another factor is our punitive approach to crime and poverty. we lock up a higher % of our population than any nation on earth, by far. and our prisons are a breeding ground for criminality. they are like a finishing school for criminals.

another factor, frankly, is the image of black people that exists, which blacks intenalize. there was a professor who was an african descent who did some good studies on this, apparently middle class black kids try to imitate kids from the streets and you can document it. the problem is that being authentically black is defined as being from the hood. if you are smart or whatever you get clowned. i've seen this with my own eyes. some of the kids i grew up with were super smart but ruined their lives. but lets not get cute - go over to your local ghetto and look around. its pretty bad for the real poor, theres a ton of pathologies the kids have to deal with.

it can be overcome though.....read this:

www.latimes.com/news/local...82109.story

"No one in Canada talks about 'the trouble of educating black kids', and there doesn't seem to be any visible economic constraint or 'glass ceiling' either. There are black people in Canada that are poor, and there are also black people that are captains of industry and in the highest positions of political power (e.g. Governor-General)."

But Canada and Great Britain didn't have a history of systematically undereducating and subjugating blacks that lasted until just a generation ago

>Cdub, have you ever questioned Obama's "blackness"?

Am I to understand that he's not black because he is successful by white standards of success?

Will there continue to be subtle protestations that we will never have a truly black president as long as things like academic achievement matter?

MALCOLM X: Stop Begging The White Man and Stop Apologizing to the White Man

www.youtube.com/watch

By the way if anyone wants to see a really good documentary on what a difference environment can make in the life of an inner city youth I highly recommend "The Boys of Baraka" www.pbs.org/pov/boysofbaraka/

and if you have any heart it will probably make you cry just a little.

yeah the speech exerpts he had were absurd. the guy is a racist trying to make hay.

people like you will always draw conclusions (erroneous or not).


So i see no need to censor myself

I would say that Bill Cosby apparently doesn't know much about the Black Muslims. Probably because he has never actually had much to do with them.

He apparently never met the ones that killed Malcolm X.

He apparently never met the ones in Oakland that killed Chauncy Bailey and a bunch of other people they didn't like, murdered each other to get control of the family's crooked bakery business, tortured a woman to extort money from her and committed a host of other crimes. He apparently never met the Black Muslim leader who died while facing a host of sex crime charges.

Those Oakland Black Muslims were just as bad as any crack-head gang running loose in the projects. Worse, in fact, because they had people like Ron Dellums, Barbara Lee, Don Perata and a bunch of other powerful elected officials pulling strings for them.

When those Black Muslims decided to clean out a neighborhood they did it by murdering the folks they didn't like and trashing liquor stores. But don't kid yourself that they were trashing those liquor stores in an effort to run them out of town. They trashed them for the same reason the Black Hand gangs in Italian neighborhoods on the East Coast and Midwest did -- as part of a campaign of extortion. I don't think they made their nut selling those fucking bean pies...they made their nut through crime. Organized crime. Just like the Mafia.

But I am digressing in an unhelpful way. Your point is taken, John. I am not defending this Jackson guy because I know nothing whatsoever about him. I don't know if he actually ever taught school in the south or anywhere else, or if his name is even Jackson. I don't, in fact, know if he actually exists. The whole article may have been written by the blogger for all I know. I tend to distrust almost everything I see in blogs because so many of them are concocted from whole cloth by people who are more interested in their opinions than in any facts that back those opinions up.

However, I think that the subject matter of the article is one worth discussing. I think it is more difficult to teach many black students than it is many white students for some of the reasons I gave above, based solely on my own experiences in the classroom, not on any sociological theory or careful study. I don't know the actual reason why many black students seem to be more difficult to teach, but to deny that black students often fail at a higher rate than students of other races is simply to ignore something that is a real problem in our society.

Maybe, as some have suggested, it happens because of class and economic differences rather than race. I am trailer trash myself and I can tell you that some of the laziest, most ignorant, most worthless motherfuckers I ever met were the poor whites I lived next to in trailer parks all over the Western U.S. They are the reason I can't bring myself to watch Jerry Springer; I grew up next to those assholes -- why would I want to watch them on TV?

Maybe it happens because of home life conditions that are endemic among some portions of the black community. Maybe it happens because of the history of slavery, or the Jim Crow laws, or the failure to provide emancipated blacks with that mule and 40 acres they were promised more than a hundred years ago. Maybe it happens because of a diet too dependent on greasy, salty, high-calorie fast food, or something in the water. Maybe it happens because of all those things.

I don't know what causes it, but I do know it is a problem. And dismissing it because of the racism of the article is not going to make it go away. Everybody's comments in this thread were more informative and illuminating before people simply started ragging on the piece for its racism.

<<Case in point: Yewni says of me: "Did anyone actually call him a Klansman or are you now deciding to put words in our mouths?"

That is precisely the sort of thing a devious racist like me does -- puts words into people's mouths. >>


Wow. Now we are supposed to feel as though we have accused you of being a racist? This is strange. Since when is this even about you? No one has even come close to accusing you of racism. Why are you going down that path? You say you want to sincerely discuss this matter but you haven't attempted to. Instead you have chosen some "poor me" route. The fact is no one called anyone a Klansman until YOU posted and used the words yourself. No one has even come close to calling you a "devious racist" except for YOU.

If you want to have a reasonable discussion about this issue then by all means have one but right now you seem only interested in accusations and name calling which is hardly conducive to meaningful and productive discussion.

I gotta go watch some fireworks now.


Perhaps sometime we can have a real discussion about the educational issue instead of a tit for tat in which unfounded racial accusations are slung around.

>Accusing somebody of posting StormFront quality material is tantamount to calling somebody a Klansman. After all, StormFront was founded by Don Black, the ex-Klansman who tried to overthrow the government of Dominica with a gang of mercs.

the blog post in question sounds entirely in line with what i've read out of white supremacists. anyway accusing someone of posting SF type material isn't calling that person a klansman. although frankly i do think only a racist would take that blog post seriously. so do i think sly racism is being exhibited on this thread? yes. its clear who has the anti-black agenda.

<Not that it matters much. One racist is as good as any other, right? Whenever we are confronted by a problem that appears to have something to do with race, it is always best to avoid talking about it. Talking about race is the kind of thing that only racists do. >

Aw c'mon Bill. Dusty and Cdub's tiff notwithstanding, the original essay this thread was inspired by is just a really, really bad springboard to start discussing race issues - it's just way too damn biased. The author clearly is prejudiced against black people, and as has been pointed out here and on the comments from Nemko's blog sounds like a totally crappy teacher to boot.

If we want to really talk about the issues of race, class, and education, it's certainly a worthwhile toipic - and probably left to a new thread, as this one is so clogged up. But I will leave this comment from a teacher responding on Nemko's blog, one that I think does the best job at refuting Jackson's idiocy:


'As a white male who moved to the Mississippi Delta to teach black kids, I witnessed much of what Mr. Jackson writes about. Yet, I am appalled. It is obvious that he had contempt for his black students, and I'm sure they knew it. These are not the words of anyone who has any business teaching America's youth.

My experience in the Delta was very difficult. Like Jackson, I faced a situation where apathy, violence, and irrational behavior ran rampant. Everyday students entered a learning environment riddled with internal and external distractions. However, I cannot accept the picture that Jackson paints. My room was extremely diverse - and I don't mean racially (all of them were black). I had nerds, suck-ups, jocks, class clowns, musicians, bullies, book worms, thugs, etc. Not all of them worked hard for me all the time, but they all cared because they knew I cared for them. They didn't want to disappoint me. In my final year at the school, 13 of my 29 students tested into the honors program for the following year. They worked their butts off for me and they were rewarded with a chance to have a better learning environment, a better education, and a potentially better future. There were about five students that were in danger of failing my class, and they stayed after school everyday the second half of the year to get help. True, I had to chase some of them down from time to time, but they did the work and all of them passed (One of them earned a B his final quarter- his first ever). I had meaningful relationships with all of my students that extended beyond my classroom walls.

There were fights in my classroom. There was occasionally disorder. There was frustration from both me and my students. I had to deal with pregnancy, drugs, and weapons at one point or another. They didn't always like me, and God knows I didn't like all of them all the time. However, they were my kids and it was my responsibility to give them everything I had.

There is a huge achievement gap in our educational system. However, the root cause is not race as Jackson would have you believe. It is a culture of poverty that is prevalent in minority school districts. The essay hints at this by talking about their, at times, distorted world view. I recommend a book entitled "A Framework for Understanding Poverty" by Ruby K. Payne. My black students lived in a different world than I did. They came from homes where education was not valued. They had parents that made terrible decisions and, if present, taught them lessons that ran counter to our middle-class value structure. They had terrible teachers who came out of the same educational system that we're criticizing. And then they'd go home to neighborhoods where survival is a greater concern than homework.

I highly doubt Jackson ever visited the home or neighborhood of any of his black students to see this. He said himself that he had no meaningful relationship with any of his black students. I'm guessing that a big part of the problem in his classroom was himself. Students need a reason to care.

Marty, you want to encourage "real" dialogue on the issue, but I don't see a one-sided and obviously close-minded essay written out of frustration and anger to be helpful. The reality is that our school system is in crisis. It is a complex issue and race belongs in the dialogue, but we need to understand that race is not the problem. Bad teachers, bad parents, and bad cultural norms in poverty stricken areas are problems. It saddens me that Jackson's experience in a black school brought him to the conclusions that it did, but I think it was irresponsible of him to publish an essay of such stereotypical hyperbole.'

July 1, 2009 7:24 PM

I'm talking about disproportionately skinny calves.

My experience with such people is that, regardless of their intentions, they are usually unreliable when it counts.