Is Black Culture the Problem With Education? (Q&A column)

DiversityInc ^ | 19 Dec | Luke Visconti

[flowerplough]

Excerpt from Question:

Why should public schools receive equal funding? If some communities choose to pay higher property taxes, why shouldn't they be entitled to a more well-funded education if they so choose? Why must the state ENFORCE a faux equality? We all know the D.C. public schools and the California public schools receive some of the highest funding in the country, yet perform miserably. Yet when you look at the states that succeed the most academically, you'll note that while Wisconsin and Minnesota pour money into their public schools, Wyoming and Montana don't. Yet all four states perform in the top 10 in the country. The one common denominator? They all have predominantly white populations.

Excerpt from Answer:

It's not intellectually honest to discuss Black educational underperformance as if it is something that arrived on the current scene fully formed. The state isn't trying to force "faux equality." It's (ineffectively) dealing with centuries of oppression. Equality in opportunity has never been part of the American experience. We can't run away from that reality because it is responsible for the disparities in outcome by race in the facts you cite.

The good news is that getting to a solution for the disparities in education is not difficult when you accept that we are genetically all one human race.

This doesn't mean everyone is of equal talent, but it does mean that every group of people has an equal percentage of talented people. Therefore, if education is managed correctly, every town--Black or white--SHOULD have the same outcome if the process assumes equal outcome as the only acceptable result.

[flowerplough]

Not sure if you'll see the comparison to be as applicable as I do, but the first "deep thought" that pops into my mind here is "Conservatives want to help those who cannot do for themselves, liberals want to help those who will not do for themselves."

[Jim Noble]

It's (ineffectively) dealing with centuries of oppression

The most important, mind-freeing concept that one can get is that "centuries of oppression" have NOTHING TO DO with what you see in all-black public schools.

Zero.

[AD from SpringBay]

It's (ineffectively) dealing with centuries of oppression.

Oh - it's still whitey's fault. Now it makes perfect sense.

[ClearCase_guy]

The state isn't trying to force "faux equality." It's (ineffectively) dealing with centuries of oppression.

1) Black families were healthier in the 1950's -- but then the State stepped in and tried to help them deal with centuries of oppression.
2) Black communities were healthier in the 1950's -- but then the State stepped in and tried to help them deal with centuries of oppression.
3) Black schools were healthier in the 1950's -- but then the State stepped in and tried to help them deal with centuries of oppression.
4) A dominant part of a black culture today seems to be a rejection of education, hard work and proper English. Is this a rational reaction to centuries of oppression?

Walter Williams has written on these things brilliantly. Blacks are killing themselves, and government intervention by the do-gooders just makes things worse.

Stop rewarding bad behavior.
Start rewarding good behavior.

That's a radical approach, but it just might work.

[oh8eleven]

Is Black Culture the Problem With Education?
Gee, ya' think?

[Sherman Logan]

The good news is that getting to a solution for the disparities in education is not difficult when you accept that we are genetically all one human race.

This doesn't mean everyone is of equal talent, but it does mean that every group of people has an equal percentage of talented people. Therefore, if education is managed correctly, every town--Black or white--SHOULD have the same outcome

A truly breathtaking example of conclusion-jumping. Especially since the questioner was not blaming genetics but rather black culture as being responsible for the disparity.

The author also discussed paying teachers by outcome, but would react with horror if it were actually tried, since this would have a highly disproportionate effect on "minority educators."

[astounded]

“The most important, mind-freeing concept that one can get is that “centuries of oppression” have NOTHING TO DO with what you see in all-black public schools.”

The problems among the black underclass cannot be solved unless and until young black women keep their legs closed and stop propagating children. These children beget children who have little hope for the future. The education problem is a problem of fatherless homes in poverty, period.

[Will88]

“It’s (ineffectively) dealing with centuries of oppression.”

But learning to read is not a multi-generational proposition. It starts over with each newborn, as do other aspects of education. Most of the answer lies in the 70% out-of-wedlock birthrate, and the lack of parental involvement in a kid’s education. Schools, and government will never be able to make up for all those deficiencies in home life, nor should they continue trying.

[Dr. Ursus]

Everytime that I saw a program about black servicemen in
WW2,they all came from a family that had a mother and father.Also, they could speak perfect English!

[Arrowhead1952]

Why U ax me dat?

My bad.

< /sarc>

[antiRepublicrat]

Blacks as a whole would be doing very well if they had the equality they have today with the values they had 60 years ago. Decades of Jackson/Obama style race baiting coupled with guilty whites creating the welfare system, throw in a dash of communism, and you have the impending death of a once decent culture.

When I listen to the older black people I know talk about their youth it’s absolutely nothing like what I see today on issues such as family cohesion, honor and respect. That’s not to say its gone, but it’s not a strong feature of the culture anymore.

[RVN Airplane Driver]

In a local North Texas small town daily paper they had a section where folks put their kids pictures in along with a brief note of love, etc. The white kids all had notes that ended with: Love, Mom and Dad and the black kids had not one mention of a Dad...Grandpa and Grandma, Mom and Granny, Mom...but not one mention of a Dad! That says it all!!

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

An important point can be found with English language instruction.

English instruction in the US used to be entirely based in phonics. When it was universally used, black literacy was almost on a par with white literacy.

Enter Noam Chomsky. He was instrumental in creating the muddled and bizarre alternative to phonics called “whole language” instruction, which is more a philosophy than a teaching method.

Whole language instruction became a faith-oriented doctrine of the far left, who to this day rigidly adhere to the belief that somewhere, somehow, it *must* work, though it has failed in every one of its endless trials.

In practice, it was introduced on the large scale in the late 1960s, and within a few years, was discarded by every sane white public school, because student literacy test scores plummeted with its use.

But in liberal Democrat controlled black schools, it demonstrated to the left that blacks were clearly inferior, and it also created an opportunity for them to remain inferior. Black literacy dropped off sharply, never to recover. The left then blamed this on segregation, first insisting that schools be integrated, then that white schools be forced to adopt whole language English, it being a better way to teach English in a way that black students would understand.

As such, Chomsky is as responsible for American apartheid as South African president B. J. Vorster was in his country.

Even today, the utter contempt the left has for black intellectual development can be found in practices such as “ebonics”, which also still has advocates, despite being almost universally derided at utter nonsense.

[WayneS]

Equality in opportunity has never been part of the American experience.

That is a bald-faced lie.

While equality of opportunity was ONCE not part of the American experience, for at LEAST the last 45 years it has been an integral part of the American experience. Overcompensation has even been part of the experience in some areas.

The vast majority of the past 2 generations of Americans of ALL races have NO room to complain about a lack of opportunity.

[WayneS]

...the equality they have today with the values they had 60 years ago.

Right on target, and well put! Thanks.

[sonic109]

I wrote to the author of this BS article. Maybe we all should.

[Alberta's Child]

Everything I needed to know about the problems in black culture, I learned from Bill Cosby.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

When you look at all Liberal programs, not just education, going back to the 20s and 30s you see nothing but failure in all of them. The same is true the world over. You would think failure was their goal. Perhaps it was.

In order to take over a strong and free country like the USA the Liberals first had to destroy our foundation of Christian values, our history of accomplishment and goodness, our education system and now our economic system. It can only be concluded that was their goal..

This author is just a useful idiot in the war, not a corrupt schemer like many of them are.

[Bon mots]

Singaporeans were oppressed... and far more recently than any blacks in America. The Chinese Singaporeans have lived in Singapore for generations and were first brought over as coolie labor to work the plantations for the Brits. The Indians too.

They do remarkably well in schools, education and everything and their city state is a shining jewel in Asia, so that tired old oppression excuse is dead.

Blacks do not seem to do well anywhere... in the dozens of African countries where many of them have never even seen a white person all the way over to Zimbabwe, where they actually took everything away from the white people. Didn't help.

In Obama's own family, the family member who had some white blood and a white upbringing in 'racist' America, where he was abandoned by his drunk, womanizing bigamist father did surprisingly well for himself. His brother, who enjoyed a pure African upbringing and with whom he shares a father lives a life of poverty, indolence and idiocy.

Obama's Brother
Daddy took good care of dem boyz.


Obama's other brother.
Nice job Daddy.
Obama wrote a book about the father of these people who abandoned them, and stuck a knife right in the back
of his white grandparents who really made him who he is.

[ClearCase_guy]

Marx laid it all out in his Manifesto. Destroy the church. Destroy the family. Immiserate the population -- only after these things have been accomplished would a communist society be possible.

I don't say it was all a grand conspiracy, hatched by some mastermind in Moscow, but clearly a whole lot of leftwing activists understood the road that had to be traveled, and they have all been pushing in one consistent direction for about 100 years. Now they're really getting results.