Contrary to what the current educational data on Black children’s achievement suggest, the African American community has always placed a high value on education. From slaves who were beaten for sneaking away to hidden sanctuaries on slave plantations to learn and teach others to read to the Little Rock Nine who suffered physical and verbal abuse to integrate schools following the Brown v. Board decision African Americans have overcome many obstacles and paid a high price to receive an education. Today, this legacy is in serious peril.
President Obama and the President of the NAACP Ben Jealous agree that eradicating educational disparities between Black (and Brown) and White children is the premier Civil Rights fight of 21st Century. In his speech to the NAACP’s 100th Anniversary convention, President Obama spoke these truths:
“…more than half a century after Brown v. Board, the dream of a world-class education is still being deferred all across the country. African American students are lagging behind white classmates in reading and math -- an achievement gap that is growing in states that once led the way in the civil rights movement. Over half of all African American students are dropping out of school in some places. There are overcrowded classrooms, and crumbling schools, and corridors of shame in America filled with poor children -- not just black children, brown and white children as well. The state of our schools is not an African American problem; it is an American problem because if Black and Brown children cannot compete, then America cannot compete. Innovative programs and expanded opportunities will not, in and of themselves, make a difference if each of us, as parents and as community leaders, fail to do our part by encouraging excellence in our children…Government programs alone won't get our children to the Promised Land. We need a new mind set, a new set of attitudes -- because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way we've internalized a sense of limitation…We've got to say to our children, yes, if you're African American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that somebody in a wealthy suburb does not have to face. But that's not a reason to get bad grades, that's not a reason to cut class, that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands -- you cannot forget that. That's what we have to teach all of our children. No excuses …To parents we can't tell our kids to do well in school and then fail to support them when they get home. For our kids to excel, we have to accept our responsibility to help them learn. That means putting away the Xbox, putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. It means attending those parent-teacher conferences and reading to our children and helping them with their homework. And by the way, it means we need to be there for our neighbor's sons and daughters.”
On general principle, it’s hard to argue against the President’s appeal to individual responsibility. Like many who are counted among the so-called “Black intelligentsia” or as Michael Eric Dyson refers to them, the “Afristocracy,” which are made up of black professionals and the Black elite (i.e. Bill Cosby, Dr. Alvin Pouissant and Juan Williams to mention the more familiar voices) the President promotes the tenets of the “culture of poverty” theory which shifts the brunt of the responsibility of African American youth’s failure—socially and educationally—to the parents, home environment and individual behavior while downplaying or ignoring the more persistent and pernicious structural influences that block opportunity and encumber achievement. They focus on the outcomes or the symptoms of the problems that have manifested into individual behaviors as opposed to the systemic and structural influences that create and reproduce urban blight, broken families, crime and violence, teen pregnancy, drug use and drug selling, cultural indignities and vulgarities in music and language, and children uneducated and undisciplined. Most of us know that personal responsibility or individual effort alone cannot solve the problems that are plaguing our schools and preventing Black and Brown children from succeeding in our schools.
If we are truly committed to improving the educational achievement of ALL children and equipping them to live out the American dream as competitive and productive global citizens, we have to take an honest assessment of the processes and mechanisms whereby education is used to reproduce social inequality in larger society and create a permanent underclass made up largely of Black and Hispanic/Latino people. We must get back to practicing the principle of collective responsibility. Every adult--whether you have a child in the school system or not, whether you are among the affluent or impoverished, whether you live in the “hood” or in a gated community---should make it a priority to take an active role in helping to improve the academic outcomes of African American and poor children. From mentoring and tutoring a child who is not your own, helping a young single parent rear his or her child correctly, regularly attending local school board meetings to joining and working with the local NAACP—no act is too small or insignificant. The making of history runs on a parallel track with the present. When the final record is written about this generation the question will be where were you and what role did you play in helping to advance the Civil Rights agenda of your era, not how well you knew or how proud you were of the work that others did who went before you.
