Posted on 03/28/2003 2:26:38 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:09:22 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
INDIANAPOLIS -- Across the nation, black males tend to lag behind their high school classmates. Washington Township Superintendent Eugene White is confronting the problem head on, singling out black male students and chastising them for their poor performance in school.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Poverty in America***Having children is not an act of G-d. It's not like you're walking down the street and pregnancy strikes you; children are a result of a conscious decision. For the most part, female-headed households are the result of short-sighted, self-destructive behavior of one or two people. They might have bought into the nonsense of "experts" like John Hopkins University sociologist Professor Andrew Cherlin, who said, "It has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes." The real issue, according to Cherlin, "is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income." That's a call for fathers to be replaced by a government welfare check.***
The blacker-than-thou paradox divides*** I remember those days well, a heady time when African-Americans took education for granted as the sure route to self-improvement and the subsequent uplifting of the whole race. On my tiny Texas campus of fewer than 1,000 students, only fools refused to read and study diligently. Only fools destroyed their brains with drugs. Only fools physically hurt their brethren. In fact, "being smart" was in. We called it being "heavy." We even expected jocks to be heavy. All musicians, especially the jazz types, were heavy. Black power meant just that: being black and powerful, being armed with education and the drive to improve our lot in a hostile environment where the very concept of racial egalitarianism was still alien to most white Americans. Black power meant sharing the good and eliminating the bad.***
And the culture of failure carefully nurtured by the racial bloviators isn't??? Being a 20-year-old, illiterate, three-time loser isn't??? Being 16 and already having three children by different fathers, none of whom is still around, isn't? Knowing that your future consists of a choice between crew supervisor at Mickey D's and a pool of blood in a gutter isn't?
FAILURE is racism! DEPENDENCY is racism! Self-determination is victory.
Straight talk and hard work is needed, not Jesse Jackson posturing pap.
I live around the corner from one of our middle schools, 7th and 8th graders. There have been 40 some arrests there in the last two weeks. Our city schools have been in a state of "academic emergency" for several years and all our superintendent does is say she needs more money.
It upsets me that so many of these young kids, black, white and hispanic, are throwing their lives away, prefering to be a thug rather than get an education and get out of this democratic made hell hole city.
But, being a white police officer and trying to talk to them doesn't work out too well, the kids view me as the enemy. (kids of all races)
It's hard to teach an old dog a new trick. More money means more union members supporting the Democratic Party. And Americans are told, "It's for the children." Phooey! Pull the other one. "Excellence" bumper stickers are sent home to cover up the education fraud.
Just in one state: $6 Billion Crumbling Schools
In time, the concept of black power changed. Instead of being a sentiment that united us, it became a source of deep division. Those who followed Martin Luther King and his nonviolent movement, for example, were not as black as those who followed, say, Malcolm X's philosophy or that of the fearless Black Panthers.
No longer bringing us together, black power had become a negative litmus test for one's degree of "blackness." We had entered the "Blacker than Thou" era. On campuses nationwide, black students separated themselves into enclaves.
Groups whose members adopted African-sounding names, perhaps wore dashikis and other African garb and spouted words by the likes of Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver were blacker than those who majored in business and talked of Wall Street.
If you could quote from Frantz Fanon's book The Wretched of the Earth: The Handbook for the Black Revolution That Is Changing the Shape of the World, you were one black brother or sister.
And if you had an African name, wore a dashiki, sported a huge Afro, followed the Socialist Workers Party, talked like a Trotskyite, peppered your speech with Marxist aphorisms, majored in black studies and planned a trip to Africa, you were the essence of blackness.
The ultimate blacker-than-thou paradox occurred on traditionally black campuses. Nearly all of these campuses had parallel student government organizations. One was the legitimate body elected by the entire student population and was usually called the Student Government Association. It had the blessings of the administration and faculty.
The other was a self-appointed organization, usually called the Black Student Union. Assorted radicals belonged to it. In other words, the BSU was blacker than its duly elected counterpart, the SGA. I was president of the BSU at Bethune-Cookman College and founder and editor of the BSU newspaper.
These divisions -- who is black enough and who is not -- were not isolated to college campuses. The phenomenon defined black life at all levels in black communities nationwide.***
And we have a weaker country.
'No parent should ever leave education entirely in the hands of the school.''
'No parent should ever leave education entirely in the hands of the school.''
'No parent should ever leave education entirely in the hands of the school.''
'No parent should ever leave education entirely in the hands of the school.''
This can't be said enough; and it needs to be said to the parents as much and as well as the kids. When I was in high school (mind you, an all black high school in Gary, IN), I was courted by Harvard, as were some other kids in my graduating class -- and they were serious.
I was more intent on engineering at the time (which they didn't have), but they got an honest look from me, at least.
Back to this situation, the kids are lazy, and the parents are equally lazy. They need a wake-up call....
Black conservative ping
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The historian Gertrude Himmelfarb breaks it down this way: For Conservatives, it's all about the Culture. For Liberals, it's all about Politics. Well, I'd say that the Civil Rights movement has been pushing Politics for about 40 years and they don't have too much to show for it. Superintendent White is pushing Culture. We'll see if that works (I have no doubt).
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