My Day
with President Obama
Scott Davis sitting next to President Obama
Scott Davis was feeling anxious. He was about to meet the
President of the United States, and he wanted to make a good
impression. Of course, he had spent the past two days preparing
for the event by making sure he had the right outfit to wear, studying up on current events, and even preparing thank-you notes for
key people involved in selecting him for the honor. Davis is nothing
if not meticulously prepared. But he wasn’t always so.
Raised by a single mother, Davis and his four siblings lived in a
housing project in Yonkers, NY. He grew up the way many poor
young Black men in a single-parent household with an absent
father do—disconnected and adrift. Like countless teenagers
before him he struggled to find meaning and purpose in his life,
squeaking through high school with no real plans for college.
After graduating from Yonkers High School in 2009, Davis took a
year off and contemplated his future while working in retail. It was
his mother who urged him to apply to college. “You can do it, Scott,”
she would say to him. “You’re smart and you’re capable.” So when
Davis finally applied to schools, he admitted he did it for his mother,
so she would leave him alone. “It was the best decision I ever
made,” he recalled with a smile.
President Barack Obama had chosen Lehman College as the
venue to announce the formation of the My Brother’s Keeper
Alliance, a new independent nonprofit foundation that aims to
address opportunity gaps among young men and boys of color.
About a dozen young Black and Latino men from across the nation
were invited to meet with President Obama, who wanted to have
an intimate chat about what it means to be a young male minority
in this country and about responsibility.
By mid-morning, Davis and the other young men were being
escorted through the corridors of the Music Building to the third
floor Hearth Room, where they would meet President Obama.
The excitement was palpable, and it was not lost on Davis that he
would soon be in the presence of one of the most powerful leaders
in the world. As he entered the room, Davis immediately took in the
room’s arrangements—tables had been set up in a U