The crime-prevention activist and Republican in Savannah, Ga. opines: "Liberal leadership in the Black community have stamped promoting school discipline synonymous with endorsing educational apartheid. When parents refuse to parent and inner cities support the worst possible conduct, is it any wonder White responses transformed many systems into de facto penal colonies? When a group won’t raise youth performance standards there’s little complaint when others impose heavy handed solutions. Discipline has all but vanished from contemporary Black culture. The most embarrassing and destructive attitudes have been raised from the gutter and assigned glitter status. Adherents proudly bellow and rampage through our neighborhoods on collision courses with majority White criminal justice systems. Marches against racist teachers and/or policies should be matched by mass gatherings demanding discipline downloaded back into our culture."
He continues: "Criminality has become a perverse lifestyle inflicted upon low income urban stakeholders and any other unfortunates. It’s enough to make some Black concerned citizens long for segregated classrooms where instructors exercised real control. Jim Crow wasn’t a boon but many of our institutions enjoyed higher standards than present. Until Black parents and stakeholders create culture change, too many youth continue volunteering for probation; incarceration and sometimes annihilation. Discipline is an expression of Black community love all but lost. Self-discipline is that love demonstrated by individuals. Until we match the community and personal discipline of Jim Crow-era Black schools, our youth will continue being free to be disrespectful; free to be criminally violent and ultimately free to fail forever."
More commentary from Mr. Enzi: "Marchers and activists should do the community a big favor by attacking lack of self-discipline at least as hard as public education racists. Absent a two front approach, we risk counterattack by fifth columns of out of control youth attacking from the rear. That’s the cost of activist attention always being focused elsewhere. Racists will always be there. Better behaved Black children is another matter entirely. If more jails is someone else solution - what’s ours? Self-love stemming from discipline is a good start."
Booker Rising response: While too many black youth are out of control thanks to bad parenting, Mr. Enzi is overstating the case here. Why the black = poor formula, when 75% of black Americans are not poor? He implies that most black folks are into criminal activity, when the vast majority will never see the inside of a jail cell. Most black students are not causing discipline problems in the classroom. It is the undisciplined minority among us wreaking havoc (and undermining the educational experience of everyone else) who need to be nipped in the bud. It should be pointed out that Jim Crow-era black schools had corporal punishment, often with another spanking when one got home (according to my older relatives). Until I reached high school in 1984, the teachers in my racially-mixed schools in the South (where I partly grew up) would paddle unruly students in front of the classroom. The mess going down nowadays in classrooms wasn't tolerated back in the day. However, better behaved kids starts in the home.
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NADRA ENZI COMMENTARY: School Discipline: A New Civil Rights Demonstration?
