The number of black people involved in Melaleuca or Tahitian Noni or Mary Kay is significant, particularly among the middle class. To a certain extent this should put to rest the idea that black people aren't interested in starting their own businesses because they are too enamored (too brainwashed) by mainstream society. Given the recent news about the rise in poverty rates particularly among African Americans, we shouldn't necessarily be surprised that blacks are attempting to either supplement their income or replace lost earnings through such efforts. But reading Or Does It Explode for the Black Politics class I'm teaching really points to some of the pitfalls blacks tend to face that make it difficult to get out of wage slavery simply through entrepreneurship.
Or Does It Explode takes a look at Harlem during the Great Depression. Unlike other recent attempts (John Jackson's Harlemworld comes to mind) Greenberg's work does an excellent job of grappling with the politics, economics, and culture of black harlemites and how their life choices were truncated by larger political and economic processes.
Talking about how the Great Depression combined with racial discrimination to severely impact black economic options, Greenberg notes that many black professionals started their own businesses. They did so desiring to serve the black Harlem community, but also to make money for themselves. But they faced significant hurdles:
Black businesses were generally poorly capitalized and thus could not compete effectively against better financed whites. Instead, blacks moved into low-profit fields and competed against one another for a smaller share of the market....If blacks had had needs peculiar to themselves that only other blacks could provide (like Jews who needed kosher meat, for example) black stores could have competed successfully against white, even with higher prices. By and large, such was not the case...For most services, larger and better-financed white establishments competed successfully against black ones in the same neighborhood. They could often offer the same products at a lower price, or provide a more varied selection. (p.27)
Often pundits and jackleg theorists blame either black consumers (black people are just too brainwashed to support their own, unlike X ethnic group), or black producers (black producers are just too trifling to provide good service) without considering the basic principles of Econ 101. The one arena black people have not so much a monopoly but a decided market advantage is in the area of culture...which is why most of our wealthiest individuals are culture workers. Which brings us to The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.
Although the biggest news related to state level politics is the recall in California, many of us recognize that the recall attempt is part of a larger pattern. The activities in Texas, where the Republicans in charge of the state legislature are attempting to redraw the political lines for the Texas Congressional delegation, are plausibly related. A colleague of mine asked me in the locker room last week whether I thought race had anything to do with the Texas redistricting attempt--which looks like it'll soon be a reality, given the return of Texas 11. Off the top of my head, I said no.
Here I am a SPECIALIST in race and politics...but I couldn't have been more wrong.
The way that the Republicans are going to get an extra six seats or so is relatively straightforward. All they have to do is redraw the district lines so more democratic voters are packed into fewer districts, and then split the rest of them so they'll be small minorities in the rest of the districts.
Question. What populations are easiest to pack into super-democratic districts?
Answer? The segregated populations. Black and Latinos.
In the short term what this does is give black and Latino politicians the opportunity to pick up more seats in the Texas delegation. And this is a good thing. But what it also does is create the opportunity for the Republicans to establish almost perpetual control over that state delegation. Kuff quotes from a Beinhart article that notes a similar dynamic. I noted earlier that the reason the Reagan Democrats BECAME Reagan Democrats was because they associated the Democratic Party with Black people. Norquist, Delay, and the White House would LOVE to see that dynamic played out in Texas. I can easily imagine a situation in which the majority of the state's population would be non-white and Democrat, while the majority of the state Congressional delegation would be white and Republican.
I don't remember William Thomas, even though I used to have many discussions with him. But now as I read him, I find myself amazed to agree with everything he says in this essay.
The reason I, at that time, continued to believe in liberalism and that voting Democratic was in my best interest was because I thought I could find no alternative. Although I disbelieved most of the liberal agenda, often the only time I would hear from conservatives on issues like affirmative action was when there was an aggrieved White fire fighter complaining about reverse discrimination. At least the liberal Democrats would try to court my vote, even if they attempted to court my vote with nothing more than tired, old shibboleths. For the most part conservatives would simply ignore my concerns. When faced with the apparent choice between those who have the wrong solutions but express concern on the one hand and those who may be knowledgeable but seem completely indifferent on the other, the natural choice for most people will be to choose the incompetent but caring. As Jack Kemp would say, "We conservatives have dropped the ball on racial issues."
I find this crossing of paths without recognition rather amazing, striking even.
I want to shamelessly quote this article from Alternet by Lee Hubbard, because I have yet to find a decent history site which covers the Southern Strategy. Since I only use the internet for research and don't have subscriptions to nice transcription services I employ fair use for educational purposes.
I get the feeling we are about to witness some poorly informed backbiting on the Southern Strategy...
Does the GOP Have Racial Amnesia?By Lee Hubbard, AlterNet
March 20, 2001Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, recently met with House majority leader Richard Armey to discuss racial harmony. The meeting was described as cordial and productive, but if so, it was only because the leaders ignored the history of the GOP's racist past.
Mfume was responding in part to a letter Armey had sent him, declaring that "It has become an all too common practice to spread unfounded, racially charged falsehoods against Republicans for political advantage. If left unchallenged, this practice will continue to divide our nation, polarize our political parties, and do untold harm in the lives of real people who are unjustly accused of conspiracy against the civil rights of African Americans."
After the meeting they held a joint press conference to talk about trying to heal the canyon between the GOP and the African-American community. One of the things that Armey did not talk about, however, was the GOP's history with the black community, espescially the last 30 years, that have caused African Americans to treat Republicans with suspician and in many cases outright hostility.
At one time, the GOP was the party of blacks, and they religiously voted for the "party of Lincoln." They were attracted to its message of freedom and self-help. While black voting for the GOP decreased after Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, blacks still had high regard for the Republican Party, especially since the Democratic Party had long been in the grip of the "boll weevils" – Southern senators like Stennis, Eastland and Bilbo – who blocked nearly all civil rights legislation for the first half of the 20th century. Black people voted Republican by a 60-40 margin in the 1956 election that returned Eisenhower to the presidency for a second term.
This changed, however, when race become central to the Republican Party's national strategy, especially in the South, now the main region of power for the GOP. Arizona senator Barry Goldwater began the Republicans' catering to Southern racism in his 1964 presidential race against Lyndon Johnson. Realizing a large share of the black vote was going to Johnson, who was working on crafting the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, Goldwater came out against it, and went for states' rights instead. This helped him ride the wave of white backlash, and he carried the five Deep South (Dixiecrat) states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. This was unheard of for a Republican at the time.
That same year, Strom Thurmond, the then segregationist Democratic senator from South Carolina, saw the writing on the wall and switched to the Republican Party. "The Democratic Party has forsaken the people," said Thurmond at the time. "It has become the party of minority groups, power-hungry union leaders, political bosses and big businessmen looking for government contracts and favors."
Four years later in 1968, Richard Nixon's "Southern strategy" used tactics from the Goldwater and the Dixiecrat playbook of George Wallace to play on white fear and resentment by labeling blacks "welfare cheats" and "laggards." The white backlash to the Civil Rights Movement and to LBJ's Great Society programs (which, paradoxically, gave poor Southern white people unprecedented access to health care, education, and job training) helped elect Nixon, and the party wrote off black voters completely.
"Substantial Negro support is not necessary to national Republican victory," said Kevin Phillips, the mastermind behind the Nixon strategy. "The GOP can build a winning coalition without Negro votes. Indeed, Negro-Democratic mutual identification was a major source of Democratic loss and Republican party profit in many sections of the country."
Since then, some Republicans across the country have played to these fears to gather white votes. Ronald Reagan declared that he "believed in states' rights" when he kicked off a presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where civil rights martyrs Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman were murdered, fighting states rights and attempting to help blacks get registered to vote. Once in office, Reagan used the racialized image of "welfare queens" who drive Cadillac's, and he led an all out assault on affirmative action laws calling them "reverse racism."
Vice President Bush picked up the mantle in his presidential run in 1988 with the infamous Willie Horton ad campaign, which basically depicted all blacks of being criminals (sadly, inequitable law enforcement practices and sentencing disparities threaten to make that caricature a reality).
Some of the Republican brush-off of blacks has been unintentional, and some has been blatantly malicious. That is why blacks didn't buy the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush, who received 8 percent of the black vote in the 2000 presidential election against Al Gore, especially after Bush refused to take a stand against the flying of the Confederate flag issue in South Carolina – Bush's play on Nixon's old Southern Strategy.
While Armey may not want to hear the recent history of his political party, it is something he will have to address. If he can address this, and Mfume can be honest about the NAACP's recent actions, then maybe something can come out of the recent meeting. If not, they met for meeting's sake.
Lee Hubbard can be reached by email at superle@hotmail.com with any questions or comments.
I recently have come into possession of some access codes, thanks to my public library, to a great treasure trove of archives. So I will be able to play journalist a bit moer closely. As I was surfing through newly opened vistas, I decided to track back to the LA Riots. I quickly noticed a name that was vaguely familiar, that of Arthur Fletcher, who was at the time was head of the USCCR.
The US Commission on Civil Rights has a measly $9 million budget and a staff of 75. There are 8 commissioners who run the joint. Apparently they are currently ideologically deadlocked. Once upon a time, Arthur Fletcher, a black Republican ran the office. He tired of it and passed the buck to its current Chair, Mary Frances Berry.
These days the CCR is deadlocked. You may recall the big debate between Edley and Thernstrom over at Slate. There is a 4-4 split along party lines. Too bad the blacks are only on one side.
Right at the top of the CCR page you'll note the following:
The United States Commission on Civil Rights is composed of eight Commissioners: four appointed by the President and four by Congress. Not more than four members shall at any one time be of the same political party.The President also designates the Chairperson and Vice Chairperson from among the Commission's members with the concurrence of a majority of the Commission's members.
The Commissioners serve 6-year terms. No Senate confirmation is required. The President may remove a member of the Commission only for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.
Abagail Thernstrom is the notable Republican of the group; her colleagues are not recognizeable.
But back to Fletcher. I want to quote this article from the WaPo of October 1996.
When [Clint] Bolick got the word from Dennis Shea, Dole's deputy chief of staff, that his boss wanted to join the anti-affirmative action team, his first reaction was equal parts "delight and skepticism." Dole was among the last Republicans that Bolick thought of as a prospective ally. Movement conservatives were nonetheless delighted by Dole's move rightward, Bolick said, because "we felt having the Senate majority leader, and someone whose civil rights record was unassailable, behind this legislation was the best possible scenario." Dole had been a moderate on issues of race going back to his vote as a young congressman for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. During the ideological struggles of the Reagan era, he had constantly frustrated the efforts of Justice Department officials to eviscerate federal affirmative action programs.But Shea, a movement conservative working within Dole's eclectic legislative shop, insisted that his boss had come to believe strongly that affirmative action was no longer fair or needed. Shea, carrying out Dole's wishes, drafted a letter to the Congressional Research Service requesting a detailed account of every program on the federal books in which race or gender could be used as a factor in the selection process. When the list came back with 160 programs, the publicity helped compel President Clinton to reexamine his position on affirmative action and produced the White House's "mend it, don't end it" conclusion. At one strategy session, Dole surprised and impressed conservatives in the room by declaring, "If we are not going to do this for the principle involved then we shouldn't do it at all." He also said that he was planning to push the bill aggressively. "We're gonna do this!" he declared privately.
When? Bolick and his allies began to wonder. Twice that spring they set dates to announce the legislation, and Dole's staff called to back out at the last minute. Shea said they were working out details. Bolick concluded "they were getting cold feet right at the start."
Dole finally unveiled what was called the Equal Opportunity Act on July 27, 1995. "Earlier in the year, I promised to introduce legislation to get the federal government out of the business of dividing Americans, and into the business of uniting Americans," Dole said at a news conference. "Today, I am fulfilling this commitment." He said he hoped his bill would be "a starting point in a national conversation, not just on the future of affirmative action, but on the future of America."
Arthur Fletcher, a black Republican who grew up in Kansas, was so depressed and angered when he heard Dole's statement that day that he immediately sat down and wrote him a 13-page letter. Fletcher, who had helped develop affirmative action programs as an official in the Nixon administration, told Dole he had foolishly bowed to pressure from the right and underestimated the dismay his decision would cause in black America. But within hours there was also dismay among conservatives. When Dole returned to the Senate floor and delivered his maiden speech as an anti-affirmative action man, Bolick watched on C-SPAN with growing alarm. The words were similar but Dole's demeanor had changed. "I was watching his eyes and his eyes would not leave the text on the podium," Bolick recalled. "It struck me that he was uncomfortable pushing the issue. I was afraid that he would lose his convictions and that he would be a poor advocate even if he remained constant. Both of those fears proved well founded." In the months that followed, Dole made little effort to get Senate co-sponsors and then went large stretches without talking about the issue. The revolutionary fervor waned, and with it the call for drastic action. Dole went silent on the issue. Considering his history, this was not a major surprise.
We may speculate on the amount and scignificance of Fletcher's influence on Dole, but there is no question that he had some, both as a fellow Kansan and as a fellow Republican. Was that the source of Dole's ultimate reticence? I don't know. What I do know is that black Republican leverage doesn't seem possible in the minds of most Americans, and yet a mere 7 years ago it was there in plain sight.
Was there something extraordinary about Arthur Fletcher? I don't know. There isn't enough within easy reach of Google for me to find out. But I'm getting closer to the ability to find out such things. In the meantime it looks to me that he was simply a right man on the right at the right time.
Too bad he's alone and forgotten.
A couple of days ago I wrote a piece about some of the myths about black politics that get neatly packaged and consumed whenever something "racial" happens in the media. Art McGee sent the Afrofuturists a brief article about the lack of colored folk in Dean's campaign. If Will Lester got the quote right, this is what Dean had to say:
"Asked why most of his supporters, particularly at the Meetup sessions, are white, Dean readily acknowledged that his support has been from the ground up, while attracting minorities must be done from the top down.
"You've got to go to the leadership in those communities. You can't just do the grass roots without the blessing of the leaders," Dean said last week.
I like Dean as a candidate. But damn this statement is stupid. Here we go again.
Why exactly CAN'T you go grassroots? What's preventing you? There's a strong black community on the internet, whether you're talking about the Afrofuturists, the black blogging community, or the various fraternities and sororities that have their own email lists. The Goldboot list (a list for members of Omega Psi Phi) runs literally thousands deep. Even given the difference in internet usage between black and white citizens there is no explicit reason why the same methods couldn't apply.
I'm thinking that what's going on here is the same regressive ideas about the relationship between "black leaders" and black citizens that I talked about the other day. To be "down with the folks" you got to go to The Black Church (yep, there's only ONE black church, and everybody black goes to it, because you know they all believe in the God, the same God that spoke to King). THEN you got to go to the NAACP. THEN you got to get the blessing of Rev. SHarpton and Rev. Jackson.
AFTER all that, you can get to the folks. In fact, you don't even have to GO to the folks. Just slide the Reverends some skin, and THEY'LL get the folks for you. Yeah sure, you have to say you support Affirmative Action, and are against Racial Profiling, and that you were at the March on Washington. But you don't have to do much besides that. Black people don't really care much about the issues, unless the reverends tell them to.
To show you how stupid this sounds, I'm going to flip the script:
Reverend Sharpton is doing well among African American voters but there aren't that many white faces in his campaign. 'I'm not sure what Sharpton is thinking about' says Andrew Knight, Professor of Political Science at the University of Idaho. 'He's got to get the white vote if he wants to be successful.'
Sharpton himself recognizes the problem.
'Well, the problem is that with black voters I can speak directly to them about their issues--about the poverty, the segregation, about the lack of an urban infrastructure, about the desire for higher education and health care. With whites, I have to go through their leaders and get their blessing first. So I've been trying to get in touch with the Pope, and with the cast of Friends (they ALL watch Friends) and I've just been having no luck.
"After I get the nomination, I'm hoping that all I have to do is give John Kerry some Ben & Jerry's coupons and he'll get the white vote for me."
Yep.
(Someone please tell me that Will Lester got the quote wrong.)
Abiola finds a gem of a story on the lengths to which parents will go to educate their kids. I would advise seriously against it as it only exacerbates the domestic problem, but I understand. My youngest brother was a member of the ABC program. We sent him from California to Minnesota for highschool. My youngest sister was similarly bussed 60 miles a day round trip in elementary school. So our family understands the downsides of this kind of separation, as well as the upside of avoiding the domestic nightmare of ghetto ed.
I have long been an opponent of vouchers based on my understanding of two fundamental rules.
#1. Vouchers are inflationary. (increases demand)
I think the first rule is underscored by the thing that Abiola mentions, the high amounts of money spent per pupil in American public schools is not increasing the amount of valuable education that is being put into kids' heads.
The classic argument about capitalism says if you put three people on an island with an equal amount of money, after a month one of them will be rich. Some people are just better skilled at using money to their advantage. These people are already buying the best education they can for their kids. Putting more money into the system only accelerates this process.
#2. Vouchers don't fix supply.
No new schools are created by voucher money. The same schools which are considered better without it will now be inundated by new applications.
The bad schools will empty. The good schools will fill. Will the good schools expand? Will these expanded good schools be as good?
The idea that vouchers encourage is to make everyone see the city's public and private schools as a whole. The implications of this must be followed up. You still have a finite number of students and a finite number of teachers & facilities. The problem is a poor distribution of the good resources and teachers along racial, class and geographic lines. Voucher proponents readily acknowledge this, but they haven't followed through to logical conclusions. It is not singularly the money of parents that created this skewed distribution. So redistribution of money won't solve the problem, not that vouchers even approach the difference in skew. Remember, everybody gets vouchers, not just poor urban ethnics.
Additionally, paying teachers higher salaries don't make them better teachers. Public school districts have yet to demonstrate to me that they are capable of hiring better qualified (read more & advanced degrees from higher quality colleges) to impart valuable knowledge on kids. This is a business solution to a non-business problem. If highschools were modeled more closely to those institutions of higher learning we know are the best, we would be closer to solving the problem.
I have a number of ideas that I think ought to be considered.
One.
Principals should not be teachers who got burned out on teaching and decide to go for the higher salary instead. They should be administrators who intend to be the best managers possible.
Two.
Highschools should be campuses. They should be open long before and long after school hours. Their libraries and athletic facilities should be open into the evenings and after dark. There should be more jobs available to provide community services through highschool facilities. Auditoriums should host regular events. Day care centers should be located on or near campus. Today's teens should have to think twice about a choice of going to the mall or to campus on the weekend.
Three.
Bus teachers, not kids. The burden of educating children falls to parents but also to teachers. This is rather obvious, but why is it that teachers aren't rotated through schools? Is it because local schools are run so very differently? If so, re-emphasize Point One. Is it because commuting is arduous? Not quite so arduous on adults who drive their own cars as on children who ride busses.
Four.
Decentralize. Schools are unmanageable because districts are too large to act in time. Everyone acknowledges this.
Going back to Africa for a bit of Old School education for the kids is an appealing idea. For a globalist like myself, I like it just as much as going to India for dentistry, as many of my Desi friends do. But as a citizen and a parent, I can't have it. Our problem isn't money, it's structural.
I noted yesterday that Al Sharpton came to town to help lead the protest on City Hall. Concerned citizens marched from the North side of St. Louis to City Hall, with Sharpton leading the way for at least half the march. So let's see. We've got the plaintive cry to the "black church." The used to be mayor now President of the School Board--Vincent Schoemehl--made the rounds in order to apologize for basically calling concerned black parents nazis. We've got the "black leadership" intimately involved from jump on both sides. On the one side you've got the Black Leadership Roundtable who believed that the only way to change the schools was to take over the school board but didn't have the juice to take it ALL the way over. On the other side you've got Al Sharpton. Enuf said.
I believe that the St. Louis schools are in trouble, and that the reform slate responsible for bringing the corporate ginsus to slice and dice the budget did so out of a firm desire to "do the right thing." However, I also understand that whenever you've got a largely disempowered citizenry being forced to swallow a plan they felt they had no say in...you're going to have problems. Even if the plan is perfect. So I don't have a problem with parents wanting to take their kids out of the schools. I don't have a problem with parents demanding some form of transparency. Not at ALL. This is how democracy works...
But what I don't like is the nice neat package that St. Louis Black Politics is wrapped in for media consumers. "Black leaders negotiate for black community. Black community doesn't like result. White leaders go to black church to convince black voters. Black leader comes from out of town to lead protest."
Rinse. Repeat.
What's the problem with this scenario? First it isn't accurate in the academic sense...so those interested in studying this phenomenon would get the account wrong if they presented it in this fashion. Second it is based on a set of regressive assumptions about politics in black communities. Third it reifies the entire idea of racial difference to the point that it becomes very difficult for people outside of St. Louis to understand what exactly is occurring here.
What are some of the regressive assumptions here?
1. Black leadership is an organic trait.
Here I mean that black people don't necessarily need things like elections to figure out who their representatives should be. They can just "feel" it. They "know" when someone is down, and when someone ain't. Now to be honest, this last part is true. I can spot people who don't really like us a mile away. Looking through a striped McDonalds Happy Meal straw.
But the whole idea of "organic leadership" is problematic because it is at its base anti-democratic. How do you get rid of someone who isn't elected in the first place? How can you possibly hold these individuals accountable for their actions? From what I understand the members of the Black Leadership Roundtable are not elected as such. Donald Suggs is as cool as the other side of the pillow...but no one elected him. His position as owner of the St. Louis American does make him an influential figure in St. Louis as a whole, but that does not necessarily make him a "leader." And as far as I know Sharpton's "National Action Network" is just a shell designed to house his perm.
Ron Harris (journalist for the Post-Dispatch) notes that one of the problems that the Roundtable faced in hindsight was that they didn't deal with ELECTED LEADERS. I don't think they did this consciously...our ideas about black politics are at this point largely subconscious. We can write these narratives with our eyes AND our minds closed. Though elected officials are (by default of being elected) THE legitimate representatives of any community, the Roundtable felt that the black elected officials just didn't matter. It should come as no surprise that the folks raised up.
2. The Black Church is monolithic, political, and reaches all black people
Newsflash. Not all black people go to church. Not all black people are Christian. Not all black people believe in God! Even assuming that black church attendance is higher than white attendance, we're still talking about a shade over 50% if THAT. And these churches are very different from one another, mirroring the class and caste differences within the black community. Some of them are heavily political and engaged in outreach...some of them are apolitical and involved in nothing more than ensuring their parishoners get to heaven. Whatever the case, the churches even taken in sum do not represent the views of all black people, and going through the churches to reach black people (as opposed to other more traditional mechanisms) would be like trying to reach all whites by going to a Monday Night Football Game at the Rams stadium.
But again, this notion that blacks are organic and "deeply spiritual" cause both blacks and whites to make arguments about the centrality of the black church that really aren't warranted. And the idea that black people are deeply spiritual easily devolves into the argument that black people are overtly non-rational, which in turn easily devolves into the position that they are easily lead to engage in foolhardy political activities. Which in turn takes us to:
3. Marches constitute political action
We've got to get this idea that marches and boycotts are either the only avenue available or the political avenue of choice for black people. Marches are an old school tactic that was used largely to get media coverage that could in turn raise consciousness levels among the interested. THe problem here is that the march has become ubiquitous. MLK Holiday? March. Increase in the number of black prisoners? March. The Mayor of St. Louis draws a black district out of existence? March.
Black leaders without constituencies are tied to marches largely because these events legitimize them (instead of counting votes, you can just count marching heads to see how much of a "black leader" one is--see Million Man March). And folks who are upset and want a quick way to verbalize their problems have an outlet. But marches inevitably lead to symbolic victories. And a puffed up sense of accomplishment. As such while effective in some individual cases, marches are largely useless as a form of political activity.
4. Black people have one interest
Related to the idea that black leaders are organically grown like watermelon, is the notion that all black people have the same exact interest. While I'd say we all agree that white supremacy should be eradicated, there is a great deal of disagreement after that. Part of this disagreement is ideological-some of us tend towards the nationalist end, some of us toward the integrationist. But much of it is contextual and depends upon the circumstances. Take this event for instance. The Black Leadership Roundtable largely supports the reform agenda. But the workers who had their jobs cut (largely black) wish they had their jobs back. Class distinctions (plus some other stuff) explain these differences. While blacks who live on the North side don't want those schools closed, I'm willing to bet that blacks (particularly those not from St. Louis) are on another groove entirely, willing to gut those schools if it means they don't have to pay private tuition any longer.
The problem here is that by conflating all black interests together we miss the diversity of black people and to a certain extent take them out of society as it is lived. What I mean here is that whites differ on a number of issues based on class, or gender, or sexual orientation. Black people are subjugated by white supremacy, BUT THEY ARE STILL BESET BY THE SAME GENERAL ISSUES AS THEIR WHITE COUNTERPARTS.
A second problem is that if we assume that all blacks have the same interests, it isn't that hard for "black leaders" to cut deals with folks in power for what amounts to bottle deposits in the large scheme of things, and then bring those bottle deposits back to black people saying "look what WE got." Knowing damn well those bottle deposits can get those "black leaders" new Playstations...but them Playstations won't help black people as a whole do much of anything.
This problem is a BIG issue here, largely because the solution isn't going to be retracted....and the solution isn't going to be effective in the way that people want or expect. When I say the solution won't be retracted what I mean is that those jobs aren't going to be UNcut...and those schools aren't going to be UNclosed. So if black parents can't get that, what's going to happen is that some "black leader" will negotiate some type of settlement that will largely benefit that leader.
On the other hand, the types of resources really needed to transform St. Louis Public Schools aren't forthcoming. I strongly believe that given the dynamics of hypersegregation that hamstring public schools the feds have to kick in some serious loot to deal with the real problems. So that leaves members of the Black Leadership Roundtable unable to really do much more than shuffle some of the line-items around in hopes that manna from heaven will fall.
Kids the country over are going back to school.
Except here in St. Louis.
Black citizens have called for a back to school walk out in order to protest a series of drastic measures taken to reduce bureaucracy by a reform school board. This conflict has captured the headlines at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Riverfront Times for sometime now. Given that the first parents meeting at my son and daughter's charter school only had around ten black parents out of fifty (the school is majority black or close to it), I thought it'd be helpful for me to get the cobwebs out of my head by getting some of my thoughts on schooling down on paper so to speak.
* No one is talking about pedagogy.
Here in St. Louis the problem is bureaucracy first and foremost. Too many schools, too many broke down teachers, too many fatcat staff members. The solution? Get rid of them. For someone like John Ogbu (who made the argument that the reason black kids weren't performing was because they equated academic success with acting white) the problem was oppositional culture. The solution here? Civilize the kids.
The central problem to me is that the kids aren't being taught the types of life lessons that make them good independent citizens. Because school doesn't teach them how to take over the world they tune out. Men more than women, non-white kids more than whites. The pedagogical issue isn't brought up, unless we're talking about corporations bringing it up to address their worker shortage. All the talk about bureaucracy and parents and black culture misses the point.
*Radical and Conservative solutions are required.
The pedagogical changes I call for won't take place over night. People have to organize for them, and call for them, but this is a long term goal. In the short term we must engage in incremental change, and use self-help tactics designed to give our kids the prerequisite skills until we don't need to anymore. Kids aren't succeeding at math? Create math after-school programs. Kids not doing well in reading? Have comic book reading day, to get kids interested. These are stopgap measures, but measures that must be employed until the revolution comes.
*Black Parents are not to blame
It is ultimately our responsibility to make sure our kids learn, particularly if we understand the forces arrayed against them. But responsibility and blame are not equivalents and should not be treated as such. I refuse, for example, to blame black parents for not coming to the parent teacher meetings at my daughter's school. they SHOULD be there, but our kids aren't underperforming solely because parents aren't there.
*The Long View is difficult given our view of black politics
Hearing that Sharpton is in town made me want to throw up. He helped to plan a march on the city capital today designed to get airplay and to let the mayor know how the "black community" feels. The type of mass spectacle that attracts him like flies to shit does not lend itself to the type of political organizing that can transform communities and schools. It gets people excited, and riled up no doubt. But it leads to JUST ENOUGH energy that Sharpton and his folks can use it to get kickbacks in the name of "the community."