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.
It is amazing, though, to see what has happened to it. There are different strains of it and each strain has a different idea of the proletariat.
The burden's always been there. Before affirmative action it was just a presumption that Blacks were inferior. After affirmative action, the presumption hasn't really changed.
Within the race, we do- others outside the race rarely do because race is so much more of an issue than class when it comes to judging Blacks.
I suppose what ends up happening is that blacks who join the middle-class, end up adopting the white middle-class culture.
Some do, some don't.
I'm glad someone else here recognizes that.
I work with college educate blacks who never read the newspaper, never read a novel, and do not follow current events at all. They also never take their children to museums, historical sites, and or cultural events. Why? Because they grew up no knowing anyone who did such things? It is part culture but their culture is built of history.
You are right, and part of that history is a culture of segregation. Most Blacks who did not grow up under segregation and are at the same time interested in education and culture tend to expose their kids to those things, even if they are not well-educated and/or have blue collar jobs. That is basically the story of my family.
Not misinterpreted at all - Correctly interpreted as disruptive behavior in a classroom.
Huh? Ever try to control a classroom of second graders? it's difficult with well-behaved kids. It's impossible with kids who won't follow the rules.
I have been a Junior Achievement volunteer for over ten years, for grades ranging from first grade to high school seniors, in schools ranging from inner-city to affluent suburbs. Am I "uptight" about student behavior? Only when it makes impossible for me to teach my material. What you discount as merely a cultural difference is probably a big part of the reason why schools serving largely black populations generally do such an abysmal job. If those teachers were less "culturally sensitive" and a little more "uptight", the kids might actually learn something.
No-- I'm not saying those standards are higher or lower- you are the one evaluating them on that scale. My argumnent here is not about test scores- it's more about conduct. The one and only point I'm making here is this- sometimes certain standards of conduct matter, sometimes they do not. When they don't, why punish those who don't act according to those standards?
Not misinterpreted at all - Correctly interpreted as disruptive behavior in a classroom.
The problem is that too many times disruptive behavior from a White student is overlooked while the same disruptive behavior in a Black student is punished. That's the real double standard I'm referring to.
If that's the case then we have nothing to debate unless you're harder on Black students who keep you from teaching than White students who do the same thing.
My highschool was one of middle class whites (60%) & ghetto blacks, who were bussed in (40%). Only a handful of the bussed in kids went to school to learn, and those kids had something in common- a parent who cared. There was a small minority of middle class blacks also & they performed at the same level as whites from their economic status.
Regarding the double standard. In my school it was the exact opposite of what you describe. The black kids were simply predators who would terrorize the white kids. When these kids would beat the hell out of a white kid, who just happened to be in the bathroom at the wrong time, the white kid would get suspended for the same amount of time. This happened all of the time & parents could do nothing about it. Why? Well the school didn't want to look racist. I know! There wasn't a white kid in my school who wasn't afraid everytime the bell rang. MAFREE, I lived it & know. The double standards are 100% opposite then the one you describe.
Having heard my Reconstruction-era (born 1871) Southern-raised grandmother be far more condemnatory of "white trash" than of "colored people" [a term she used scrupulously because only "white trash" used the "n" word] because "colored people can't help it" and "with white trash it's their own fault", I formed a firm conviction that the only nonracist way to judge people was to apply the same standards to everyone.
Here we agree: disruptive behavior should not be tolerated from any student. As much as teachers must try to treat everyone equally, we know they are human, with the same failings as we have, and I'm sure it is not a rare occurence that teachers let behavior slide in white kids with whom they can identify (at least the first time or two) that they would crack down on in black kids, especially those who come with histories of being disruptive. Is that wrong? Yes, as I've consistently stated in this thread, standards should be the same for all. The harder question is the context of the behavior and the surrounding circumstances. A 'smart' remark from an otherwise good student doesn't have the same effect on classroom discipline that a 'smart' remark from a kid who is failing and has no interest in the class. The former may simply break the tension and get a laugh, the latter may be a direct challenge to the teacher's authority. But that can only be determined in the situation and that's where mature judgement comes in. A judgement all too often lacking. I sympathize with your concerns, truly, despite the serious points I've made in other posts.
I can agree as long as the punishments for violating those standards are equal. The point of the article is that they are sometimes not, though we have also been discussing standards and who should set them.
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