When you reflect on President Obama's childhood and the ACE, given what we do know about him we can calculate he does have an ACE score. Recently, he visited a federal prison and mentioned if it were not for community and family support he believes he would have ended up in prison. So, even the President of the United States acknowledges the power of positive, stable, adult relationship to a child's success. The Road to Resilience is obvious (it even saved a president)...however, as a community we need to begin the journey.
 

EL RENO, Okla. — President Obama, who in recent weeks has shed any reticence to talk about racism and discrimination in American life, suggested inside the walls of a federal prison in Oklahoma on Thursday that under different circumstances, he could have been there as an inmate rather than as president.

“That’s what strikes me — there but for the grace of God,” the president said, standing in an empty cellblock with polished concrete floors and gray-and-white walls.

Minutes after he had finished meeting with six nonviolent drug offenders in El Reno federal prison, a medium-security facility, Obama said his life could have taken a trajectory similar to the prisoners’ if he had not had the kind of family and community support many young men of color lack.

Obama, who has acknowledged using marijuana and trying cocaine in his youth, is the first sitting president to visit a federal prison.

“When they describe their youth, these are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different from the mistakes I made, and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made,” the president said. “The difference is that they did not have the kind of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes.”