Barb honey, i do understand. Remember we are talking about NOW...and how about we narrow it down from the 80's on
That generation, and i would assume 2 or more by now, have NO excuses. You cant continually blame your state of being on the past and FAR past. At some point you have to take responsibility for yourself.
Public school is what you make of it. Do you really think that today's blacks are doing well in school or that their parents care one bit if they succeed? I never had after school programs so that is not an excuse. All teachers must be accredited to teach.
Blacks are not the only ones working while attending college. Not every white person in this world is rich. Its all about the willingness to WORK to get ahead in the world.
To tell you the truth Barb, yes blacks had a GREATER opportunity for everything as i grew up. They had a grater chance for top choice of every program simply because they are black.
The fucked up part is that the blacks didnt/dont HAVE to get good grades to apply to the best of everything. All they need to do is apply themselves and take responsibility for their lives. Get the hell of welfare and entitlement programs get an education and get a job.
Chapter 11: Discrimination in Education
In considering discrimination, racism, and prejudice, it is important to come to a clearly understood definition of terms. Prejudiced people may or may not discriminate, and discrimination does not necessarily imply the existence of racism. Discrimination can be passive or unconscious, and prejudice can remain un-acted upon, but when the two come together in a purposeful way, they produce active racism. The relevancy standard partially defines racism as discrimination based on irrelevant criteria.
In employment, aptitude tests were found to be a discriminatory tool used to cover racist employment practices.
In housing, redlining black and Hispanic people out of white communities trapped them in inferior housing and degraded neighborhoods. In past chapters we have seen that wealthier neighborhoods have better public transportation, roads, police protections, schools, grocery stores, and hospitals. The construction and maintenance of low rent housing is deficient, and in many cases, the environment is degraded. If only a few widely dispersed white people discriminated based on race in their preference of neighbors, redlining would not be such a problem, but this type of discrimination is too prevalent to allow the markets invisible hand to sort out.
A 2001 survey of perceptions shows that: 78% of white people do not believe there is discrimination in housing where only 51% of black people feel the same; 85% of white people feel there is no discrimination in education where only 51% of black people feel the same; and 78% of white people feel there is no discrimination in employment, where only 33% of black people feel the same.
These perceptions have substantial policy implications, given the racial makeup of Congress and the Supreme Court.
There are significant short-term benefits for individual and groups of white people. Benefits to the ego of those who enjoy privilege and place, maintenance of comfort zones, and economic advantages are of highest importance. However, there is no benefit from discrimination for society as a whole, only costs:
Where discrimination against minorities is pervasive, society as a whole loses potential human capital. The abilities and creativity of the minority communities remain underdeveloped and underemployed. Hence, total output of goods and services is less than it would be in the absence of discrimination. [
] In addition, much of the output we do produce is directed to relatively unattractive uses such as the surveillance of homes, streets, jails, and welfare caseloads. Thus, whatever direct gains or losses individual whites incur are overwhelmed by the very large indirect losses to the economy as a whole.
This was a very long block quote, but the points made are of major importance and mutually reliant, so I wanted to keep them together the way they are stated.
The willful stifling of over half of our talent degrades our ability to construct a beneficial society, not only economically, but in every measure of social good.
Offensively noticeable discrimination is easier to identify than more subtle and pervasive forms more often practiced today. Discrimination in education, housing, and employment as practiced in the US used to be both, and legitimized by US law. Citizens now enter the education system equally, but upon exiting, there still remains vast inequality. What happens between kindergarten and 12 grade, or college? Segregation is illegal, and supposedly nonexistent, but Schiller points out that one black student in a population of 2,000, or one white student added to a population of 1,999 black students does not add up to integration except on paper, and racial isolation in the schools is still the hallmark of the American education system. Moreover, the separateness is still coupled with inequality of building construction and maintenance, supplies, quality and number of teachers, and technology, and integration within the school systems does not always translate to integration within the schools or classrooms.
Past segregation restricted opportunity to develop abilities, and tracking systems and IQ testing traps students in remedial education while schools invest more time and offer greater opportunity for gifted students to excel.
Studies undertaken to try to gauge the scope of effective segregation have been exhaustive in detail, yet the findings have been inconclusive as a measure, and all we still know is that school segregation continues to be major determinants of black achievement and status.
Racisms ugly stepbrother is classism, and racial discrimination in the schools is coupled with economic segregation. Housing and the ability to afford it make neighborhoods more stratified by economic class then racial makeup, and the discussion above about disparities in public goods and services apply here as well. The way school budgets are allocated,
students attending schools in poor communities receive lower shares of funding, and like those students discriminated against based on race, work with poorer supplies, uncertified and fewer teachers, outdated technologies, and low expectations of reward for hard work.
The dropout rate for poor students in K-12th grades is twice as high as that for non-poor students, and those who do make it to graduation day often cannot afford the cost in tuition and time away from employment to attend college, and the disparity in college attendance rates has more to do with economic class than it does racial demographics. While flawed and prejudicial theories regarding the ability of minority students, similar to assumptions made regarding minorities, color the perceptions society has of the poor, Schiller explained that many talented but economically disadvantaged students do not enjoy the same opportunities wealthier student do.
Children do not control family finances or where they attend primary and secondary education, but the flawed character theory as applied to parents poisons the social well for the children. This is grossly unfair, and speaks to the discussion question regarding our treatment of children. It seems that support for income maintenance programs for the sick, disabled, and elderly are highly favored by society while aid programs that help children are widely unpopular. Because anything done to help the children of the poor also helps their parents, often viewed to be undeserving, and the children are thus denied the support (or even the sympathy) of society at a time in their development when it would provide them, and society, the most benefit.
Bradley R. Schiller, The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination Tenth Ed. Pearson Prentice Hall, NJ, US, 2008
