You’re Almost Right: Positives of Segregated Schools

Historically, in discussions about integrating schools in the United States, there typically has been an assumption that black students are only gaining when they leave black schools, located in black communities, with black peers, black teachers, and black administrators. The reasoning goes like this: black folks don’t have anything of value (historically, collectively, institutionally, economically, intellectually, religiously, culturally, even individually), and white folks have all that is valuable (across all the previous categories, and even white folks’ toilets have been held up as preferable in the United States), so integration can only benefit black children and black people. The rhetorical question arises “what could black children and black people have at risk by integrating into white schools?” (notice that integration is framed as black folks coming over to be with white folks, not the other way around)

As archaic as this may appear to some, it is very much a current way of thinking about integration. This weekend’s Opinion Pages of the New York Times provides evidence of how current the mindset is. The author of this article, David L. Kirp, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Overall, I liked his article. I left his article with the impression that he is for justice and, though he is a white male, I have no reason to conclude from his writing that he is a racist white male. But what his writing does make clear to me is how deeply engrained the assumption is that integration is a no-brainer, good for black children and for black people. As a matter of fact, all these years later, this assumption even seems to have a dataset to support it. As Kirp states, “The experience of an integrated education made all the difference in the lives of black children — and in the lives of their children as well. These economists’ studies consistently conclude that African-American students who attended integrated schools fared better academically than those left behind in segregated schools.” Sounds good right? But the problem with this statement (Kirp concedes my point later in the article) is that this does not provide and apple-to-apple comparison between two equal schools. W.E.B. Dubois wrote about this problem in 1935:

“Today, when the negro public school system gets from half to one-tenth of the amount of money spent on white schools, and is often consequently poorly run and poorly taught, colored people tacitly if not openly join with white people in assuming that Negroes cannot run Negro enterprises, and cannot educate themselves, and that the very establishment of a Negro school means starting an inferior school.”

So Kirp, as a white man, is far from alone as he makes this assumption. Many blacks have, and may yet have, this assumption.

American society, including government, has historically been racist (and still is) which means that black schools, located in black communities, serving black human beings, have been divested of power and the goods that power carries with it. One good of power is economic capacity. Black schools, in black communities, had limited economic capacity, if any, in some cases during segregation. This does not mean that black teachers were not excellent, that black students had diminished academic capacity, or that black administrators were incompetent. It means we will never really know how great (or pitiful) black segregated schools could have been at producing outstanding students.

We do have some indication though. In So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistance of Failure in Urban Schools, Charles Payne, professor in the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, writes “The South, through the first half of the twentieth century, generally spent on the education of Black children about one-third what it spent on whites.” But don’t think that my native South is the only culprit. In Boston, Chicago, New York and out West, black schools, and the black communities in which they were located, were not given access to the same economic capacity as white schools. Despite the economic limitations within which black, segregated schools operated, Payne concludes that our schools were characterized as having teachers who had “a broad interest in children, in their character, and in their future.” Teachers had “a sense of mission, [there was] a moral compact between children and teachers. Children felt pressure to succeed; whether or not they [were] going to take school seriously [was] a choice that [was] made for them by adults. They felt pushed cognitively and socially.”

So at least some black, segregated schools were doing good work with black students, even in divestment. What would investment in black schools have resulted in?

This same apple-to-orange argument applies to more modern schools characterized by re-segregation, the kind of segregation that Kirp is against. Because American society is still racist, though in far more nuanced ways than in previous eras, when black schools and white schools are compared, it is not a “straight up” comparison. Charles Payne discusses in detail the culture, practices, and most importantly, some contextual factors that characterize many current black schools in the US. It ain’t Kansas, Dot. For me, the thing that really shows the racism in American society is that black schools (aka “urban schools”) get the chance to become what many of them have become. For example, there is no justification for my high school, Goldsboro High School (Goldsboro, NC), to be at the bottom of the barrel. My community watched my school plummet to the bottom over years and years of mismanagement, neglect, and racist practices. I suspect that my black high school’s story is similar to other black high schools across America. Ignorant black folks had a hand in the decline of my high school (I am hopeful that a better day is in progress), but somehow, these ignorant black folks never got a chance to screw up the white schools in my hometown. It simply wasn’t tolerated. Therein lies the difference: you can say all you want about today’s black schools being “bad,” but it never happens overnight. Somebody has to LET it happen. This never seems to happen with white schools though, no matter the color of the parents, teachers, or administrators.

Returning to the article, two lines of Kirp’s piece really got to me:

“For these youngsters, the advent of integration transformed the experience of going to school. By itself, racial mixing didn’t do the trick, but it did mean that the fate of black and white students became intertwined. School systems that had spent a pittance on all-black schools were now obliged to invest considerably more on  African-American students’ education after the schools became integrated. Their classes were smaller and better equipped. They included children from better-off families, a factor that the landmark 1966 Equality of Educational Opportunity study had shown to make a significant difference in academic success. What’s more, their teachers and parents held them to higher expectations. That’s what shifted the arc of their lives.“

Historically, black folks have held high expectations for our children, especially when it comes to education. We have more recently had a decline in adherence to this tradition, but I would place that change around the 1980s and later, given the systemic effects of illegal drugs that were introduced to many black communities. Black folks are individuals, but generally this is true.

As Kirp continues, he expresses great confidence in integration’s promise for “making schools work.” I think he’s almost right. To the extent that integration gives black children access to what they always have had a right to as American citizens, I agree. It works. Educationally, all that black children and black folks ever needed was the proper preparation for entering school, the proper environment at school, the proper resources, and ready teachers. I am convinced that black students can do as well as they have done since integration, or better, even in black, segregated schools, as long as these schools are not divested of what white schools have and have always had.

Integrated schools are not automatically better for black children. In fact, history tells us that integration can harm black children. Malcolm X rightly spoke of how unwise it is for black folks to make those who behave as our enemies into the teachers of our children. W.E.B. Dubois, long before the 1950s, warned against a blanket assumption that integration is good for black children and black people:

“It is difficult to think of anything more important for the development of a people than proper training for their children; and yet I have repeatedly seen wise and loving colored parents take infinite pains to force their little children into schools where the white children, white teachers, and white parents despised and resented the dark child, made mock of it, neglected or bullied it, and literally rendered its life a living hell. Such parents want their child to “fight” this thing out,-but, dear God, at what a cost! Sometimes, to be sure, the child triumphs and teaches the school community a lesson; but even in such cases, the cost may be high, and the child’s whole life turned into an effort to win cheap applause at the expense of healthy individuality. In other cases, the result of the experiment may be complete ruin of character, gift, and ability and ingrained hatred of schools and men. For the kind of battle thus indicated, most children are under no circumstances suited. It is the refinement of cruelty to require it of them. Therefore, in evaluating the advantage and disadvantage of accepting race hatred as a brutal but real fact, or of using a little child as a battering ram upon which its nastiness can be thrust, we must give greater value and greater emphasis to the rights of the child’s own soul. We shall get a finer, better balance of spirit; an infinitely more capable and rounded personality by putting children in schools where they are wanted, and where they are happy and inspired, than in thrusting them into hells where they are ridiculed and hated.”

This brings me to the positives of segregated schools. William Edward Burghardt Dubois writes about some positives of segregated schools in a 1935 article titled “Does the Negro need Separate Schools?” (source for all previous Dubois quotes) Dubois writes,

“We have got to accept Negro schools. Any agitation and action aimed at compelling a rich and powerful majority of the citizens to do what they will not do, is useless….the futile attempt to compel even by law a group to do what it is determined not to do, is a silly waste of money, time, and temper.”

So one positive of segregated schools for black students, then and now, is to get on with the proper education of black children when attempts to do so through integration is not resulting in a proper education or a suitable environment for education. Those who are familiar with culturally responsive teaching practices are well aware that not all school environments in 2012 are hospitable for teaching black children and that some environments will not be required to change into one that is. They are allowed to be what they are. If I knew that about a school, I would not send my own children to such a school.

Dubois writes further,

“To endure bad schools and wrong education because the schools are “mixed” is a costly if not fatal mistake. I have long been convinced, for instance, that the Negroes in the public schools of Harlem are not getting an education that is in any sense comparable in efficiency, discipline, and human development with that which Negroes are getting in the separate public schools of Washington, D.C. And yet on its school situation, black Harlem is dumb and complacent, if not actually laudatory.”

Another positive of segregated black schools, then and now, when they are done well, is that it undermines faith in white supremacy. Dubois writes,

“If Negroes could conceive that Negroes could establish schools quite as good as or even superior to white schools; if Negro colleges were of equal grade in accomplishment and in scientific work with white colleges; then separation would be a passing incident and not a permanent evil; but as long as American Negroes believe that their race is constitutionally and permanently inferior to white people, they necessarily disbelieve in every possible Negro Institution.”

Thirdly, a positive of black segregated schools is the forced recognition that segregation and discrimination exist. We, in America, especially in the era of Obama, would much rather perpetuate a post racial, a-systemic, ahistorical lens of our society. Dubois could have written the following this weekend in the Times:

“There can be no doubt that if the Supreme Court were overwhelmed with cases where the blatant and impudent discrimination against Negro education is openly acknowledged, it would be compelled to hand down decisions which would make this discrimination impossible. We Negroes do not dare to press this point and force these decisions because, forsooth, it would acknowledge the fact of separate schools, a fact that does not need to be acknowledged, and will not need to be for two centuries.”

A final positive of black segregated schools is that, unfortunately (although clearly not automatically), black schools are more likely than integrated schools to nurture the cultural linkages of black students, to acknowledge the contextual realities faced by black folks in America, and to see the full humanity of black children in the process of teaching and learning in 2012. There are cases to the contrary, where black schools are less intentional than integrated schools about these aspects of student development, but these cases are exceptions. That’s a tough pill to swallow in 2012, but swallow it you must. Of course, there is an historical progression into our current state. Dubois writes,

“Negroes must know the history of the Negro race in America, and this they will seldom get in white institutions. Their children ought to study textbooks like Brawley’s “Short History,” the first edition of Woodson’s “Negro in Our History,” and Cromwell, Turner and Dykes’ “Readings from Negro Authors.” Negroes who celebrate the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln, and the worthy, but colorless and relatively unimportant “founders” of various Negro colleges, ought not to forget the 5th of March,—that first national holiday of this country, which commemorates the martyrdom of Crispus Attucks. They ought to celebrate Negro Health Week and Negro History Week. They ought to study intelligently from their own point of view, the slave trade, slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, and present economic development.
Beyond this, Negro colleges ought to be studying anthropology, psychology, and the social sciences from the point of view of the colored races.”

Integrated schools can be good or bad for black students. I agree that integration is one way to make schools work. I’m convinced, however, that a better way to make schools work is to challenge and divest racist practices throughout American society, for power to be taken from elites and entrusted with the people, and for wealth to follow such a transformed power structure. If this happens, we will have no problem with integrating schools. A broader band of schools will become “good schools” and the few schools that may yet perform poorly will be a much more manageable challenge to overcome. If I am wrong, and whites still don’t want to go to school with black folk in such a transformed power structure, fine. Go your way as we continue to educate our children. I’m confident that we can nurture our black students into the best performing humans on the planet.

Post Script: May 25, 2012  1:16 pm

Since posting this article, I have discovered a data set that I interpret as giving some evidence of the nuance that I claim exists today around racism and race in America and some historical, communal ground for my presented position. Unfortunately, the data ends before the 1980s, but it indicates a trend. This data is from the American National Election Studies and asks a simple question:

“Are you in favor of desegregation, strict segregation, or something in between?” 

I interpret the rise in “in between” as a selected response (note the decline in “desegregation” as a selected response for all participants and the near disappearance of “segregation” as a selected response for all participants) as the nuancing of actual racial sentiment among whites and a move away from integration among blacks (see respondent break down). Also among blacks, I interpret the decline in “desegregation” as a selected response as further evidence of a move away from a desire for integration (see respondent break down). I base my interpretation on this data set and on qualitative accounts of American history during this period.

The qualitative data indicates why integration may not have been as desirable as it once was among black folks leading up to the 1980s: white, racist practices continued (increased in some ways?) in integration and integration did not result in the mutual regard of whites for the shared, equal humanity of black persons.

Do you have a different interpretation?

College and Career Ready: Lesson from the Penn State Scandal

Question: What does Joe Paterno have to do with the Common Core State Standards? The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were created to ensure that American Education, state-by-state, reliably prepares students who are college or career ready. Why was this common standard developed? Because community colleges and universities, along with the business sector, concluded that the students who were making it to college were unprepared to be there. There are many examples that could be held up to illustrate the questionable level of preparation that students possess when they enter and matriculate in our colleges and universities, but here’s an example that you probably weren’t expecting: the Penn State Scandal.

Last night, a significant number of Penn State students, before the national and global press, mobbed the campus of Penn State; wildly decrying the firing of celebrated and loved football coach Joe Paterno. It was clear that the firing of the Penn State coach, amid allegations that he did not do enough to alert police about the actions of his retired assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, who was caught in the act of child molestation on several occasions across several years, was not acceptable to these college educated students. But I’m wondering why? Sure, it is not clear that “Joe Pa” knew about all the incidents, but he was told about at least one incident, which he only reported to university administration, with no follow up. It’s obvious that these rambunctious Penn State students lacked the capacity to make a critical judgment about how to position themselves when faced with the choice of decrying unreported child molestation or decrying the firing of a culpable sports coach. But, not only have some Penn State students demonstrated a lack of sophisticated, informed, critical thinking, the Penn State university administrators, the educational leaders, acted as if protecting athletics outweighed the protection of adolescents.¹ They did nothing short of criminal behavior by sweeping under the rug the repeated acts of a pedophile. This is madness and all of this has happened on a campus that was hailed in 2010 by the Wall Street Journal as a “top ranking” university for corporate recruiters! ²  Until this scandal, Penn State may have been regarded as a model of college and career readiness, where impressive high school graduates entered, matriculated, and were recruited for corporate careers, but that cannot be the case now. On last evening, it became clear to me that these Penn State students were neither college, nor career ready.

This is a lesson from the Penn State Scandal: primary education, secondary education, and collegiate education in America has not prepared many of our students and professionals to be critically thoughtful and principled persons academically, morally, or behaviorally. Whether or not the CCSS, and the implementation of these common standards, state-by-state, can reduce or eliminate the number of high school graduates who are unprepared for college or career remains to be seen. I sincerely hope that it can.

Without question Joe Paterno was a successful football coach, having achieved one of the most impressive college football records in the nation. But his success, due to his own poor choice, is not “success with honor.” Unfortunately, his kind of success, success without honor, is much like that of our current system of education in America.

Endnotes:
¹ I should note that even members of the press conference that was held to announce Paterno’s firing reacted negatively to the decision of the Penn State University Board.

² Penn State Tops Recruiter Rankings, September 2010
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704358904575477643369663352.html

Puff Down: You’ll Get Used to It

So, how does it feel to be a problem? Of course WEB Dubois was talking about being black in America, but I’m asking “whites” this question today. How does it feel when who you are is a problem? In this past Monday’s New York Times, college admissions and how to select one’s race was the issue. Whiteness, once a sure ticket to benefits, is now a problem for college applicants. Now students are passing for non-white in any way that they can. My favorite was the one about the French great-grandfather born in Algeria, who’s drop of blood might make the college applicant’s family black. Somewhere, beyond space and time, Nat Turner is amazed. We should be too. The cost of identifying as black, or even as non-white, has been high in America and on planet Earth. Blackness (or non-whiteness) should not be conveniently used as a commodity. But because Americans tend to value what we want more than who we are, that’s exactly what is happening in order to get into college.

This brings me to the first real issue that this article gives us a chance to think through: do we even care about the foundation of identity anymore? It seems that we do not. The leading subject of the article is a high school graduate born to a black dad and an Asian mom. In the article, she admits that prior to her college application, she had never even really thought about her ethnic identity, much less how it is abbreviated by “race.” I’m saddened to read that she got through 13 years of “education,” family holidays, and her family’s reunions without having it raised with some serious opportunities for reflection. Equipping youth and young adults to identify themselves, and to identify with themselves, is of basic developmental necessity and of basic practical necessity.

But now that her college aspirations are in the balance, she is thinking about her race, and  she has opted to identify herself in the manner most convenient for what she wants: she is black. No wrestle with history, no embrace of culture, no conscientious commitments to self or others, just a box check and she’s black. As one who leads black boys into clearer and deeper understandings of what it means to be black and male, I find her mode of identifying herself too simplistic and I see no signs that she has identified with herself. Hopefully, when she attends college, her professors will double back to this missed opportunity and guide her into a critical understanding of herself, her story, and ultimately her identity. (I can hear some of the college professors I know thinking, “yeah right.”)

The second real issue of this article is the engineered concept of “race.” Race is only real because we have been conditioned to think according to that lens. The concept of race was created and used (especially by government) to mark non-whites as “other than white” and thereby clear a space for “whites” to enjoy exclusively the privileges and benefits that they concluded should belong to them. Now that the privilege of whiteness is becoming eroded, in various ways, those who are beginning to experience what non-whites have always experienced in America, are unsettled. For example, remember when Obama was elected and people started saying, “I want my America back!” How about this one: boycott the movie Thor because the actor playing the norse god is black. Another sign of distress is the fact that some are seeking ways to maintain the status that they have grown accustomed to. Note how the “multiracial” category has exploded in college admissions. Did I miss an outbreak of Jungle Fever?

In these specific situations, and in general, I say welcome to the real world folks! Your white fantasy is over, and those who opted to plug into the white fantasy are rethinking that choice because it’s not panning out for them the way it was designed to. From college admissions to characters on the big screen, white just ain’t as important as it used to be and it doesn’t get the advantages it used to. Does that mean non-whites should pop bottles and celebrate our arrival? No. Whiteness is still pretty powerful in America, so don’t enter an alternative fantasy. Does that mean that we replace “whites” with another privileged “race”? No. It means that we can begin to really settle in to the truth: all humans are valuable and all ethnicities have a history and a culture that contributes to our collective good. Puffing down (shout out to Prof. Boykin Sanders), after you’ve grown accustomed to being puffed up, is a difficult, even painful journey. But it’s apart of becoming a well-adjusted, mature human being. The sooner one begins that journey; the better off one is in the long run.

Keep Thinking

Richard Brodhead and Randall Robinson

Yesterday afternoon at Duke Chapel, the university held it’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemoration. Attending this event afforded me several firsts. This was my first time participating in this Duke event, this was my first time being inside Duke Chapel, and it was also my first time hearing Duke president Richard Brodhead and social justice advocate Randall Robinson speak. On almost all these firsts, I left feeling impressed.

The celebration service was wonderful. It featured African percussionists and dancers, a 100 Men in Black Choir (it was a few men short of 100 voices, but sounded as rich and as precise as their name), and program participants, ready with ideas, that were worthy of the occasion. Duke Chapel was an humbling beauty that inspires worship and acoustically takes your breath away. I sat near the front on the side near the lectern (I’m sure there is a proper name for this raised, protruding speaker space in the chapel) and had the pleasure of sitting behind William C. Turner, a fellow member of the United Holy Church of America, professor at Duke, and pastor of Mt. Level Baptist Church in Durham. It is always good to see him anywhere we meet.

The Chapel and the Commemoration itself were impressive. Then came greetings from Richard Brodhead. He was obviously informed about history, Dr. King’s life, and specifics that were relevant to our time as we celebrate Dr. King. But as I listened, and Dr. Turner helped me name what I noted, there was a consistent theme of then vs. now. At first it slips by the listener, but as you followed his remarks, it became clear that for Dr. Brodhead, what he was recounting was indeed history. He spoke in contrasts between Dr. King’s day when skin color and opportunities were inextricably linked, and our time when that is no longer the case, thanks to Dr. King and others, as he was sure to say. At last it was clear, from his perspective we have made it over. Although he did not say that the work of Dr. King was over, has contrasts indicated it well enough for me to conclude that evidently he reasoned that the progress made from then to now was progress enough to distance ourselves from Dr. King’s civil rights world. With this particular first, I was not impressed, but neither was I surprised.

Later came the keynote from Randall Robinson. He began by stating that his address would be about “what has not been done and what has not been remarked.” Impressive. From there Robinson wove a tapestry of what it means to be educated rather than trained, demonstrated how close but concealed education was in his own young life in the form of phrases like “from here to Timbuktu” and even in the very yearbook of his high school “The Rabza,” and made close connections between the past and the present. He eliminated perceived historical distances. He punctuated his re-education curriculum list with, “…but nobody told me.” He went on to describe several other things that go untold to black Americans, such as the story behind the Queen of Sheba, the primacy of Ethiopia in Christian history, the significance of Haiti to the history of the Western Hemisphere, and other critical truths that are unspoken and unknown to many African Americans. I was impressed. Though he did not spend much time referencing Dr. King, he did show clearly how close we remain to Dr. King’s time and how much work remains undone. Yes, we have accomplished much (Brodhead claimed that there is no department at Duke University where African Americans are not integral or leading), but the basic system of white supremacy remains in tact and many African Americans remain mis-educated.

To back track a bit, as I entered, took my seat and looked around in Duke Chapel, I couldn’t help but think quietly to myself about how convenient it was for black folk to be welcomed into Duke’s marvelous facilities for this occassion, but how inconvenient it would be to invite black folks to share in Duke’s economic advantages, gained so long ago with the labor of black folks. I was impressed by the fact that Robinson voiced the same thinking later in his address, though not directly to Duke University, as he clearly explained the rationality of reparations. No one present could claim that they did not understand how it is reasonable to compensate the people who created the wealth of this country, but had no share in the wealth created. Further, there is precedence for compensating wronged groups of people in the US and internationally.

I was impressed by all my firsts, except hearing Brodhead speak. He meant well and I credit him for his earnest effort, but his analysis was too easy, too simple, and too distant from what is and what has been. I look forward to other opportunities to participate in Duke events, but will be careful about being lured into thinking that “I’ve arrived” when I do.

You’re Here!

Welcome. Since this blog is about what’s on my mind, this is going to be very interesting.

Stay tuned.