Day of Black Male Solidarity June 2010

CULTURE, POLITICS & EDUCATION - The Education of African American Males in Pittsburgh: Saving Our Sons, Broadening the Dialogue”

American people of African descent are caught between a hurricane and a volcano when it comes to the acquisition of life giving and life sustaining knowledge. Too many of our children are trapped in urban school systems that have been programmed for failure; and all too often the answer to what is to be done to correct this injustice is left in the very hands of those most responsible for the problem.

W. E. Du Bois once argued that the proper education for oppressed groups such as African Americans had a special critical purpose. He knew that education was always and everywhere political. For the oppressed, the political rule of education had to be aimed precisely at finding the means to end oppression.   Speaking before the graduating class at Howard University, in 1930, he put the issue this way:

“First there should be no misunderstanding about this -no easy going optimism. We are not going to share modern civilization just by deserving recognition. We are going to have to force ourselves in, by organized far seeing efforts, by out-thinking and out-flanking the owners of the world today who are too drunk with their own arrogance and power.”

The education of African Americans has been shaped throughout history by two major problems. One is access to educational opportunities and the other is the quality of accessible schooling. Unfortunately, the struggle for access diverted the energies of African Americans from the task of designing and providing quality schooling. In addition, the content of the schooling that African Americans did receive was designed to meet the needs of politically empowered European Americans and not the particular needs of African Americans.

If our public educational systems are the first formal state sponsored orientation into becoming productive citizens, we are in deep trouble. If public schooling is supposed to stimulate the nation’s children to become poets, doctors, teachers, scientists, computer experts, musicians, business people, carpenters, professors, etc., get ready to throw in the towel. This is the eleventh round and the only answer that is forthcoming from most school systems is to change the superintendent!

Some of the most intelligent advocates of public school education continue to blame the victim as if children have the capacity to educate themselves. There is a need for our children and for our people to know correctly and accurately that the way people define the world has a lot to do with how they interact in the world – it dictates teaching techniques, it dictates methodology, it dictates the way you assess children’s progress, and dictates the way you are able to stimulate the growth of children. The American education systems have not been effective in educating Black children. The emphasis of traditional education has been on molding and shaping Black children so that they fit into an educational process designed for Anglo-Saxon middle class children.

We know that the system is not working because of the disproportionate number of Black children who are labeled slow (mentally retarded) and placed in special education classes. We know that the system is not working because of the disproportionate number of Black children who are suspended, expelled, and pushed out of school. We can see that the system is not working when we look at the high percentage of Black teens that are unemployed, and the overrepresentation of Black people in the prison system.

The topic that we are discussing here today is a complex one, and certainly cannot receive its due in the limited amount of time we have – because serious paradigm shifts in thinking need to occur before extensive system reconstruction can begin.

The basic thing that I would like to do, in this short amount of time, is to talk about a few points we should keep in mind as we reassess the education of Black children, and seek to give them a relevant education – an education that will maintain the survival of and advance the interest of our people.

The issues of identity become a perpetuating and powerful question because a part of what happened during slavery was an effort to eradicate our identity, culture and self-concept. When a people’s identity is gone, their capacity to function as a unit and all sense of connectiveness is gone.

When people don’t know who they are, anyone can send them anywhere – when people don’t know where they are going, any road will lead them nowhere. When people don’t have a sense of their traditions, they can be blown away by any wind in every direction.

In order to develop African American minds, you have to be aware of the enormity of the problem.

It’s very real for all of us because it focuses on the most important thing that has been created out of the love of our people and the universal connection to God, our seeds, our children – and it is our responsibility to address the plight of our children, how best we can educate them, and correct the conditions they find themselves in – for it is no fault of their own.

Too many of us see education as essentially a preparation for jobs, as a preparation for moving up in social status, and as a means for securing a better lifestyle. Certainly these are some of its major functions. However, I do not see them as the primary functions of education.

I think we should look at education in a broader sense. We must move beyond viewing education as merely an individual achievement – that education is something that someone gets – in exclusion of what else is going on in the world. Education is a social process, and it only makes sense within a social system. We must move beyond viewing education merely as an individual achievement or as an achievement that will merely enhance the individual’s life or maybe the narrow family lives of certain people.

Every culture engages in education in one form or another – it doesn’t matter how primitive or how advance it may be – there is still a process of what we call education taking place. It might be learning how to fish, hunt, cook, develop choreography, dance, rap, manage businesses, design space stations or other roles in society. People have to be trained or taught in some way or another. In addition, when an individual is taught to perform a particular job, that job is part of a network of jobs, a system of jobs – each one dependent upon the other – each one forming a component of a complex web. The web is the means by which a particular social system is held together, protects itself and advances its interests.   So even if the individual thinks he or she is getting an education for himself or herself alone,  when you look at the role and job the individual is performing, it is really part of a network of jobs, a network of roles which together then maintain a social system and protect and advance the interest of a people. Therefore, when you look at jobs and preparing for roles, you must look beyond what it will do just for you as an individual and family as a group – you must also look at those jobs or roles in the context of your social group, of your society think it is vital that we understand that the major function of education is to help secure the survival of people. Let’s look at the United States and President Bush. Supposedly we live in a capitalistic society. We must understand that even if Bush follows the capitalistic mode of letting the market determine what business will remain and what business will go, he has to also recognize that a very vital industry (our defense industry) cannot be permitted to go – even if market forces dictate that it should go. For instance, computer chips are very important in the making of computers. These chips are also important in the development of the defense systems that make up the security of this country. It could be quite possible, given the market, that the United States would not have that kind of industry – period. The Japanese are so much more competitive and better at producing these types of computer chips that the United States could order them from Japan or South Korea. However, they

United States recognize that to put this country in that situation would put the nation in jeopardy.  It would mean that vital parts of their computer system and programs would be known by other nations. The United States would be dependent upon those nations for parts of a computer system vital to this country’s security. If by chance the United States and the countries providing the parts were no longer allies, our national security would be greatly at risk. Recognizing this, the United States knows that it must have people within this country capable of performing the designing, manufacturing and other related jobs that develop and produce the necessary essentials for our nation’s defense system. The loss of these types of jobs are not only losses to the people that held the jobs, but ultimately losses to the nation itself, for it makes the nation vulnerable to a potential enemy.

Another example would be a blue collar job such as a machinist – which seems to be a relatively pedestrian occupation. However, at times this job is vital towards our national defense. A top notch machinist can literally make an engine – an automobile engine – a jet engine, etc. You might think that all this machinist would be doing is drilling holes in iron and steel.  It’s extremely vital to understand that this type of job is not just meant for a man to just feed himself and his family – it is intimately related to the defense of this nation.

Autoworkers are not just people working the assembly lines. In times of wary, the assembly line becomes a line for making tanks and other vital materials needed for the defense of this country.

The point I am making is that jobs may be looked at as mere jobs for personal economic sustainability. But in reality these are not merely jobs for personal growth. Jobs and roles people play are not only vital to the people themselves, but also to the social system supported by those jobs and roles.

I think this vital information is often left out when African American people begin to look at the role of education in their lives. When we talk about maximizing the intelligence of  Black children, we are speaking not just in terms of their ability to go through school, get  better reading and writing averages, and go to the right colleges. We are concerned about enhancing their intelligence so that they can serve as a means for maintaining the actual physical survival of Black people.

“You can tell a tree by the fruit it bears.” Those of us who are familiar with the Bible, of

course, are familiar with that verse. We must evaluate education in terms of its fruits! We haven’t seen, as yet, the outgrowth from the colleges that are providing the degrees in business, economic and community development, into our communities in any concrete way. It almost seems that it is going in the other direction – which means the degrees we are receiving in these colleges and institutions are not degrees that are designed to advance and enhance the economic, social and political development of our community – but are degrees for service. It seems that no matter how hard we work in preparing ourselves to achieve these degrees, the central constant remains. That constant is that we are being educated to serve the interest and advancement of people other than ourselves.

It’s not enough to get another degree. We have to learn to use the degrees we have to serve the interests of our own people.

So when we look at education in terms of enhancing the advancement of Black people, we must recognize that we are chiefly responsible for the education of our children. We are responsible for preparing our children not only for their own survival, but also the survival of our people. This means that we must educate our children.

The educators of our children must understand the psychology, history, cultural lifestyles and experiences of our people. The schools that we have inherited are schools that have not been designed to understand the cultural experience of Black children. The schools that we have inherited are not designed to address the educational needs that are culturally relevant to children of color. Whether they are equal or unequal, successful or not successful there is a lack of continuity between what’s going on in the school and what’s going on in the culture.

In a culture that’s self determining, there is an organic relationship between what’s going on in education and what’s going on in the community as a whole because the educational structure is developed out of cultural need in an attempt of the culture to adapt itself to certain social demands – so there is a wholeness and continuity there.

But when you have an educational structure imposed on a culture from the outside to meet the needs, then there is an educational discontinuity and disconnection from that culture and its people. Therefore when the children of that culture walk into that type of educational system, it’s foreign to them and disconnected from their own life experiences.

Then that child’s life experience is looked upon as something worthless and valueless – in need of correction, in need of remediation and restructuring, in need of all types of nonsense – special education, drug management – all because people refuse to look at the psychology of our children and our people.

When you get children that are wrestling with emotional problems, motivation problems, identity and self-concept problems, educational systems must recognize that it might take a little bit more time to prepare them for the educational process, than other children that may not have the same psychological problems.

If some children have been psychologically distorted, confused and traumatized – for whatever reason – perhaps the educational process should start with healing the psychological and emotional wounds. Once those wounds are healed, the children will be able to excel.

Many educational systems are not concerned with education. Education is a business. The same thing is true of corrections. Its principal function seems to be to make criminals out of imprisoned people. It is an industry. Millions upon millions of dollars go to the people who built the prisons, the people who sell it food, the people who sell it electricity, etc., and the raw materials of the system are our boys, our sisters, and our brothers. The system takes the politically weakest groups and processes them so that everyone else can get a piece of them.

The cop gets them and makes a living off of them. Then the lawyer gets them and gets his piece of the action. Then the judge gets them, the court officers get them, and the penal industrial complex gets a piece. If they are lucky to get out, the parole officer gets them in the end. And by that time, they are socially impotent – haven’t got a career or skills – so they get recycled through again. It’s an Industry!

The educational system, to a very great extent, even if you are not of African descent, is one that really depends on people to think. But when they do, it’s in very narrow terms. This system can’t afford to truly educate all of its people. It can only educate a small group – who can only think within the narrow confines of their professions.

One of the major needs by which we have been ruled is through our emotions. Of course to rule people through their emotions, you have to strip them of their capacity to reason or if you don’t strip them of their capacity to reason, you disconnect the reasoning from their ability to influence their behavior.

Then that leaves them open to emotional appeals and being ruled then by their emotions. This leaves them open to all types of addictions, facades, and current negative situations that African Americans find themselves in. It leads them into making decisions based on destructive emotions instead of well developed positive thought processes.

I think a major portion of the early education for African American children should be dedicated to the development of thinking skills.

Education is vital for the survival, cultural enhancement, and advancement of people. How you truly measure education is by the degree that education is going to increase the survival of your people. Knowledge and education have to be usable, functional and relevant to the upliftment and social advancement of your people. Education is not just an individual process – it is a social process to enhance the collective group.

We have to begin to create and design educational systems that will begin to address the basic fundamental social, political and economic needs of our people. Most children are born into the world at the top of their game – genius level. The culture that receives them will either nurture and develop the genius in them or silence their minds before they are developed.

Most children remain a learning mode. However, those that truly explode with ideas, creativity, and unbounded talent are the ones introduced to knowledge in creative environments by talented and caring people. It is our responsibility as Black people, parents, educators and citizens to develop environments that will nurture and protect our Black children so that the genius in them explodes to its fullest capacity ensuring the survival of our culture.