ARE BLACK NEW YORKERS LOSING THE WAR AGAINST 50-YEAR TIDE
OF EDUCATIONAL GENOCIDE?
By S. E. Anderson (written in 2004 and published in Our Time Press)
Fifty years after the
powerful impact of a combined legal strategy and activism across Black
America that brought forth the Brown victory, we are worse off. The US
political and economic system found ways to absorb our militancy and
reformist demands because we– for the most part –wanted in to this
rotten–by–nature system.
In the South, our Black-run schools were allowed to be dismantled…
and most of our wonderful Black teachers wound up not teaching our
children. In the North, white flight from the cities were the order of
the day and we– for the most part– were uncritical of what and how our
children were being taught by racist white teachers until… the rise of
the Civil Rights/Black Power era of the 1960’s. It is in this era of
the 60’s and 70’s that we dreamed of and struggled for POWER. Today, we
need to rekindle that righteous fire to dream of and struggle for
POWER. Especially the POWER to develop our children’s minds to be
proudfully Black; to be inquisitive and critical thinkers; to embrace
science and math….
…But today, if we randomly chose 100 eager wide-eyed Black
kindergarten children from throughout the five boroughs entering Mayor
Bloomberg’s “public” educational system, they have less of a chance of
graduating from high school and going to college and graduating than
their grand parents and great–grands did back in 1954 when the US
Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional.
In fact, given the present quality of education provided for our
children, this is what is happening and will most likely happen to
them:
• Out of the 100 kindergarteners, only 40 will make it through to the 9th grade to high school––
• Out of the 40 who made it to high school only about 15 or 16 will graduate from high school––
• Out of the 15 or 16 who will be high school graduates, at most 6 will go on to college––-
• Out of the 6 who will go on to college at best 3 will graduate
from a four–year college… and only 1 of them will be a Black man–– What
happens to the 97 young Black men and women who never graduate from
college?
We know only too well. Just walk down our neighborhood streets any
workday afternoon and look at who’s hanging out. Just visit Riker’s
Island… or any of NY’s prisons anytime. Just look at who’s behind the
Burger King, KFC and McDonald’s counters for slave wages. Just look at
who is getting killed in Iraq and other US imperial war zones of the
world. It would be a horrendous criminal situation if we are only
talking about 100 young Black men and women. But we are talking about
witnessing tens of thousands of kindergarten-aged beautiful,
inquisitive Black children being sent into these anti–education centers
to be transformed into intellectual zombies destined to be bling–bling
consumers, prisoners and warriors protecting white supremacists’ wealth
in the name of “Democracy.
We are also talking about us Black adults complying with these
terrible institutional acts to render our children 21st century slaves.
At the start of the 2004–05 school year we, African-American adult
citizens of New York City, are allowing nearly 36,000 5 to 7–year-old
Black children to enter the first stages of educational genocide, the
systematic institutional miseducation of African- American, Latino and
Asian youth based on the racist assumptions and policies of white
supremacy that are embedded within the very structures of the US
educational system. Let’s never forget that some 520,000 elementary and
secondary Black children are also being subjected to this educational
genocide policy.
This institutional mis–education process renders our children and
our future “superfluous” (useless) to the needs of capitalism and white
supremacy. At the start of the school year, we eagerly look forward to
seeing our children go into these buildings of Education Hell.
Sometimes we smile. Sometimes they smile or cry. We cry with pride
& joy and with an undying assumption that our sons and daughters
will learn and grow into prosperous men and women. We hope beyond hope
that their experiences will be better than what happened to us.
Many of us either deny the horrors we see right in front of us or
have fallen under the white supremacist spell that this is the best we
can do because of our limited intellectual capacities. But since 1954,
the reality is monstrously opposite of our dreams. For out of the
36,000 beautiful, bright Black tots happily skipping or tearfully being
torn from moms or pops on that first day of school, 31,000 will end up
with miserable lives of dropouts: jail, death, drug addiction,
hustling, prostitution, teenage moms with no support, AIDS, dead–end
jobs…. If we allow school year 2004–05 to go on as business as usual.
Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence (BNYEE)
is here to say that we don’t have to have “business as usual” with
Bloomberg and Klein cranking up their educational genocide machine
preparing to transform our children’s brilliance into madness and
criminal self–centeredness. BNYEE
– Black men and women who are educators, parents and students – is here
to take a stand and organize to regain community control of public
schools so as to implement a curriculum that stimulates intellectual
growth, critical thinking, scientific & technological knowledge,
Black pride and respect for community.
BNYEE is prepared to go
into every corner of the Black community to help build a mass movement
to not only combat educational genocide currently operating within the
public school systems, but we are also prepared to implement a totally
different, more egalitarian, educational system where parents and
students have a direct and equal say (as do the teachers and
administrators) in the day–to–day operations of schools and the entire
system.
BNYEE is a fighting
organization. We know that this $12–14 billion/year educational system
is run by ruthless men and women primarily concerned with making a
profit and maintaining the criminalization and dumbing–down process of
Black and Latino children. They are not going to give up their control
through moral suasion and nice negotiations.
They have a “white supremacist” mandate to carry out… and have the
backing from the governor, the US president and Congress through all
kinds of racist and criminal policies including the No Child Left
Behind Act that’s leaving our children behind at faster and faster
rates than back in 1954.
A half–century after Brown v. Board’s promise
of Black freedom and equality, we now have the possibility to unite and
confront the educational genocide currently ravaging Black America in
general and New York City in particular. BNYEE
is just a local representation that is growing across Black America:
organized resistance and struggle for education and liberation. It is
ONLY You and I reading this that can fight to make this Black Freedom
Promise a Reality.
BNYEE invites you to join
us in this righteous work to bring educational excellence to our
children. For information about our next meeting and actions please
call: 212.252.2997. <www.freewebs.com/bnyee>
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