not be a lot, but it is certainly something.

I don’t see black people up in arms about how this amazing proclamation missed the major news, but we are the first to talk about how the world is racist when things don’t go our way. Well this time it did. What are you going to do about it? 

• Dexter R. Mullins