A Letter to My Elder(s)

I wrote this e-mail to a gentleman who I met in this last year who shows a genuine interest in alleviating some of the problems of the black community. Most importantly, he is interested in ending the cycle in which the black youth are encapsulated. I wrote this to him as a response to something we (Black Men of Lawrence) were discussing only the night before. I was writing it, and it blew-up into something very important, but unexpected. So, I'm offering it to you here:

I wanted to e-mail you about what was being discussed last night at the black men of lawrence gathering. Mostly, I wanted to discuss the education thing. Derrais and myself were discussing what your associate was saying about the youth and we agreed that a drastic difference between your generation (or at least his) and our generation is that the black community had more control over the school system. One of the greatest sacrifices that black people made to facilitate integration was selling their children to the machinations of a white dominated educational system. Rather than the school board having to answer to a black majority, the schools now have to answer to a white majority. The white majority never did--and still doesn't--care about or desire their children to learn black history. Derrais and my experiences both attest to that reality. I would assume that it is no better anywhere else in the midwest, and probably worse as you approach inner-city schools that are controlled more directly by the state. I think that No-Child-Left-Behind is a part of that. By having a federal program that decides what kinds of information a student must know in order for the school to be accredited, the schools are pressured even more to ensure that the black students assimilate. Since the black students are not interested in assimilation, drop out rates are only more likely to increase.
I asked Derrais how much black history he had in his youth, and it appears to me that if you asked all of the more advanced black students to find a commonality that explains their status as academics in contrast to their dropped-out counterparts, you'd probably find that most of us had parents that were engaged in our education. Furthermore, and most importantly, they taught us black history where the school system didn't. I contend that, either it is job of the black community to demand that some alternate history and racially respectful curriculum be added in the school systems--or at least the black community provide that black history base to their pre-pubescent child's home life.
I think an important way of developing the black youth, would be to create a short book list of "must-reads." A list of books that will give black children the kind of background that they need to love themselves and respect what they are learning. The only book that I'm certain of is the Autobiography of Malcolm X, which should probably be read during the middle school generation. I think that a brief black inventors book should be a part of the elementary school period. Also in high school should be the alternative history of the United States, such as Howard Zinn's People's History or something along those lines.
To me it seems that black youth fail to embrace education because it is white washed. They teach that the Greeks invented math, science, and philosophy. They teach that everything of value in our lives is white. I guarantee you that no more than 1% of black youth know that math, science, and philosophy was originally taught to Greeks by Africans. Even fewer think of Egyptians as black--because they are consistently presented as white. Astronomy is just as African as it is European. They don't teach that the Mayan calendar included eclipses--which means that astronomy existed in the "New World" at least a 1000 years before Columbus. The school system is denigrating towards minoritized histories. Whiteness is treated as fact, and imperative. Black youth have nothing to love about themselves, and even less to love about a school system that teaches that for white students but not black students.

Think of it this way. How do white people learn their identities? How do black people learn their identities? White people learn it everywhere, and all the time. Black people have to search for it. If black people are inundated with sensory information that tells them that the nature of blackness--authentic blackness--is criminality, ignorance, and irrelevance, and no one is correcting that sensory information, then it should be no surprise that the black youth are on the purely survivalist level. Why should they develop beyond that; they've been told their whole lives that they should aspire to nothing more than survival.

As I said in my last e-mail. Black people have all of the skills necessary for success, it is merely misplaced energy. When black people are doing for self, you can see the abundance of talent, focus, determination, dedication, and discipline that we all inherently have. When black people feel like they're not benefiting from their efforts--like white-washed schools--you can literally watch their energy turn from enthusiasm to exasperation. Then, when they are punished for their disinterest--because the whole of society tells them they should be interested in whatever it is that white society is inundating them with--they are traumatized.

My generation is only one generation removed from social revolution. Our heroes are at most ten years removed from the Civil Rights Movement. We only know the aftermath of those efforts. What black people really need is to take a cold look at the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement and see how much has changed. I can say, and see, that while the laws have changed, little else has. Even the laws are getting reversed--into de facto forms of archaic Jim-Crowism.

Watch the supreme court decisions in regards to integration, affirmative action, and civil rights legislation. Ask yourselves, how much of Martin Luther King's work is sticking around? School integration? White flight fixed that, and the supreme court is ending it now. Affirmative Action? George Bush and congress have taken care of that--but the supreme court got first bite. Civil Rights legislation...such as the Voting Rights Act? How many of us actually vote? Not enough to matter as a political block. Our voting has been destroyed by gerrymandering, gentrification, the electoral college, and direct bigotry. To my generation, we don't see the glories of the Civil Rights Movement. To us, it was nothing more than a failed black unity movement...cause we don't even have unity.

My point is, your generation saw it all. You saw the good, ran with it, and in-between all of your success--the rest of us slipped through the cracks. While the black middle class rose, the black lower class fell. The black youth that you are concerned with are not (necessarily) the children of the black middle class. They are the children of the people who DID NOT benefit from the Civil Rights Movement. They are the second generation of integration losers. Our grandparents were farmers, and ghetto residents. We felt the sting of the neo-conservative movement; and the bitter loss to the neo-liberalist movement. While the black middle class shakes their head at the losses and changes. The black lower-class is racing through the ghettos keening with their guns, tears streaming down their hardened faces, wondering where hope went.

I'm sending you a set of song lyrics attached to this e-mail. It's a song by the Hiphop group Dead Prez. The song is titled "They Schools." It's uncensored because I think it's important to our understanding of their perspective. I honestly don't think that any of the black youth comprehend their problem on the level of Dead Prez--many of them probably FEEL that, but are incapable of comprehending or articulating what's wrong in their world. I'm also giving you a link to something I wrote called the "Black Student's Manifesto." I wrote it a while ago when a childhood friend of mine insinuated to another friend of mine that being an AAAS major was anything but worthwhile. It only speaks to the idea of black identity. Hopefully some of this helps to make sense of the perspective and problem of black youth today. It's no easy task that you're pursuing. You're not only battling against the hardened hearts of black youth, but in order for you to reach them at all, you must be willing to put up a fight against the white majority who might be the foundation of your income. To win this fight, you must have a healthy fear of the battle.

Black Student's Manifesto

I hope this wasn't too long. I wasn't thinking very linear. But I hope it helps some. I'll drop by your office sometime next week.

Chris