Examples:
Over the course of the semester, class discussions veered from little things, like ways to remember to bring books to school, to how the students felt when they could not get waited on in stores and how difficult it was to go anywhere, even to school, without money in their pockets.
If you have to have special ways to remember to bring books to school, you don't really want to be there. The problem is not a lack of book-remembering techniques. It's your attitude. And trading stories about problems getting waited on only stokes feelings of resentment and anger. How does that lead to positive achievement?
35 percent of black women in the same age group and 36 percent of all 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in higher education.
Why not at least mention the positive side? Black women are attending college at a rate almost identical to young people as a whole. Doesn't that refute the notion that racism and economic oppression deprive willing blacks of opportunity?
"It's the shame of American higher education," said Arthur E. Levine, the president of Teachers College at Columbia University.
Classic liberalism. The failure of black men to attend or graduate college is not *their* shame or failure. Somehow, it's the fault of "American higher education."
Some black male students are labeled developmentally delayed, funneled into special education and "never get mainstreamed," she said. Shoved off the college prep track, they begin a "cycle of being reprimanded, disciplined and ultimately suspended for negative behavior," she said, leading to expulsion, unemployment and even crime and imprisonment.
The implication seems to be that the black male students are wrongly, even maliciously, labeled "developmentally delayed." Yet there's no evidence offered to back that up. Still, implication is clear : the problem is the mean-spirited system, keeping the black man down.
One evening, a student volunteered that he was troubled by his recent attempt to buy his brother a birthday present at Tiffany's. He said he had had trouble attracting a salesclerk's attention. He also told them about trips he had made to stores recently, dressed in jeans and sneakers, and being followed by security guards.
Stop the pity party. There are rational, experience-based reasons, having nothing to do with racism, that explains much of this. How about focusing on negative black culture, the glorification of "gangstas" and everything that goes with them?
Unfortunately no, classical liberalism is now called conservative.