Dumb As a DOOR Knob: Academic Performance of African Americans Continues to Decline

It appears that over the past decades, since the times of slavery and Jim Crow and up until the civil rights and black power movements, the value in which education is perceived in the African American community has reduced significantly. It was Malcolm X who said “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” In general terms, academic prowess and proficiency is on the decline for America regardless of ethnic persuasion, with the exception of Asian Americans. In fact we may be producing the stupidest generation in American history and present statistics suggest that U.S. high school students are basically incompetent in the areas of math, science, history, economics and geography.

According to a survey conducted by the National Geographic Society, only 37 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can find Iraq on a map of the world and that 50 percent of Americans cannot locate the state of New York on a map. Moreover, only 43 percent of all U.S. high school students knew that the Civil War was fought sometime between 1850 and 1900. Today, American 15-year-olds do not even rank in the top half of all advanced nations when it comes to math or science literacy based on report published by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Although the aforementioned is for all Americans, statistics for African Americans is even worse. A new study released by Seattle Public Schools revealed that African-American students whose primary language is English perform significantly worse in math and reading than black-African immigrant students who speak another language at home. Findings of the Seattle study indicate that only 36 percent of black students who speak English at home passed their grade's math test, while 47 percent of Somali-speaking students passed. Other black ethnic groups did even better. In reading, 56 percent of black students who speak English passed, while 67 percent of Somali-speaking students passed with other black ethnic groups scoring higher again. However, still in concert black students scored lower than the district average of 78 percent for reading.

As it stands presently, the African American community is moving farther and further away from the traditions and values that maintained our collective integrity – specifically the value and importance we attributed to reading and education. Today about 41% of African American males graduate from high school in the United States according to the Schott Foundation for Public Education and just 22 % of African American males who began at a four-year college graduated within six years (National Student Clearinghouse/Study by Consortium on Chicago School Research at U of Chicago).

Maybe this is why 69% of African American children in America cannot read at grade level in the 4th grade, compared with 29% among White children. Up until Brown V. Board of Education, it was discriminatory practices like segregation that kept Africa Americans poorly educated, now it is ourselves. Until we realize that more education is part of the answer, we will always be confronted with social and economic inequity.

Yes, the school systems are not servicing the needs of African American males as effectively as other ethnic groups. Many years ago, a black man who knew how to read was a threat to mainstream America, and during slavery such a skill was punishable by death. Now, education is no longer considered as a valuable, revolutionary act and we eventually victimize ourselves, just as much as the school systems our students attend.

Aint No More Charles Hamilton Houston’s

Once upon a time there were activist warrior scholars who served the needs and protected African Americans against the onslaught of laws designed to subjugate, marginalize and mass incarcerate this population disproportionately to their representation and the occurrence of such crimes. Most of these involved rights proclaimed under the constitution and dealt with receiving an equal education.

As many know, during slavery, a slave was not allowed to learn to read; it was illegal. Whites didn't want black slaves to read and write because they might be encouraged to run away. In addition, People feared that slaves who could read would be more rebellious. At the time of the Civil War, only 1 or 2 percent of slaves were able to read and write meaning that Illiteracy was one of the worst handicaps of being a slave. In most cases, outside of having hands or tongues cut out or being blinded, death was the punishment for a slave learning to read.

To the slave, the ability to read and write meant freedom—if not actual, physical freedom, then intellectual freedom—to maintain relationships amongst family members separated by the slave trade. These men and women took great risks to empower themselves, and in some cases, achieved freedom. However after slavery a dark period emerged and well up into the 20th century, African Americans were still disenfranchised by the legal burden of obtaining an equal education. Charles Hamilton Houston was one of the bright lights of activism that addressed these social ills.

WEB Dubois wrote that “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” I would suspect that he would say that in the 21st century this would continue to be true but add something implicating the impact of the criminal justice system on the worsening of this problem. To put it plainly, it is like comedian Tony Rock stated, “People always say I act like I am afraid of the police, I am afraid of the police."

If there was a time in which our community need the aspiring efforts of a Charles Hamilton Houston it is now. Who was Charles Houston; well he was a lawyer, educator and a warrior. He was the man who devised and led the legal strategy leading to the end of legalized racial segregation in the United States. He also taught and mentored a generation of lawyers, including Thurgood Marshall, James Nabrit, Spottswood Robinson, and A. Leon Higginbotham. It was his work and effort that laid the legal groundwork that led to 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that made racial segregation in public primary and secondary schools unconstitutional.

He completed high school at the age of 15 and graduated from as one of six valedictorians from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1915. After serving in World War I as a second lieutenant in field artillery and receiving an honorable discharge from the army, he enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1919 where he earned his Bachelor of Laws in 1922 and a doctorate in 1923. Truth be told, Houston, and not Barack Obama was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review.

He fought to end legalized discrimination and, in particular, the "separate but equal" doctrine accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson. He proceeded step by step and from 1935 to 1940, he successfully argued several cases using this strategy, including Murray v. Maryland, (1936) which resulted in the desegregation of the University of Maryland's Law School and Missouri ex rel Gaines v. Canada, another case that Houston argued before the Supreme Court, declared that the scholarships Missouri offered to African Americans to attend out-of-state graduate schools did not constitute equal admission. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the admission of a black student to the Law School at the University of Missouri (1938).

Thurgood Marshall took over where Houston left of as NAACP's Special Counsel. In Smith v. Allwright, Marshall successfully challenged "white primaries," which prevented African Americans from voting in several southern states. In Morgan v. Virginia (1946), Marshall won a case in which the Supreme Court struck down a state law that enforced segregation on buses and trains that were interstate carriers. In 1948 he won Shelley v Kraemer, which ended the enforcement of racially restrictive covenants, a practice that barred blacks from purchasing homes in white neighborhoods. In 1950, he won cases that struck down Texas and Oklahoma laws requiring segregated graduate schools in Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma. “In those cases, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment required those states to admit black students to their graduate and professional schools.”

Houston's said “A lawyer's either a social engineer or he's a parasite on society," the formers whose goal was to focus on "bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens." Like I said in the intro we do not have any more of these types in Law. They say we have Obama, but he went for the presidency making one wonder which he would be according to the reasoning of Mr. Houston. We have growing evidence that the current administration will not address these issues. Travon Martin aside, there is a history of injustice deserving our attention. The store clerk, who shot Michael Haynes II in the back and murdered him apparently during a dispute over the price of condoms, The Georgia business owner onto John McNeil, in jail for shooting Brian Epp, who trespassed onto his Cobb County, Georgia property in December 2005 while waving a box cutter and threatened McNeil's son, after being asked to leave his property multiple times before firing in self-defense. Not to mention the countless unknown cases that railroad black men under the guise of justice.

What is required is what Houston and Marshall did: a structured plan to address the legal burden of what leads to the disproportionate mass incarceration of African Americans. Today such an approach would have to tackle several current legal opinions:

Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202 (1965): Robert Swain, nineteen, year old black male, was indicted, tried and convicted of raping a white woman in Talladega County, Alabama, and received the death sentence. There had been five African Americans on the grand jury panel of thirty-three, two of whom served on the grand jury which indicted Swain. Of those in the county eligible for jury selection for grand and petit juries, 26% are Negroes, while the jury panels since 1953 have averaged 10% to 15% African Americans. Of the eight on the venire, two were exempt, and six were peremptorily struck by the prosecutor. The court held that: A defendant in a criminal case is not constitutionally entitled to a proportionate number of his race on the trial jury or the jury panel and that purposeful racial discrimination is not satisfactorily established by showing only that an identifiable group has been underrepresented by as much as 10%. The courts conclusion was that there is no evidence in this case that the jury commissioners applied different jury selection standards as between people based on race.

Purkett v. Elem (94-802), 514 U.S. 765 (1995): During jury selection, he objected to the prosecutor's use of peremptory challenges to strike two black men from the jury panel, an objection arguably based on Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). The prosecutor explained his strikes: "I struck [juror] number twenty two because of his long hair. He had long curly hair. He had the longest hair of anybody on the panel by far. He appeared to not be a good juror for that fact…I don't like the way they looked, with the way the hair is cut, both of them. And the mustaches and the beards look suspicious to me." The Supreme Court upheld this was valid.

Then there are Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) and United States v. Armstrong (95-157), 517 U.S. 456 (1996) among others. Like I said, we cannot depend on the current administration to do anything albeit in his book “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama admitted his drug use and how it could have derailed his future. The president is quick to say he is against the disparity in the criminal justice system yet his actions prove otherwise. His first Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel increase funding for Clintons "COPS ON THE BEAT" program in 2007 when he co-sponsored the COPS Improvements Act of 2007 - Amends the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to make grants for public safety and community policing programs (COPS ON THE BEAT or COPS program). Although Clinton claimed that this program was impactful in decreasing crime, a GAO report indicated if any reduction occurred in violent crimes it was barely 1 percent at a cost of $8 billion. Moreover, Worrall & Kovandzic (2007) showed that COPS spending had little to no effect on crime.

Two more suspect members of the team include Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder. Biden has always been in the led of the war on drugs, on everything from marijuana to steroids. He even wrote the legislation that created the position of a national "Drug Czar", and his Anti-Drug Proliferation Act provides 20-year prison sentences for folk who throw parties in their home if drug use occurs. In addition, he was a proponent of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in 1994, which allocated substantial funds for construction of new prisons, established boot camps for delinquent minors, and brought the death penalty for crimes related to drug dealing. Biden’s 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill included a provision allowing for the federal execution of drug kingpins, asserting that drug-related offenses were equivalent to, or worse than murder.

Eric Holder is no better than Biden or Emanuel. Holder, a former D.C. prosecutor, and the chief law enforcement officer in the U.S., complained that prosecuting the banking executives who caused the 2008 global financial crisis and subsequent deep recession was too difficult. But he is all game for marijuana. As U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., Eric Holder sought to raise marijuana penalties and restore mandatory minimum penalties for drug crimes. His plan was to set minimum sentences of 18 months for first-time convicted drug dealers, 36 months for the second time and 72 months for every conviction thereafter.

All I am saying is that we cannot wait for Obama, even if he is a black president with a past of self-admitted weed and drug use to protect the average black man on the street who are disproportionately targeted by the drug war and court system, to help us. We need another brave group of legal minds like Houston and Marshall to adeptly and shrewdly dismantle the new laws of modern Jim Crow. If either were living today, they would probable say the same about mass incarceration as Houston did education. “This fight for equality of educational opportunity (was) not an isolated struggle. All our struggles must tie in together and support one another. . . We must remain on the alert and push the struggle farther with all our might.”

2012: And Negroes More Slaves Than Ever

“Ugly is what ugly does,” that what my grandmother used to tell me. It was one of the many philosophical idioms she used to instruct me throughout my life as I was growing up as a child. Over the years I started to understand what she meant. I take that it means that people stuck on stupid and fixed on foolishness are ugly and means that you must be judged by your actions. It means that and intelligent person who does stupid things is still stupid. You are what you do.

And without the aid of any screed, I will like to use this to present the premise that regardless of what we call ourselves, African descendants in the united States are even more of slaves now than they were prior to the emancipation proclamation and display more disdain and rancor for who we are than ever in any time prior. To validate this apriorism., will use three recent examples: the newfangled excursus pertain to the description of whether we are African American or Black, the cruel and demoniac, beating on 20-year-old Brandon White and Roland Martin for his perceived homophobic tweets during the Super Bowl.

The first is part of the problem, whether or not people should call them Black or African American. In a nut shell it suggest that conformity has no boundaries and even worse – that African descendants in these United States have successfully been imbued with the outcomes desired by colonialism since we continue to select to define and see ourselves through the spectacles of white European culture. This may be why we tend to be more responsive than proactive. As such, no wonder that African Americans spent $507 bill (out of our total estimated buying power of $836 billion) in 2009 on hair care & personal grooming items. Or that we spend more on self mutilating products (perms, fake nails, and fake hair) than any other ethnic group. As a people in general, we spend almost $50 billion on vehicles alone while less than 50% of African Americans owned their homes as opposed to whites (70%).

The reasons for those that deny any connection to Africa reflect more of a bland and opaque sciolism than actual reality. “Africa was a long time ago” or “It denotes something else to me than who I am.” To even have such a discussion in evidence of a people without any direction and we all know that in order to have direction, as in math and science there must be a starting point. Why is that of all the humans in the world, we are the only people who are afraid to own our connection with our history without apology? Although other ethnic groups from India, Iran, China or wherever, although they came via means other than slavery, when their kids grow up her, they still remain connected to their ethnic heritage. Why, because they accept who they are. If we cannot believe in ourselves and do not accept who and what we are via our colonial indoctrination, we will never succeed as a people.

One has to wonder, why is that we adopt such positions. One is that we do not own our connection with our history and even worse consequently do not accept such with any apology or reservation. This is what is so problematic with what happened to Martin – a man who should have known better, just one day after the beating of Brandon White.

The actuality is that we spend time on speaking about such, which really are not important, than the root causes of our self-destruction, taking responsibility and things that do mater. We would be more likely to stand and Support the irresponsible and ignorant actions of Roland Martin than take the side of righteousness – even suggesting that what he tweeted was no directed toward gays. “If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him! #superbowl” Martin tweeted,

No secret about it, it was. We all know what a “real Bruh” means, “pink” and that any one that looks or is attracted to another man’s crotch are key words. And don’t forget slapping the “ish” out of someone is equal to knocking someone out violently. Yes Martin should have known better but it may be his lack of connection to our community, all of our components regardless of beliefs and practices led him to this outcome. Yes, he can be seen by a reasonable person as cheerleading for violence against men who are excited to see the crotch of another man - gays. Yes like many of us, he was a pawn in the game, defeated by his own self inflicted wounds as many of us, through the main tool of mentacide today – the television.

For example, remembering the television show the “Fresh Prince of Bel Air can provide a vivid example of this. Will Smith’s character was the one most folks attended to. He was book dumb but street smart, he could dance and could get all the girls while Carlton was the one to be hated, an educated black man who could not dance. Even in our schools, the popular kids do poorly academically and cause havoc while the straight A students are looked down upon. About 69% of Black children in America cannot read at grade level in the 4th grade, compared with 29% among White childrenThere is a reason why black folks will break in your home, trash the place and take everything except books. Chances are book shelves are never trashed in robberies.

All of the aforementioned, the discussion of whether we are African American or Black, the beating on 20-year-old Brandon White and Roland Martin for his irresponsible and ill-informed tweets during the Super Bowl are as Dr. Na'im Akbar stated, "We are ignorant of who we are and what we can do.” It means what Dr. Carter G. Woodson wrote in "The Miseducation of the Negro," "When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door he will cut one for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary."

What we do and say is important and an intelligent person who does stupid things is still stupid (Roland Martin) and people stuck on stupid and fixed on foolishness are ugly (The Attackers of White). Not valuing who and what we are and where we come from contributes to such idiocy and unfortunately makes me think that Brown versus Board of Education means nothing now, because most of us don’t value education, care to accept our origins are in Africa and don’t care about learning. “Just because a cat has kittens in an oven doesn’t make them biscuits.”

Who is the real madoff: African Americnas Still Display Scant Signs of Economic Improvement

By definition, to improve is to enhance in value or quality — to make better. Yet more than 40 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, there is still no noticeable improvement in the quality of life in the African American community.

A new report suggests that a large corpus of the African American community has made very little progress when compared to whites over the past few decades. According to a survey given to African American adults, seven out of 10 adults view today as very tough times for their children and perceive poor black youth as falling further behind. Yet, unlike adults, two out of three African American youth perceive current times as being “very good or OK.”

In addition to survey data, the report also provides economic data on opportunity trends. Four out of ten black children are born into poverty compared to less than one in ten for whites. Less than 40 percent live with two parents versus 75 percent for whites. African American children are statistically more likely to die before their first birthday or become obese in school.

More startling is the finding that 85 percent of African American children in the fourth grade cannot read or do math at their grade level, and almost half eventually drop out of school. A young African American male born over the past decade has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime.

It is essential that we remember that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was more than a dreamer; he was a catalyst. We cannot think we have it made, since the numbers show us otherwise.

In 2010 the unemployment, underemployment and hidden unemployment rate for black 16 to 29-year-olds was 40 percent and 43 percent for black males. The large number of young black adults not working full-time jobs will severely limit their future employability, earnings and ability to support their families.

It was Dr. King who said, "It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps."

Supended sentence

African American males, from elementary school to high school, are struggling academically. This has been confirmed in a new report outlining suspension rates of African American males. According to a national study co-written by Daniel J. Losen, a senior associate at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California Los Angeles, and Indiana University Professor Russell Skiba, there is a growing disparity with respect to the treatment of white and nonwhite students in terms of suspension.

Using U.S. Department of Education data on suspensions, the findings support that black males in middle school are suspended at higher rates than white students. The study also reported that Palm Beach County ranked No. 1 among 18 large, urban school districts nationwide in terms of the frequency with which it suspended black male middle school students in 2006. Fifty-three percent have been suspended at least once. Milwaukee was second with 51 percent. Other cities, including Atlanta, reported suspending more than 35 percent of African American male middle school students during the same time period.

The national sample was comprised of more than 9,000 middle schools. The study also observed that 28.3 percent of black males, on average, were suspended at least once during a school year, This is a rate almost 3 times the 10 percent recorded for white males in middle school. African American females of the same age group were suspended more than four times as often as white females (18 percent vs. 4 percent).

The study suggests that as a result, many African American male students miss valuable class time during the middle school years, a critical period in their academic and social development. The report, titled “Suspended Education: Urban Middle Schools in Crisis,” found that 175 middle schools in these districts suspended more than one-third of their black male students. Eighty-four schools suspended more than half the black males enrolled.

The report confirms what many have suspected for years. In Nashville, Tenn., nine metro middle schools have suspended more than 50 percent of African American males, mainly ages 9 through 12, according to Vanderbilt University psychologist and human development specialist Maury Nation.

Big Booty Women and VIP: Why Black Students Can't Finish High School

Tatiana Reina wanted to graduate in the worst way — and she did. Ordinarily, a student's graduation would be applauded and presented as an achievement and symbol of perseverance, but not in Reina's case. The 21-year-old Reina was enrolled at Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., for six years. Her grades and attendance records were abysmal, replete with missing classes and failing grades. In 2007, she even faked her graduation, sneaking into the commencement line panoplied in cap and gown.

Although she had ample time to complete her high school graduation requierements, Reina did not hold up her end of the bargain. She did not attend the majority of her classes. The standard for graduation is to attend at least 90 percent of one's classes. Even when she was confronted with "aging out" or being too old for the school system this year, she received another chance and still did not attend the required amount of classes.

Yet Principal Jacqueline Boswell still allowed Reina to graduate.

According to the New York Post in June, Reina showed up for the last five days and was given some health and chemistry assignments in the guidance office," where "She sat at a computer and Googled her answers." The Post also states that "teachers were pressured into giving Reina — and a half-dozen other failing students — minimally passing grades of 65, the equivalent of a D, to get the credits needed to graduate."

In Knoxville, Tenn., incoming top 100-freshman receiver Da'Rick Rogers was charged and detained after an early morning bar fight that left police officer Robert Capouellez unconscious on the street. Witnesses have alleged that while the officer was down, Rogers and others repeatedly kicked the officer in the head.

It is strange that people — not all, but some — do not appreciate the value of an education nor put forth the effort to maximize opportunities when proffered. Reina could have easily gone to class and studied just as Rodgers could have valued a scholarship to a major Division I school. However, neither exhibited behavior that indicated appreciation, but rather acted as if it was their right to graduate in the former case or attend college in the latter.

We often point fingers at the institutions rather than the individuals. The fact is, many of us spend more time chasing or being the big booty girl in the VIP section of the club, than studying, helping our youth value education, or assisting our kids with homework.

The new white folk – us

In 1954, 0n may 17 The United States Supreme Court announced its unanimous decision regarding the historic Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas case. The case specifically targeted the doctrine of “separate but equal”. Thurgood marshall used social science to note the negative impact on the mental and psychological well being of African American students as well as the noted inferiority of the schools that African Americans were forced to attend. His purview was that such school segregation violated the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. One significant point of evidence was evinced by Dr Kenneth Clark and his wife. Called the doll test, Dr. Clark showed how segregation impacts African American children. In his words:

"I presented these dolls to them and I asked them the following questions in the following order: "Show me the doll that you like best or that you'd like to play with," "Show me the doll that is the 'nice' doll," "Show me the doll that looks 'bad'," and then the following questions also: "Give me the doll that looks like a white child," "Give me the doll that looks like a colored child," "Give me the doll that looks like a Negro child," and "Give me the doll that looks like you." By Mr. Carter: Q. "Like you?" A. "Like you."

His results showed “that of the children between the ages of six and nine whom I tested, which were a total of sixteen in number, that ten of those children chose the white doll as their preference; the doll which they liked best. Ten of them also considered the white doll a "Nice" doll. And, I think you have to keep in mind that these two dolls are absolutely identical in every respect except skin color. Eleven of these sixteen children chose the brown doll as the doll which looked "bad." This is consistent with previous results which we have obtained testing over three hundred children, and we interpret it to mean that the Negro child accepts as early as six, seven or eight the negative stereotypes about his own group." This was a while back, a time before many of us were born, however there is a similar behavior however it is self directed.

It used to be that the forces of racism were the main culprits of the problems that many African American Currently, there are many trends in behavior that denote some of us are regressing. One such trend is young men calling themselves goons and thugs and gangsters and women calling them Barbie – a white doll. Now some have considered my presentation of such as petty, non-sensorial and even as bull shit. However I disagree. True it may be younger folk doing such but that does not abrogate my responsibility to point out what I perceive needs to be discussed.

It is as if one should not attended to unemployment just because they have a job; or not be concerned about high dropout rates among African American males because their son is graduating and going to college. I suggest that we have lost our way and that our behavior from self –hate, to being self absorbed and materialistic is akin to the manner in which white folks treated use decades past. They were the one that made us feel less than equal; they were the ones who used violence on us; they were the ones that made laws that made it a crime punishable by death to learn to read; they were the ones who considered black as vile and ugly. Not any more for today it is us. We make ourselves feel less if we don’t have certain material to define us; we sing about beating killing and shooting our own kind in popular music as if it is acceptable behavior and even parade it on television via videos and on the radio as if it proffers a benefit to our community; we no longer read and if we do in many cases it is about gossip and/or celebrity and now we proclaim ourselves to be representatives of white beauty, at least some of us with the use of fake hair and proclamations of the aforementioned. Why not Kendra, I mean the black doll has a name – or is it that even today – we associate with the white doll over the black one?

Even today what Dr. Clark noted still occurs. Now I don’t care nor am I trying to ruffle any feathers, however I will not separate myself from acknowledging or trying to openly discuss things that may be detriments to our community. It is sad that folks get defensive and prefer to attack the messenger than accept and think about problem solving. If we should have learned anything from Martin Luther King Jr., it should be tolerance of the opinions of others. He encouraged open discussion and the promulgation of thought as opposed to self-destruction when he wrote "A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan” and “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." 459 years latter and we still got major problems folk and we too weak to accept, point out or even acknowledge them. And as such, we may as well put on them white robes for how are we any different from the KKK?

wayne's world

I have been writing and wishing that the election of our new president would at least be a form of vicarious stimulation for many a folk to see and appreciate the value of intellect, of knowledge and more importantly of being informed and of the value of reading. Especially as it relate to young African American men and out youth of all races and creed. This is my greatest wish, superseded only by jones getting the economy right and back to par.

Especially since I am reminded that since forever, even the historic Brown versus the Topeka Board of Education, that the education gap between blacks and whites in this country has remained the same and in many cases increased. The case itself was based on understanding the premise of the Segregation of white and Negro children in the public schools of a State solely on the basis of race, based on state laws requiring such segregation. Marshall argued on my mom’s birthday of December 9, 1952 that such denies to Negro children the equal protection of the laws as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, in particular as based on "separate but equal" doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 .

To summarize the case, Black children were denied admission to public schools attended by white children according to their race albeit white and black schools were almost the same with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications, and teacher salaries. In conclusion the court decided that racial segregation in public education had a “detrimental effect on minority children because it is interpreted as a sign of inferiority.”

Although this case ended segregation based on race, the achievement gap remains. It doesn’t matter if we speak of reading levels or standardized test, very little has changed. With respect to the LSAT for example, using cut-off score of 145, over 60 percent of black applicants will likely be denied admittance to law schools compared to 20 percent of white applicants. Even with respect to the SAT, the average SAT scores of black students in the early 2000s was 857 compared to 1060 for their white confederates.

I know that historically standardized test scores are not an indication of intellect and that they have been historically biased toward non majority students, but they are a barometer or the academic divide irrespective of economic status. When it comes to reading, math and science the gap is consistent across all grade levels. This may be one reason why drop out rates for African Americans are higher and why since the aforementioned Supreme Court Case in 1954, high school dropout rates of blacks has only decreased by about 3% while there has been no significant change noted for whites.

Now the reason I am saying this is because I just read an interview in GQ given by Lil Wayne. Now I know Wayne aint no role model, but the truth is that parents can’t pick and decide who their kids look up too. Although I accept him as a skillful lyricist, I was troubled when I read in his interview “no one can believe what’s written down.” He continued to say “if there was a book that said, there was this bum with a mansion with twenty bitches in it, you’ll try to use it and put it toward real life. That’s why I don’t write nothing down. That’s why I don’t believe the Bible, nothing that’s written, because nothing that’s written is to be believed.” When specifically asked "so you don’t believe in books? His retort was “there is one I read and get information from. The damn dictionary.”

Now I won’t pass judgment on Lil Wayne, but I must say, that I believe and was taught that education was the great equalizer, that if you wanted to hide something from someone of my color to put it in a book. True, I know kids aint reading GQ, but not to call Wayne and idiot, I think to assert that you can’t believe anything that is written is not productive, a representation of not assuming the collective responsibility that all of us, even rappers have to the general community from which they come. We all cannot be as fortunate to have our bodies tattooed like a national geographic map, or the gold from mines in South Africa in our mouths, or diamonds from Sierra Leone on our necks. But that’s Wayne’s World, not mine.

The Mountain Top and Promised Land – Not yet

I had a happy go lucky post but I was like fuc that shit. 5 The world we live in has changed in just one day. Not via the first African American President, but more so because of a change in generations. The challenge of his victory is not for the man to succeed, but rather for those of us to step up to the plate and be critical, to become more knowledgeable and aware and more importantly, to except the responsibility of change. Yep, it is not on him, but rather us. We have been moved by rhetoric proffered by an impassioned man of intellect, can and will we match his motivation is what will be required for him to leave a legacy in the name of Washington and Lincoln. His poetry again is extremely lofty, but the challenge is and will be his actions and what he practice.

It was interesting for me that he thanked and congratulated George W. Bush for his leadership – namely because he criticized the policies of the former president and not the man. I wonder if we as people can do the same; separate the person and the individual from their policies. I do such but many cannot see such a distinction. I remember when J.C. Watts was in the house and how I vehemently disagreed with his positions, I still respected him, as I do Obama, albeit I disagree with his approach. I just don’t recall nobody getting upset when I held J.C. to task and respected him at the same time. Maybe I am wrong to obviate emotion from problem solving, but such is neither here nor there. But it is ok for Obama, not for me as a simple man who cooks breakfast and dinner each day for his family, runs his own business and brushes his teeth with baking soda instead of purchasing toothpaste.

True I am an idealist, and I may upset some folks when I say what they desire not to hear, or see or think about and to them. It is not about me or you, but us, and us is not monolithic clones – we are all diverse and valuable. But I will never take any thing personally if it is on a given subject matter, but I will if it is about me or my family. Maybe it is the scientist in me for it is my desire to understand, just understand. I do not mean or intend to offend folks, or make them angry with what I write, but if I do, so be it. I do not mean or intend to make folks happy or smile with what I write but if I do so be it.

The point still remains that collective responsibility will make or break the president and his success not me being critical or folks being over protective. It will be us. It’s like its cool for the news or media to keep politicians honest and be critical of them, even when they repeat as opposed to think and evaluate, but not a regular, single black male parent who only has the interest of his kids at heart and the world the reside in. I don’t desire ratings or viewers, but if u do it is cool, if you don’t it is cool. Just be open and objective is all I request and leave your emotion on the chest of drawers.

So do what you must and say what you must, be critical, even of me but equally of those that have control over your life more so than my words and thoughts. I just happen to be a product of my elders, and not the only person whose mother (since we had no car) had to take the bus to the only hospital (John Gaston) that admitted blacks, just so I could be born, So say and do what you must with respect to me for I am strong and a leader – just not a politician. Emotion in thought is for the week minded and followers when it regards problem solving and suggesting solutions.

I am just afraid, afraid that folks will think that we have over come that we are at the mountain top, that we have reached the Promised Land. But I know, like Richard Pryor, and Gil Scott, and George Clinton said – people can’t handle the truth. And albeit you may consider it my truth, the truth is until I see health care for all, until I see the education gap decreased (hasn’t since 1954 Brown versus Board of Topeka), until black men are not admitted to prisons disproportionate to their place in the general population, until kids in America if the are of African descent do not have a mortality rate of Uganda, until I am not the only African American father active in the PTA, I don’t care who or what color the president is, I will be critical. So take that and if such is perceived as a high horse and contrite and un-touching all I can say is Jesus wept. The work is on us folk. Maybe this is the post partisian area, maybe not. Likewise, maybe I should look at him as Barack Obama instead of Mr. President – naw, I think not. For as Obama has said, we should expect and demand more of our leaders, and I do folk.

when a 70 is an F

There once was a time when education, regardless of gender, race or economic status was valued more so than anything else. It was seen as the great equalizer and the one intangible that was attainable by every one.

Today seems that the value for education has diminished greatly, and that the transformation of values as such has turned for the worse. I had conversation with my folk this morning about his. As usual we saw this from different angles. He suggested that the values have not changed; it was that people tended to finish college but would still have no job, so I was not as important as it used to be in past days. My position was not based on securing jobs, but rather the value of pedagogy in general.

Although I do not remember the time when my mom and her siblings went to school, I do remember seeing pictures. First it had to be hell and high water for them to miss a day in school and second they always had books in their hands.

My grandma would always say she never went to school. She had to work and getting married at sixteen meant she placed her family first. But this was in the late 1930s – a few decades before Brown versus the Topeka Board of education.

Today, it seems to be just different. Told him that 70% of the young African American males that enter the 9th grade wont graduate or finish school with their peers. That means that only 3 out of ten graduate high school, at least on time. Because of this 70 percent, nearly 80 percent eventually drop out.

I consider this foul on two fronts. First is our disposition and concern of materialism in the form of objects versus what one produces with his mind. Add to that our inability to want to work hard and delay gratification for the attainment of easy money. The last front is governmental, being that more money is spent on subsidies for oil companies, big business and given to places like Israel and Pakistan than is spent on education with respect to our public schools and the pay of teachers and institutions of higher learning with the reduction of grants, student aid and loans for those interested in college.

Again, I’m just venting, and sad. I used to hate being one of the two or three African American male professors at Emory University. I felt like I had to represent all of the African American men in the world and could only kick it with the building and grounds crew outside of the two aforementioned professors. In my book, this 70 is not a C, but really an F.