the ghost of Grover Clevland

It is unsettling at times, to know that the world you live in is not alwaysone that has your best cultural interest at hand. I was trying to hold off on publishing this but I couldn’t. But just imagine, post segregation, 2007, and your child is one of 9 African American students attending a middle school in New Jersey. They come home and ask you to assist them with their home work but you cannot. Not because you are dumb but more so because are stunned and appauled.

This is what happened for sme parents whoes children attened Grover Cleveland Middle School in Caldwell, NJ. Two New Jersey middle school teachers gave students a take-home project on slavery. The students, who were in the 6th grade, were asked to write a persuasive report, as if they were a plantation owner, selling the pros of slavery for running a Cotton Plantation they had inherited from their relatives.

In essence, they were given homework that was supposed to result in a media campaign in support of slavery and the use of slave labor for this imaginary plantation in South Carolina. More than 100 students participated in the assignment. It almost makes sense given that out of the 2,334 students in the district as of the 2005-06 school year, 38 were black, according to the state Department of Education.

Higher education seems to be less than high nowadays if these type of assignments are to represent getting the most out of our students. And no, this has nothing to do with political incorrectness but moreso with the fact that Amerikka was founded and has thrived on racism and will continue to do so. Why not give students an assignment asking them to maximize the killing of Jews In Auschitz? What’s the difference. Both are insensitive and have no pedagogic utility other than to add more shame to the villians that perpatrated slavery and the extermination of the jews. I say lets put instructors like these in gas chambers, maybe they will learn something. Besides, with teachers like this, no wonder we are enrolling at higher rates in prison than in college.

But what can one expect from a school that is named after the 22nd President of these United States and a staunch racist and supporter of white supremacy.

The Dirty Dozen

This month folks in these United States of America, namely historian and pundits will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown. Historians have often misrepresented Jamestown as some type of quest for Democracy while at the same time acknowledging the exploitation of Africans and the indigenous folks who were already home trained and living on these shores that welcomed, what would become their enemy with opened arms.

I am thinking of this as I wait to give a talk on health disparities. It is strange when you think about it, that many of the problems and issues our community have with disease and limited economic empowerment started here and that I am asked to remember this even in celebration

Jamestown lead Shakespeare to pen his play the Tempest in 1611, which as one of the main characters was Calibain, who was described as a swarthy and fearsome and evil aboriginal.

I wonder what would have happened if the newcomers, the settlers, the colonizers, the Europeans had actually succumbed to the insects and diseases they had never witnessed before. I wonder what would have happened if this lazy group of trespassers had never learned to dig wells (from the inhabitants) and drank river water as opposed to learn to dig wells for spring water and succumbed to more disease and pestilence?

I just wanted to say for the record, I will not be celebrating anything related to the settlement of Jamestown for I am not a descendant of Jamestown, for it was only 12 years, a dozen years after its establishment that the first lot of 20 Africans from present day Angola landed at the colony.

Truth be told the current roots of family instability, economic inheritance and land accumulation all began with Jamestown. Maybe that is why it will always leave a sordid taste in my mouth, and I wish to spit on its inheritance with my word, deed and venom - for all we got from this act was the The Virginia House of Burgesses which only enacted laws establishing and perpetuating the institution of slavery.