When discussing real solutions to the problems that many Black students face, the first things I think about are my own educational experiences as a young, black woman from Brooklyn. Coming from a low-income, single parent household in a community filled with over-crowded / under-performing inner-city schools the odds were stacked up against me. And yet like many other Black students before me I found myself on the path to college and a fulfilling career. I found myself taking advantage of previously unimaginable opportunities because outside of school my mother found youth programs that helped to supplement what I was learning in school and at home.

Such programs have had a positive impact on my life and the lives of many other students of color. Everyday children across America attend after school and pre-college programs at which they generate a renewed sense of themselves through new arenas of support. In spite of overcrowded classrooms and out dated books, students can further develop their minds with the help of the one-on-one training and co-curriculum classes that these organizations provide. For the most part, these programs typically offer tutoring, summer instruction, workshops, internships, and career counseling.

While it's important for the Black Community to find new ways to solve our educational concerns, I think it's equally important to highlight those solutions that are presently making a positive impact on the lives of our children. I strongly believe that as a collective entity, many of the youth programs that exist today are real solutions to our educational problems. It is for this reason that I take the time to expose more Black parents and students to opportunities outside the classroom with my self-published book 'A Better Today Brings a Brighter Tomorrow'. In it you will find information about youth organizations for minority students in New York and across the United States. The Programs range from after school tutoring, pre-college preparation, mentoring, talent, summer opportunities and career training. It’s a great resource for anyone, even non-New Yorkers, because it breaks down the different types of programs that exist for young people in practically every state. This book is available in print and e-book form on www.lulu.com/msoy.

‘A Better Today Brings a Brighter Tomorrow’ is my real solution to improving education for Black students today. What is yours?

Does Vanity Fair have the "white is right, black get back" mentality?

According to the online version of Radar, a source who refused to be named said, "Everything on the cover is bright, including the white background, to make it seem as white as can be." The source also said Beyonce's "medium-to-dark skinned complexion was airbrushed to a 'Jennifer Lopez shade of bronze' to fit in with the magazine's cheery aesthetic," according to Radar, which calls itself the "magazine version of 'The Daily Show.'"

Seriously though: If Beyonce were dark-skinned with an afro, would she have made the cover?

Vanity Fair

---

I tried not to let the news affect me, but it simply has.

Why I have not seen many African-Americans in my classes has always stayed in the back of my mind, but now it's as if the problem is staring me in the face. Quite often, I was the only African-American male in my class. It made me feel like I was part of a race that's dying off. It shouldn't be that way.

Are African-Americans, especially black males, disappearing from higher education?

African-Americans Not Represented on Campus

...a Baraka recruiter tells potential students that they face three options: an orange jumpsuit and "nice bracelets"; a black suit and a brown box; or a black gown, a cap and a high school diploma. If they want the last, she says, they should sign up for Kenya.

[...]

"The teachers forced us to learn, and they were there for you 24/7—that was mainly it," Devon said. And the atmosphere in Kenya, he said, "was not violence or cursing or hatred, it was calm and quiet and nice." The location also ensured that costs were lower than in Baltimore, and that boys could not easily run away.

[...]

"I think that people think a kid from Baltimore's supposed to grow up to be nothing. That we ain't got no future, simply because we from the ghetto. I'm going to try and make a difference."

( From Baltimore's Streets to Kenya and Back )

Things were all right until Reggie White's grandfather moved away, leaving the 16-year-old and his grandmother to get by on her retirement money and his after-school job at Hardee's.

[...]

His grandmother started wandering off. She couldn't go to church anymore. Her hair got ragged. Her strength and her polish and her smile disappeared.

They couldn't afford the car anymore, so White said he would walk the two miles or so after school to work and walk home after midnight when his shift ended. He was exhausted and scared that everything he had worked so hard for his whole life was going to be lost.

He kept thinking of how much his grandmother wanted him to go to college. He kept wondering how he would afford tuition on his own and who would take care of his grandmother if he left.

( Access to a Dream )

Repost: Originally posted by wickedwisdom

Not-So-Little White Lies:
Education and the Myth of Black Anti-Intellectualism
By Tim Wise (Nov. 2002)

Cherished myths die hard, especially when those myths serve the interests of the more powerful members of a society at the expense of the less powerful. For generations, slaveowners ignored their chattels' humanity, to say nothing of their desire for freedom, even coming up with a name for the presumed mental illness that "explained" the urge on the part of their property to run away. Drapetomania, it was called: a powerful disorder that afflicted the brains of slaves, rendering them incapable of recognizing how good they had it.

The subordination of persons of color has regularly been rationalized with absurd racist stereotypes, even when evidence flatly contradicted the illogic of those assumptions. So, for example, segregation was needed to allow blacks to develop to the "limit of their capacities," and to hear some tell it, blacks actually preferred separate schools, housing, water fountains, and lunch counters. Japanese Americans had to be interned for "national security" purposes because they were disloyal to America. Filipinos were incapable of self-government; Hawaiians were heathens in need of Christian discipline, and so on and so forth.

( continued )
__________

These black institutions have produced leaders from Thurgood Marshall to Jesse Jackson to Spike Lee. Their step shows, marching bands, and fraternities and sororities have become integral elements of African-American culture. It is commonplace in black churches and neighborhoods for parents to believe that their children will have better outcomes in black colleges than in mostly white ones, because the black schools provide a more nurturing, supportive environment, free of white presumptions that blacks are intellectual inferiors or expectations they should portray the role of hip-hop gangsta.

But what happens when the truism appears less and less true? What happens when an education emergency is ignored except by those enduring it?

[...]

Why don't they attend? That's the question of the decade," said Dr. Jacqueline Fleming, the director of Texas Southern's academic center. "The single biggest factor is a lack of motivation. Their world is BET, ghetto rap, going to school dressed like you're going to a club. They're here because their grandmother said to be here, or because their parole officer said it was this or jail."

Having taught at Barnard College, Dr. Fleming has seen plenty of anti-intellectualism in more rarefied settings, too.

( Little-Noticed Crisis at Black Colleges )

^ T. Rogers, her daugher Julia Sewell. Thandisizwe Jackson-Nisan and her mother Jewelean Jackson.

"We weren't the only black people—because there were Africans—but we were the only black people from the United States, and I think a lot of the people at the conference thought that we weren't capable of doing what everybody else did."

The students have been exposed to a wide range of new experiences, including overseas travel and contact with other young people from around the world. But they also say they've had to confront stereotypes and low expectations some have of African-Americans.

"Between the schedules and this feeling that we're never going to be good enough that kind of grates on you sometimes," says Jackson. "And I know one of the other young women—they just finally said, 'We're tired of trying to prove to them that we are.' And I was saddened, because, 'You're almost there.' This is six months to graduation."

( Minneapolis Teens Get Global Education )

N.B.A. Draft Will Close Book on High School Stars
By Howard Beck, New York Times
June 28, 2005

By a quirk of fate, by a rule change he had nothing to do with and a movement that began long before anyone knew his name, Gerald Green is destined to become a curious footnote, perhaps even an icon, the face of an asterisked generation.

Sometime tonight, Green will be called to the podium by N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern and be fitted with a baseball cap bearing some team's insignia. When he does, Green will morph from highly regarded basketball prospect to trivia question: who was the first high school player picked in the last draft that allowed high school players?

The age limit that Stern promoted and pressed for the last several years will be adopted when the league ratifies its new collective bargaining agreement in the next few weeks. Starting next year, a player must be 19 and a year removed from high school to apply for the draft.

So this year's crop of prep stars is unlike any other. They will not be remembered as the modern pioneers - Kevin Garnett (1995) and Kobe Bryant (1996) bear that honor and burden - but rather, as the last crusaders for an unpopular cause: the right of teenagers to get rich playing basketball.

( continued )

^ The text that will be used this fall.
__________

"You cannot understand American history without understanding the African-American experience; I don't care what anybody says," said Paul G. Vallas, the school system's chief executive, who is white. "It benefits African-American children who need a more comprehensive understanding of their own culture, and it also benefits non-African-Americans to understand the full totality of the American experience."

[...]

Critics of the policy shift say it will further polarize the city by focusing attention on just one race and not dealing with other racial and ethnic groups like Mexicans, Chinese or Poles.

[...]

Patricia Thomas Whyatt taught the course at Strawberry Mansion, a nearly all-black school of 900 students, and found that even her own students had misconceptions of their race.

"The first day I asked students to make a list of everything they knew about Africa, then we went through each item," Ms. Whyatt said. "They thought Africa was all jungle, that people ran around with spears and lived in huts. A lot of crazy things like that."

[...]

By the end of school this month, she said, not only had perceptions changed but self-esteem had improved as well.

One of her students, Christopher Davis, 18, said: "In American society, we're known as gangsters, drug dealers and killers. People don't know all about our heritage, what we stood for, our accomplishments as a culture. I feel better now because I know a little bit more about how we lived before we got here."

( Philadelphia Mandates Black History for Graduation )
__________

Related: Philly Schools to Require African History Class

Next week I will return to my college as a Tutor/Counselor for the Upward Bound Program. We had a launching dinner for the summer component of the program and I gave a motivational speech. As I welcomed the families, parents, and students back to my college for another summer, I promised that their summer would be filled of enrichment. I promised that we would challenge the students both in and out of the class room....... but in the back of my head, I was holding back many feelings:

I remember reading an article highlighting how the President's new budget is planning to cut funding for Upward Bound program. I'm thinking to myself -- I must be a big hypocrite for promising help to these students and their families, when next year we may not be able to provide this help due to loss of funding.

"Upward Bound serves high school students from low-income families, high school students from families in which neither parent holds a bachelor's degree, and low-income, first-generation military veterans who are preparing to enter postsecondary education. The goal of Upward Bound is to increase the rates at which participants enroll in and graduate from institutions of postsecondary education" (http://www.ed.gov/programs/trioupbound/index.html).

As you can tell hearing that they would cut a program like this is really upsetting me. What else are they planning to take away from the youth in our country? This program was established in Lyndon Johnson's time when we where into helping each other. Now children have to fiend for themselves and pass standardized testing in order to get to college... No child left behind? Well, from personal experience: this past summer I helped a young lady who's only plan for her future before she came to the program was to drop out of high school and get pregnant. She was scared she wouldn't pass the parts of the state mandated test she needed to get her diploma. With the normal the support of her over crowded and under funded public high school, passing wasn't looking too promising. Through the Upward Bound program we gave her hope and now she is planning to apply to college in the fall.

Here are some more responses of others about the budget cut:( Read more... )

In addition to Upward Bound, there are many other educational and economic programs that are important to Blacks, but most importantly young people that will be affected by this budget cut.

So I'm writing this today, not to encourage a Bush bashment party. Personally, President Bush and I do not agree on many things and I know many agree on my sentiments. However, debating back and forth and sharing opinions will not do anything about the potential loss of these programs. I am urging you all to write letters to your congress representatives to let them know not to approve him budget proposal. Young people need more positive outlets to be available and cutting funding will not do anything.

White House comment line # is 202 456-1111; Fax # is 202 465-2883; US Senate Switchboard # 202-224-3121; US House of Rep. # 202-225-3121 any member of congress can be reach at these #'s. The website for the House is http://www.house.gov/ This site will give you committee assignments, telephone # to members, regular mail address, email addresses and their own website. I thank you very much on behalf of the students and their families.

Condemned by Ignorance
By Rochelle Riley, Free Press
June 12, 2005

I'll never forget the day my friend Joanna picked my daughter, then a first-grader, up from school. She fed her and chatted with her on the way back to the newsroom, where I was stuck on deadline. They walked in, and from the look on Joanna's face, I knew something had happened.

I scanned my child for injury but found none. So what was wrong?

Joanna said she had asked my daughter what she'd learned in school that day. And like a good first-grader in an American public school district in February, she told her she had learned about Black History Month.

What did you learn? Joanna asked.

"I learned that Martin Luther King freed the slaves," my daughter said. "Before that, they made brown people work without getting paid. I don't want to be a brown person."

Joanna, hysterical, rushed her to me so that I could explain to my child that she should never fear slavery.

( continued )

Related: Philly Schools to Require African History Class
__________

The Senate today will belatedly apologize for never passing anti-lynching legislation. Sponsors of the resolution note that nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in the first half of the 20th century. In addition, between 1890 and 1952 seven presidents urged Congress to end lynching. But nothing passed.

[...]

Anna Holmes remembers hearing about the bridge when she was a little girl.

It stood somewhere near where the Collington and Western branches of the Patuxent River met in Upper Marlboro, Md., less than a quarter-mile from the Marlboro jail.

"I used to hear them talking about the lynchings," said Holmes, 79, a historian who grew up in central Prince George's County.

[...]

Towns across America bear reminders of the tradition that claimed 4,743 lives between 1882 and 1968, research shows. In Alexandria, Va., a lamppost at Cameron and Lee streets served to lynch Joseph McCoy on April 23, 1897. In Annapolis, Md., a bluff near College Creek was the site of Henry Davis' lynching four days before Christmas in 1906.

Lynching also remains imbedded in the consciousness of black families, some of whom can name an ancestor or a friend who fell prey to mob justice, often meted out with spectators watching and memorialized with postcards of the victims hanging or pieces of the ropes that had snapped their necks.

( 105 Years On, Senate Votes on Lynching Apology )

Related: Strange Fruit

PHILADELPHIA, Philadelphia (AP) -- City high school students will be required to take a class in African and African American history to graduate, a move that education experts believe is unique in the nation.

The requirement in the 185,000-student district, which is about two-thirds black, begins with September's freshman class, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Thursday.

The yearlong course covers subjects including classical African civilizations, civil rights and black nationalism, said Gregory Thornton, the district's chief academic officer. The other social studies requirements are American history, geography and world history.

Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for big city school districts, said Philadelphia appeared to be in the forefront with such a requirement.

"Courses on the subjects are offered as electives in other cities," he said.

Some parents opposed requiring the course, including Miriam Foltz, president of the Home and School Association at Baldi Middle School.

"There are other races in this city," said Foltz, who is white. "There are other cultures that will be very offended by this. How can you just mandate a course like this?"

While acknowledging it would be better to have courses adequately reflecting all cultures, district officials said African and African American history had been neglected too long.

"We have a whole continent that has been absent from most of our textbooks," said Paul Vallas, the district's chief executive officer.


http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/06/09/african.history.ap/index.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Talk about progress. I do remember (not quite sure if it was here) seeing someone mention that they do not get credit in history for taking courses on African history... I wonder if anyone has pushed to change that rule since.

That said, while I understand that other people live here in America, I don't feel that should be a reason not to have a portion of the curriculum that pertains to black history. Slavery is a HUGE part of American history. You cannot teach American history (honestly) without addressing it. Things have happened with other races, but slavery made the Constitution...

"For blacks, higher achievement is associated with modestly higher popularity until a grade point average of 3.5 [a B+ average], then the slope turns negative," Fryer and Torelli wrote in a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. A black student who's gotten all A's has, on average, 1.5 fewer same-race friends than a straight-A white student. Among Hispanics, there is little change in popularity until a student's average rises above a C+, at which point it plummets. A Hispanic student with all A's is the least popular of all Hispanic students, and has three fewer friends than a typical white student with a 4.0 grade point average.

( The Price of Acting White )
__________

Related Repost:

Black men, the logic goes, are not supposed to think in international or deep philosophical terms. Instead, if one is to be a "true brotha" life should be a lot more simple than that: quit school, slap "hoes," smoke weed, impregnate half the female population, sell drugs, and serve a couple of prison sentences.

So, I hung out at the frat parties until early the next morning. I got drunk, talked sh-t, and listened to the recordings of rap and R&B artists that I normally would not pay attention to; I was a jazz and classical aficionado. I wanted to fit in. Oddly enough, it didn't work. Deep in the well-springs of my pretentious and book-wormish mind, I still enjoyed a good hearty dialogue on national and international events, but I had to hide it and not make it so obvious.

Many years have come and gone and, to be perfectly honest, not a whole lot has changed.

Even as a thirty-six-year-old professor and freelance writer, I still find myself having to reconcile the need for acceptance and my intellectual curiosity.

You Thank You White!!!: Exploring Anti-Intellectualism in Black America

Every morning when I work at the laundromat I bring a few books to read with me. OK, sometimes "a few books" is actually 4 or 5 books. When I have free time, I usually like to read several books at a time, and when I have long periods of time to read (like I sometimes do at the laundromat) I just enjoy going from one book to another. Fiction to non-fiction, heavy to not so heavy, that sort of thing. Anyhow, just about everyone who comes in to the laundromat who sees me reading asks me one of the following questions.

1-Are you going to school right now? or 2-Are you doing that reading for school?

Why is it that just because I'm reading a book that looks remotely academic or intellectual people assume I must be reading it for school? That whole attitude, that whole conception of the world just bothers me. What is so odd about enjoying to read, and wanting to read to learn new things? Why is it that people assume that no one would want to do such things without being required to do them? This attitude carries over into schools—people don't look at school as somewhere they can go to expand their mind and expand their understanding of the world. Most people look at schools as tools to further their careers or further their goals of making money. Some people look upon them just in terms of prestige. Whatever happened to learning for learning's sake?

Source

At Minnesota, Jerold W. Wells, Jr., a sophomore who serves on the board of the Black Student Union, is bucking the trend and majoring in African-American studies. When he first came to Minnesota, he planned to pursue a law degree. "That was a brainchild of my parents," he says. After taking a class or two in black studies, he decided "I wanted to do what I want to do." Now he plans to be a journalist.

Still, he has had to pacify his parents, who have urged him to declare a double major that he might fall back on. And he has found himself presented with the same question that the department here is trying to answer.

"When I told my mom I was majoring in African-American studies, her first question was: 'OK, what are you going to do with that?'"

[...]

To stay alive, black-studies departments at many public universities are scrambling to reinvent themselves. They are changing their names to "Africana" and "African diaspora" studies and broadening their courses from a focus on black Americans to black people in Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. A few departments, like Minnesota's, are trying to sell themselves to students by explaining just what they can do with a black-studies major.

Black-Studies Programs Struggle to Survive

In today's pop culture, street knowledge/street cred is seen as being much more relevant. They can recite an entire f-----g rap CD word for word. But reading a chapter from a book or reading PERIOD is not a part of the program. In the hiphop community and in the wider black community, you get much more clout and respect for being a popular street thug, for having bullet wounds, and for having a criminal record than you do if you are smart and you're trying to do the right thing. This leads to number 4...

Many are opting instead for the alternative economies (The Underground Economy) which include various forms of hustling...some legal, some illegal. Mostly drug running (muling), drug dealing, or some type of legal hustle that doesn't necessarily require a lot of education or diplomas. They figure...hey, why am I in school when I can become a rapper, or I can sell drugs like my friends who are driving nice cars and have all those expensive name brand clothes and all the bling and the women? Why am I wasting my time in this school? The peer pressure for our people is unbelievable. It's all about attaining that bling-bling, and not having to ride the bus, and having the women and the clothes, and having it RIGHT NOW at 16, 17 years old. They have been trained through the TV/media culture to be corporate consumption whores. They fall for it everytime (at least a significant number do), and that is true for black women and men. This leads to #5...

Continued at The Enemyboard: Black/Latino Dropouts

Many of you know that one of my biggest goals is to help to reform the education system-especially when it relates to our community.

I was reading one of my favorite magazines today and ran across this article.
http://www.chiefexecutive.net/mag/207/index.html
( Read more... )
The article has some very interesting statistics and makes for a good read.

It is frightening to think that we are at the bottom of the curve when it comes to education. Its even more frightening to think that the Black community is generally relegated to the bottom of the US education curve.

I would like to bring this to a more personal level.

I think the folks in the article have their hearts in the right place, but I wonder if they really could use the perspective of people who are actually in the schools.
What is your experience with the school system? What are the causes of the issues? What can we do, as a community, to help or people achieve a higher standard of education?