[Cincinatus' Wife]

Make excellence a 'black thing'***The late John Ogbu, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, did groundbreaking research that yielded a fascinating, if controversial, conclusion. Studying black students in Shaker Heights, Ohio, long acclaimed for its outstanding public schools, Ogbu concluded, "Black students did not generally work hard. In fact, most appeared to be characterized by low-effort syndrome. . . . The amount of time and effort they invested in academic pursuit was neither adequate nor impressive. . . . The [black] students themselves knew and admitted this."

Georgia has an obligation to improve its pathetic school system, which has suffered from low expectations for generations. In rural school systems, few white students score above 1000 on the SATs, as Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor has noted. It would be quite unfair for the state to suddenly change the rules for HOPE when it has not spent the money nor instituted the standards to teach Georgia's students what they need to know.

But it is black parents who are responsible for insisting that their own children hit the books and take school seriously. Too many black children dismiss scholarship as "a white thing." That has to end. Surely it is more embarrassing to be considered dumb than to be considered "white."***