School Equality: A Black Responsibility?

Article (Boston Globe)

We'd say it's mostly a black responsibility, but systemic issues regarding quality access remain. The conservative National Organization of Scholars recently held an event about the racial gap in educational achievement. Research shows income differences account for only about 1/3 of the gap. Carol Swain, a Vanderbilt University law professor, was the only black speaker and she hit the nail on the head. She identified various cultural factors that may hold black students back, including "dysfunctional abusive homes," "lack of parental involvement in the schools," and "negative peer pressure about learning and about high achievement as evidence of one's `acting white.'" Ms. Swain also identifies affirmative action in universities as part of the problem because it reduces incentives for most black and Latino students to do well in high school. She says better schools may provide some solutions but there must also be cultural change, and "middle-class minorities must take a leadership role in this area."

Amen, Sista Carol. We've argued the same thing! Before liberalism pumped its poison in black communities, school equality was a black responsibility. We set up schools, risked death to get an education, etc. Kids in Booker T. Washington's era (or Dr. Martin Luther King's era, for that matter) weren't calling education a "white" thing, but common-sense blackness.

A moderate, Ms. Swain says she ain't concerned about (white) conservatives who may have their own agenda. "Do liberal blacks worry about being tokens for the status quo? I doubt it. I call things the way I see them." Thankfully, black folks are taking things back into our own hands, quietly fleeing public schools for private ones and calling for school vouchers.