13 April 2008

The consequences of educational failure

A couple of weeks ago, it was reported that the largest 50 school districts and 17 large cities in the US have extremely low high school graduation rates. Some like Detroit as low as 50%. Obama won't talk about it, but I will. There are more than enough stupid, uneducated white people to go around the earth several times. But in the US, the fault of these statistics lies squarely at the door of black people. I won't call them 'African-Americans' because I've met Africans, they have dignity, intelligence, and big hearts.

When I was in college back in the late 70s and early 80s, we had African students at our university. They spoke the Queen's English and often were the top students in many classes. They weren't superior, they just did what students should do: study.

But black culture in America never valued education. Blacks have mastered and conquered everything they've set out to do in history. Look at art, music, and sports in the past century. Imagine what they could accomplish if they set education as a necessary goal for their lives!

I started school in Arkansas in the 1960s when its schools were beginning to desegregate. In prison, many, many inmates are black. And those are predominantly young, violent, and stupid — a deadly combination for any human, much less an entire race. But since the 1970s, white students have fled the cities for the suburbs, have fled public schools in favor of private schools, and have consistently moved out of neighborhoods where blacks moved in. No good ever comes from black people. The schools and their "average" test scores plummet, cities experience more crime, and housing/property values steadily drop the more blacks saturate a part of town.

Think Chris Rock's comedy routine back in 2001 where he contrasted black people with niggas. "Every time black folks want to have some fun, some nigga has always got to fuck it up!"

That's pretty much where white people have been all along, to this day. Obama doesn't address this when he talks about his 'white grandma' and the 'typical white person.' Obama don't know shit. He's never held a job in his life. He grew up in a life of wealth and privilege (in Indonesia as a kid, he lived in the US Embassy, in Africa, his family was the richest in town, and the rest of his childhood was spent in Hawaii, not Mississippi). He later went to Harvard, for which he paid in cash, and from there, straight into a law firm job, and straight into the state legislature, and immediately thereafter a Senate seat in his early 40s. Obama has not and will not address the problems that black people face and sustain in their communities. Murder, drugs, and producing out-of-wedlock children are central black life. It's as if they expect to go to jail, and until they do, they don't have credibility among their peers.

How fucked up is that?

What black people need to know is this one thing: white folks like black people, but hate niggers. You know the difference. So do we. It ain't racism, just truth.