A rchive Date
[ 03-06-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/worthington.html
Black vs. black
By PETER WORTHINGTON -- Toronto Sun
June 1, 2002
A recent editorial in USA Today supports an NAACP campaign to end what it calls "racial disparities in U.S. public schools and universities."
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is America's oldest and largest civil rights organization, and despite the affirmative action and equity programs it's helped implement, it can't understand why black students in schools mostly lag behind their white counterparts.
"Black students are over-represented in special education classes and under-represented in gifted classes," notes USA Today. To them, the answer seems to be to ensure that every level of education - like the workplace - is proportionately represented by race.
Common sense tells you this is loony. While it's true that schools in poor areas are likely to have the worst teachers and fewest amenities, the problem is greater than that. Learning gaps persist in schools where students come from the same neighbourhoods and social class, be they affluent or poor.
The NAACP and civil rights groups want to ensure that more black students are included in "gifted" classes and exposed to the best teaching, even if students aren't up to snuff. The NAACP wants teachers to "infuse African-American culture and history in all subjects." To some, this is more folly, and almost the reverse of Rev. Martin Luther King's historic (and irrefutable) dictum, spoken on the steps of Washington's Lincoln Memorial on Aug 28, 1963: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character."
That's not quite the NAACP's dream.
Walter Williams, a black writer, commentator and head of economics at George Mason University, deplores the NAACP's "racial disparity" campaign and thinks enrolment rates of black students interest the organization more than the graduation rates.
Williams points to Texas, California and Florida as encouraging examples, where the top percentage of students in each high school class, based on a grade point average, are guaranteed admission to top universities regardless of their SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) score. As a result, Texas leads the nation as far as black students graduating.
Williams and Thomas Sowell are anathema to the NAACP types because they advocate self-sufficiency over welfare. Former NAACP President Benjamin Hooks called them "a new breed of Uncle Tom" because they both stress merit over race - echoing Dr. King.
Another black writer, Larry Elder, says both Williams and Sowell recognize "the welfare state has done more to destabilize the black family than Jim Crow laws ever have." Williams wryly quips that in his lifetime he's gone from being "coloured" to "Negro" to "African-American" when, in fact: "I am black and a full American, not a hyphenated one."
Thomas Sowell (his column runs Mondays in the Sun) has long argued that racism cannot be blamed "on poverty, crime, illegitimacy and under-performing in school." To Sowell, "Race has become a political racket ... scavenging for grievance."
Sowell has travelled the world examining cultures and their effect on people. He says the growing black middle class is not the result of affirmative action programs, but the result of self-help over welfare and adherence to moral values, reverence for education and family.
During former president Lyndon Johnson's celebrated "war on poverty," aimed at helping black people, the black illegitimacy rate grew from 25% to today's 70%, and black leaders favoured by the liberal elite (Jesse Jackson?) espoused the creed of black victimology: "If you're black and don't think of yourself as a victim, you must be a self-loathing Uncle Tom."
The likes of Sowell, Williams and Elder are despised by NAACP president and CEO Kweisi Mfume, who is threatening 22 U.S. states with civil rights suits for failing to answer the NAACP call for strategies to cut the racial achievement gap in half over the next five years.
Maybe, instead of blaming others for failures in education, the NAACP and others might look at why other minority groups excel.
Maybe the fault is partly attributable to affirmative action which Sowell argues is immoral, divisive and unconstitutional as well as ineffective and may actually foster prejudice, resentment and inequality.
It is in everyone's interest to have an educated, responsible citizenry. While schools are important, maybe family ethics, the workplace and cultural values are even more important.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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