The Public School Educational Process for Black Students is a Token Gesture

The thinking behind why Black America remains stuck in the often neck-deep mud and sludge of American bullshit is complicated, yet simple. Blacks remain the unwanted and unwelcomed, consistently encountering blatant discrimination and exclusion and constantly facing the widespread unspoken anti-Black philosophy which is practiced and maintained by “White America” – we’re not really Americans and thus not worthy of investing in via a solid, formal education.

As Malcolm X stated, “Well, I am one who doesn’t believe in deluding myself. I’m not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn’t need any legislation; you wouldn’t need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn’t be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. They don’t have to pass civil-rights legislation to make a Pollack an American.

Undeniably, we are a people trying to do more than merely survive; we’re attempting to thrive, while living behind enemy lines, dwelling in the belly of global white supremacy. The nation’s President might as well be the Grand Pooh-Bah of the Knights of the Invisible Empire.

With this being our situation, begrudgingly half-tolerated, consistently devalued as humans, now, today, is the time for Black folks to stop allowing a largely cold, disconnected and disinterested White America to orchestrate the pubic educational system in which we place what ought-be our most valuable asset, our children.

Damn fools we are.

Due to the Coronavirus the United States educational system is being redesigned and rebuilt. Now is the moment in history in which Black America could abandon a system that abandoned us decades ago, create a national online K-12 educational system strategically constructed to serve Black children.

This is an opportunity for Black America to end the abrogation of our responsibility to educate and enlighten our children, prepare them for life, for the rat race that life can be. We can take that responsibility out of the cold, callus, sometimes disconnected and disinterested hands of teachers, coaches, administrators, counselors and educators who don’t view and value Black students as they should. Those backing Trump are greater in number within the field of public education than most think. They bring a Trump-supporting mindset to the school, which is the 180 degree opposite of what Black students need: the coast-to-coast establishment of an online educational system uniquely crafted for Black people, which can utilize the best of cutting-age technology and advancements in the educational process, and incorporating some of the best academicians and utilizing advanced techniques.

Why not bring together some of the sharpest minds in this industry, experts in their respective arena, and create an apparatus better than the failed system with which most of Black Americans struggle? Roughly only 14% of Black Americans complete college and attain a Bachelor’s degree, primarily because they enter college academically under if not unprepared and not nearly ready to hit the ground running like their White and Asian peers. We come out of high school years behind in reading, writing, math and science skills as compared with suburban white Kids. It’s unfair. And we don’t want to hear it but our social skills and interests, paired with our interpersonal communication tools and skills, can sometimes match our academic skills. This complicates our own individual lives.

Being under-prepared for life translates into showing up at a gunfight with a corkscrew or a piece of chalk.

Black students’ GPA, IQ and EQ could be higher. We could be more “intellectually woke” – let’s just be blunt here. The rank n’ file mainstream Black students in America, the average student, that is, 65 % to 75% of black students receive the bare minimum standard public education. Let’s not lie to ourselves. The system equips most with the bare necessities needed to survive. To “thrive” is to over, over, over achieve. Asking everyone to go from “rags to riches” with no real academic platform is cold, mean spirited and despicable, but it is business as usual for the American public school system when it comes to educating, training, preparing and enlightening Black American students.

The public school educational process for Black students is a “token gesture.”

The change to better education translates into coupling committed teachers with parents who’ll give a damn about preparing their Black student to compete and prosper in college, trade and technical schools, and ultimately in the post-college workplace, where we all strive to attain our goals, hopes and dreams.

If online education can be done right, let’s do it!

As Black Americans, let’s remove the vast majority of our “endangered” students from a system which under-serves, if not fails them. Change the environment where most of the staff, faculty and administration look nothing like them. It’s irrelevant what major school systems were talking about, Dallas, New York, LA, Denver, Omaha, Albuquerque, Birmingham, Portland – they’ve the same identical ills and woes – Black children are unsuccessfully prepared for academic success by mostly, vastly, white people.

Let’s take the naturally gifted and the hard working over-achievers and place them in an environment where what we have is Black steel sharpening Black steel – a situational relationship in which teacher and pupil are cut from the same cloth and on the same page, have shared experiences in life – connect, relate, identify, sympathize, link and bond.

No offense, but after twenty years working in a major school district, having two kids go through two different systems, knowing the history of this nation, and understanding the divisive and polarized racial situation in contemporary USA – it’s naive, reckless, careless and in some cases detrimental to Black children to leave them warehoused in a system which is under-educating them as a whole.

Pre-K to prison is real!

Most Black kids are sadly “prepared” to work at Walt-Mart, the Mall, the grocery store, while others walk out headed straight to jail, and still others end up six feet deep within ten years or so – a large chunk unprepared for life, struggling to merely survive, unequipped to make it, forced to work dead-end gigs their entire frustrated lives. No real skills to pay the bills and buy the meals in a cutthroat capitalistic job market, which is pimp-ish at best. Exploitation is the name of the game. When you are twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five, or fifty-five-years-old and possess the academic skills of a high school sophomore, you don’t have a lot of good occupational choices and options in the workplace.

Black America – seize the moment!!!