To add to what has already been a hot topic, this story comes out from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The achievement gap separating black boys from just about everyone else springs from a powerful, anti-education culture rising in the black community, a local black think tank argues in a new report.
Parents who undervalue education, and a mass media that peppers youth with the quick, shallow rewards of hip-hop lifestyle, are steering alarming numbers of boys down a dead-end path, PolicyBridge contends.
The report calls for public recognition of a phenomenon crippling the black community and the civic will to fight it. It’s to be released today via mailings to civic leaders and on the group’s Web site, www.policy-bridge.org.
[...]
Almost half of black children attending Cleveland public schools fail to graduate, and only a fraction will ever finish college.
What’s new is the identification of a leading culprit. The report argues that no amount of money or strategy will close the gap as long as black children are raised in an environment that devalues education.
[...]
The authors trace underachievement to the breakdown of the black family, a trend Daniel Patrick Moynihan publicized in 1965, when he reported that 25 percent of black children were born to single mothers. Today, more than 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers.
Absent fathers, and with families weakened, corrupting influences gained power and prestige, the report argues. Rap music, poverty and pop-culture celebrities combine to create an alluring “cool-pose culture of self-destructive behaviors.”
[...]
It recommends that the federal No Child Left Behind Act be amended to treat black boys as a distinct category deserving of special attention, including a longer school year.
It calls upon black parents and civic leaders to raise their expectations of black pupils. And it urges black men to “step up” as role models for fatherless youths [More...]
I have seen cases where black children in the suburbs feel some sort of obligation to “keep it real”. In one particular case a young man from a good family told me that he commited a crime because he felt this need to prove his “blackness” because he was not from a poor and broken home. This problem is very pervasive and follows them into Islam. DRASTIC changes must be made to destroy this type of thinking.
For Full Policy Bridge Report [pdf.]: Click Here
FYI: Policy Bridge’s Mark Batson - mentioned in the article, is Imam Johari Abdul-Malik’s brother in law
Filed under: Black American Muslims, Changing World, Children's Issues
That report took a lot of courage. I suppose they will now be called uncle toms and race traitors
Like a well known black cartoonist from Howard said, these people are a part of a culture that “aspires to ignorance”.
It is like one step forward, two steps back, when it comes to the history of the Black community. Who needs oppression, when you’re imploding from within. At this point, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Time to get it together, get it right. I also think middle class Blacks have really let the community down by remaining insular and doing little to engage with these issues.
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
Talking of the Black middle class, I heard a typical example the other day when Floella Benjamin (a respected broadcaster of Trinidadian origin) was interviewed by Robert Elms on the BBC radio the other day (find it here, where it says “Robert Elms with music, guests and facts about London, MON TUE WED THU FRI” and you click on WED). She made some comment about how Black people came through slavery and then the racist experience in London after they came from the Carribean with their dignity intact, and I thought that she really had not seen much of modern Black youth culture if she thought that. Dignity is not the word that comes to mind when you listen to some of the music many of them listen to, or see their behaviour or hear their conversation or music when you have the misfortune to have to share a bus or train carriage with them. Some might say this culture is no worse than the equivalent white youth culture, but there is nothing dignified about that culture either. I don’t believe these youths have gone through anything like the racist experience their parents or grandparents did, but then, when I am afraid to look at someone on the bus when he is driving me nuts with his rotten music and foul-mouthed conversation, I don’t care if anyone has used an N word on him.
As a substitute teacher in a mostly white district in Houston I can attest to the unfair treatment and misunderstanding of our young Black men in the school districts. Too often do I see our young men “acting out” in order to gain popularity amongst their white peers. They play into stereotypes set forth by not only the white students but faculty as well. Our young men are over looked for their intellect and mislabled as “special ed” or “behavioural problems” because of their needs. Not needs that far exceed the needs of white students but the needs that our children need from Black educators who understand them better. I recently obtained my Bachelor of Arts in Communications from a HBCU here in Texas and it is my goal to become an educator, to help our children. Black students need Black educators who will take the time to teach them not only educational material but have a role in their lives that aide with morals and self image. Intergration was the WORST thing that happened to Black people here in America. It weakend our sense of community, it failed our children, and as a result we are where we are today, trying to get our children back in the ranks and encouraging them to care about their future.
Great post.