Posted on 05/30/2002 8:16:46 AM PDT by xsysmgr
The current issue of Time magazine has a dubious article on "Learning While Black." The teaser reads: "You've heard of racial profiling on the roads and in the skies. But are minority kids also being unfairly singled out for discipline in schools?" The article is not completely one-sided, but the unmistakable gist of it is that the answer to the question posed is, "Probably so." But neither the anecdotal evidence nor the statistics cited are at all persuasive.
The story begins and ends with the story of a student for whom we are supposed to feel some sympathy, but the article concedes that the youth has "a filthy mouth" and "has been known to saunter into class on his own schedule." He was suspended after "he threw the first punch in a fistfight." The article calls him "a C student"; at the end of the article, however, it is noted that he is worried about "the D and F on his latest report card and whether they will affect his prospects for studying architecture in college."
The reason he and the NAACP think he is "a victim" — of racial discrimination, naturally — is that the white student he punched and who suffered "five stitches over his left eye" was suspended for only three days, versus our victim's one-month suspension and later reassignment to another school. But even if we knew nothing about the two students besides what Time tells us, it seems pretty plausible that there are good reasons for the different punishments. And, indeed, a conversation I had with a school-system spokeswoman confirmed that the extent of injury, who started the fight, past infractions, and so forth all may be considered under the system's student-conduct code in deciding what punishment to mete out.
The statistical evidence is even less persuasive. In big capital letters running across the bottom of the first two pages in the Time story, a finding of the Civil Rights Project is announced: "NATIONALLY, AFRICAN AMERICANS ARE 2.4 TIMES AS LIKELY TO BE SUSPENDED AS WHITES." Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the 2.4 figure is accurate. But the Time article ignores completely two factors that are likely to explain the disparity better than racism: illegitimacy and a pervasive notion among many black students that if you're not acting out, you're acting white.
The illegitimacy rate among blacks is more than triple that of whites: 69 percent of African Americans are now being born out of wedlock, versus only 22 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Does illegitimacy help explain suspensions? As a matter of fact, yes, although there is no mention of it in the Time article. Not every child born out of wedlock is a behavior problem, of course, and many children from two-parent families are; nonetheless, the data clearly show a correlation between illegitimacy and school behavior and performance.
A Department of Health and Human Services study found that for whites, blacks, and Hispanics at every income level except for the very highest, children raised in single-parent homes were more likely to be suspended from school, to have emotional problems, and to behave badly. Another study showed that white children of unmarried women were much more likely than those in two-parent families to become delinquents, again after controlling for income. Other studies have found illegitimacy to correlate with getting into trouble with the law, dropping out of school, having illegitimate children of one's own, and unemployment.
In a column earlier this year, George Will discussed a study by Paul Barton, then with the Educational Testing Service, titled "America's Smallest School: The Family." It found the presence of two parents in the home to be an important factor in school performance. Thus, North Dakota is the top state in math scores and the next-to-top in percentage of children in two-parent families; the District of Columbia is next-to-last in math scores and dead last in family composition. Will concludes by pointing out that, between birth and their nineteenth birthday, an American child will spend nine percent of his or her time in school, and 91 percent elsewhere. For many more blacks than whites, he says, "elsewhere" is not an intact family.
Another likely reason for problems in black performance and behavior in school is something that John McWhorter — an African-American professor of linguistics at Berkeley and author of American Experiment Quarterly — points out: that black students are "told by their black peers that to do well in school is to act white. Doing well is selling out. It is white students who do well; a proper black person really shouldn't do well in school." They make no secret of this, says McWhorter, who has seen it and experienced it firsthand, and it is true at every income level.
Indeed, McWhorter and USA Today last week both focused on the affluent Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, where "studies found that blacks made up only 10% of the top performing students and 90% of the lowest performing students." USA Today points out that researchers "blame a variety of factors, including peer pressure, low parental expectations, too much television and the impact of rap culture on black students, including middle class students."
This is not, of course, a message the civil-rights establishment wants to hear. The Time article highlights the role played in challenging school discipline by "civil rights activists," "civil rights attorneys," and the NAACP. What's scary is the success these groups are having. Time notes that some schools are "bend[ing] their discipline codes" after public pressure by organizations like the NAACP, so that "principals [are told] to stop handing out suspensions for picayune infractions like 'gum chewing' and reserve the punishment for violent offenses." Earlier, the article refers to "nebulous infractions like excessive noise and disrespect," and later describes how the activists and attorneys would like a program "allowing students to be tried by a peer jury [I guess this means other students] for violations such as arguing with a teacher or using profanity."
But this let-the-little-things-slide approach is dangerous. Compare the famous "Broken Windows" article by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, which concluded that "serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked." When the message is sent that little rules are not taken seriously, it's not long before the big rules are broken, too. Conversely, if students know that they are on a tight ship, then they are more likely to stay in line.
The student protagonist in the Time article is given the last word: "You learn which teachers treat different ethnicities differently. And you learn that when you're around them to stay quiet and keep to yourself." Well, we can agree to disagree about whether in fact the teachers are treating different ethnicities differently, but staying quiet and keeping to oneself isn't a bad code of conduct for students to follow in every classroom, is it?
The NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund like to pretend that, if there are racial disparities in academic performance or behavior, it must be the result of antiblack racism, but this is nonsense. Thus, the NAACP has called on every state to submit a plan to ensure that blacks are not over-represented in discipline or remedial programs, and not underrepresented in gifted-and-talented programs or graduation. No one would dispute that bias still occurs, but it is not systematic or systemic, and it is clear that the road to closing these gaps is through the black community itself.
Indeed, the stance of the civil-rights establishment is contrary to the interests and self-respect of African Americans. When discipline breaks down in inner-city schools, it is not suburban whites who will suffer. And what do we make of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's opposition to a change announced this week in Florida, that schools there will no longer require a lower IQ score for blacks to be admitted to gifted-and-talented programs than whites? A double standard like that is about as insulting as it gets.
— Roger Clegg is general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity.
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Probably not unfairly. They have been conditioned to believe that they can do anything without consequences. The more serious problem is that minority students have been singled out by liberals in general and liberals in the education system as being to stupid to learn. Whole education systems have been dumbed down because liberals believed that the minority students couldn't keep up with others. This certainly hasn't been beneficial to the minority students.
I have to agree - my wife and I have experienced this first hand over the years, and my children have also experienced this over the last few years as well.
We emphasize excellence. We emphasize studying. We emphasize education. While there are plenty of black families who place the same values that we place on those things, there are many others who do not. And their attitudes translate to their children (or as I've been known to call them, those 'bad assed kids'). And what's even more sad is that when the don't do well; when they cause disruption in the classroom, then my child is the one that suffers. Because not only is my child ostracized by these cretins, but the rest of society attempts to lump my child in with these urchins, marginalizing them and reducing the opportunities to succeed without even greater efforts on the part of my wife and myself. We are left with the thankless task of browbeating the school systems into making sure that our children get what they need, regardless of their attitude toward others that look like them.
Math is math is math. No matter where you are, your age, gender, or race, math is math. It does not change. Yet the NAALCP and other 'civil rights' groups claim tests such as the SAT and others are 'prejudiced' against blacks.
Could someone please explain to me how math tests can be prejudiced? This white boy will tell you that math has always given me big trouble.
And there is a tremendous anti-acheivement mentality in the black community. I proscribe that the educational problems of black students is not racial, but cultural. There is no doubt, and it can not be denied that black students who do well in school are accused of 'acting white' or being a sell-out or an Uncle Tom.
I firmly believe that liberals think blacks are inherently incapable of learning.
And that's the problem that I see today. My children can compete with any of the other students across the nation today, but because of the bedwetting poverty pimps and race warlords, my kids are left with having to prove themselves further yet. Not only do they have to excel, but they have to excel above and beyond even the high achievers from the remainder of the mainstream students in order to prove that they did not get where they were because of someone's sick sense of tokenism.
God, that makes me furious!
As I've said before...money won't solve this problem. It is a cultural and familial problem, not one of poverty. Can others help? Sure - but it's on an individual basis - one government is singularly unsuited for. Holding people up to standards, and treating those that do achieve with proper respect and a refusal to accept that blacks are inferior no matter how much the whining are parts of the path. ...Of course, that applies to pretty much everyone.
Please keep up the good fight.
Maybe, just maybe it is not a racism problem, but a problem that black school children cause more problems & are punished accordingly. Nah..., can't be.
Considering that about 50% of the US Prison population is African-American and African-Americans make up only 13% of the US population, the "2.4 times" number seems reasonable.
And I shudder to think about how little is required to achieve a "B" average at most public schools.
But you are correct, and I have my own personal experience with such a situation. It's hard not to be bitter about it.
If you are a black parent and your kid can't read, don't expect any help teaching him to read. They will just pass him along rather than help him.
Me too...and the people that will dumb-down your children's education so that when they get out they are unprepared I consider vile. I do not understand how adults can do that to children. One of my friends from Jamaica talks of when he was younger and was getting "A"s without trying in a NYC school, and then his parents moved to NJ and he was totally lost. The realization of how much of his time and mind had been wasted still brings him to furious tears today. (It torques me pretty good too). This guy is normally pretty calm - but when this subject comes up, he just goes ballistic.
One. The spread of disease ... AIDS has claimed millions of lives and will claim millions more. STD's are rampant enough that you see commercials about STD medications on TV almost every night. There is no substitute for abstinence.
Two. Illegitimate births ... and this article does a good job of explaining this one.
God did not give commandments in order to make Him feel important. He did it to help us live better lives.
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