My Rant

Black America is still under attack and Racism is still very much alive. Strong statements to make, but absolutely true. The recent threats of lawsuits against institutions of higher education and the dismal trend of black male incarceration and low achievement should be red flags to anyone seeking to gauge the health of the Black community.

Access to higher education has always been viewed as the way to true independence in not only the African American community, but to the whole nation. Our greatest leaders have stressed that education is the one thing, that once gained, cannot be taken away from us. Now that access is being limited once again by distributing funds once earmarked for aspiring African American Scholars, to the general student body. Why? Because the perception is that too much preference is being given to African Americans in awarding scholarship funds and that the historical effects of racism have been overcome.
The African American community has been under a consistent attack since we arrived here on these shores. Slavery, Jim Crow, a bungled attempt at integration, The Crack and HIV/AIDS epidemics, The 3 strikes laws, all these factors have had a devastating effect on our community. Our students locally have a dropout rate that has been estimated as high as 70%.

I know from my work with young people that the perception is that their opportunities are limited. The reality may be different, but somewhere along the way, the fact that they can be anything they want to be, achieve any goal that they can visualize has been lost on them. Our young people go to schools where they are met with low expectations by the school administrations and reactions ranging from amusement to hostility from the student bodies. Our young people are our most precious resource, yet we send them to places to be educated that have a dismal track record at successfully preparing our youth.

Now, the ones that do manage to make it through are being faced with the fewer resources to finance their educations. The commitment to equity and parity in this nation has been reneged on. The myriad problems of African Americans cannot be solved by any government program or initiative, but only by our own selves as African Americans. The American public must recognize though, that many of the problems that face our community were not internally generated, but created by our original status as slaves and then second class citizens. In truth, we have only been full citizens for 41 years, since the 1965 Voting Rights Act. We can not as a nation, realistically expect the effects of 346 years of institutional racism, economic deprivation and mental warfare against our community to be ameliorated in 41 years. That would be ridiculous. The problems of African Americans are the problems that America as a Nation created for us. We as African Americans are responsible for healing ourselves and our community but no one should be fooled into thinking that we are in this sad condition on our own accord.

Affirmative Action, targeted scholarships, increased academic support, specialized schools, alternative sentencing, early intervention, and mental health supports, economic incentives, parenting classes, all these things and more are desperately needed to repair the damage done to the African American community. As citizens our first impulse has been to look to the government for assistance, but we cannot expect the government to serve our needs particularly at a time when America is being referred to as “The Homeland” and we as African Americans are being pitted against our immigrant brown brothers and sisters who are being used as cheap labor just as we were. If America were my homeland then my children would be treated well. America is still treating African Americans as unwelcome immigrants. Other immigrant groups have come to this Nation and used their own internal resources to build strong communities; we have started, stalled and stopped at this endeavor several times. We hold the solutions to our own problems. We must look first to ourselves and create our own solutions. If we want our children to be successful students then we should create environments where they can learn.

We have created these structures in the past and many of them still exist today. I attended two such schools as a young student. The first was Nairobi Day School, a community run school in East Palo Alto, California. The classes were small, the students were all given indivualized attention and expectations were high. The other was Ivy Leaf School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The approach was a little different, Ivy Leaf was a private school and Nairobi Day School was a community school, but the emphasis on learning and the expectations of excellence were not. What made those schools different was not only their Afro Centric curriculum, what made those schools different is that the teachers genuinely knew all of the students in the school, and that they treated us with love and respect. They took the time to engage us as people, to respect each and every one of us as learners.
I work with young people who have very marginal grades, as an instructor at an after school program in Menlo Park, California. I am always surprised that these brilliant young minds are not performing any where near their potential in their schools. Sure, they know that they have to get good grades, but they often tell me that what makes the environment that I create for them different from their schools is that their teachers do not care about them. They do not take the time to learn them as people. I tell my students that it’s unfair, but unfortunately, that is the way life is. Very few people will take the time to get to know them as people. When educators take the time to authentically engage these young people and take the time to create positive learning environments for the youth, great things happen. All of a sudden, it’s not so important that they’re cool. It

We should learn from our Asian and Latino brethren and create economic and educational institutions that work to our benefit and we must do the internal work that is necessary to defeat the plague of self hatred caused by the 389 years of warfare that this country has waged against us. My namesake, Malcolm X put it best when he said “Just because you sit at the table does not make you a diner.”