Our Children Deserve More

There was a time when education was valued among African Americans. As a matter of fact, it was so valued that one of the professions most saught after and revered was teaching. As Africans were released from forced labor in America's South, it was imperative that they learned to communicate and function within this society they found themselves stranded in. There is a perception propogated in mainstream culture that African Americans have gone from the pursuit of education to an utter disregard and disrespect for knowledge.

School adminstrators and law makers support their prejudices by institutionalizing their racist perception by disciplining African American students more severely than other children. In the article, "Breaking the School-to-Prison Pipeline," African American students are disporpotionately affected by the policies and practices that support their suspension and expulsion at a rate of three times the rate of white students.

As an educator, I am increasingly alarmed at the propensity for young people to embrace a culture of rebellion--of the self-destructive variety. It is no surprise that they reject standard English because it is "white" and devoid of the cadence and creativity that colors their vernacular. I hardly blame African American youth for smirking and slouching in their seats as the teacher tells them the lies so prevelent in the history books.

The young people should not be left to teach themselves. The school system, as it is, certainly is not going to give them any knowledge of self or understanding. It is up to the community of African Americans--whoever is functioning on a conscious level--to share the knowledge of ancestors that survived the maafa, shirked the yolk of physical and mental oppression, and gave the world a true understanding of what it is to be humane.

People like Frederick Douglass are examples of what we can do with nothing, but most young people never really think about what he did or was able to accomplish--for you hard core revolutionaries, I'm not so concerned about his marriage to a white woman as much as I am astounded that he could teach himself to read. Fannie Lou Hammer is a woman I adore. She was pure determination with a willingness to lay down her life for what she believed. I don't know anybody in my immediate circle who possesses those attributes. There are so many other well read, well spoken and generally good people among African Americans who our young people should look up to.

The children have been left in the care of strangers and institutions. Those strangers have shown themselves incapable of giving our children what they need--love, respect, compassion, affirmation. The strangers prefer to take our children and throw them into the prison complex where they are once again enslaved.

Our greatest natural resource are our minds. We cannot sit idly by while our children and their minds go down the school-to-prison sewer.