Over the years, I have written several posts about the necessity for this country to have a serious discussion about racism in order to free not just Blacks* but all Americans from this terrible curse at long last. For example, in April 2019, I wrote a post, “We Need a National Discussion on Race and Racism.”
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and the nationwide protests, while the subject of racism is in the air, most of the action agenda proposed has to do with how to reform police departments. While this is much needed and will undoubtedly be helpful, it does not touch the underlying problem.
This is not just a police issue. This is a national issue that touches almost everyone and certainly impacts Blacks in all aspects of their lives.
Most fundamentally perhaps, because of its lasting impact, is the issue of the disparity in the education received by Black youths relative to whites. While there are numerous factors that impact this disparity, and yes, one is what the family provides the child, a major factor is the disparity of education funding received by inner city (and rural) schools based on the residential tax base of the school district. The other major factor, less often spoken of, is the bias of many teachers against the potential of the very children they are charged with educating. Can we not all agree in the motto of the United Negro College Fund that, “a mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
There have been numerous studies that have shown what a school with proper resources, and even more importantly proper attitude, can do with children from the worst parts of the inner city. To quote from one study, “In light of significant relationships that exist between teachers’ sense of efficacy [the belief that they are able to affect student performance] and higher student achievement and test scores, and in order to improve America’s schools, teachers’ low sense of efficacy in low performing urban schools should be seriously reconsidered.”
Another study titled, “Unequal Opportunities: Fewer Resources, Worse Outcomes for Students in Schools with Concentrated Poverty,” by the Commonwealth Institute, found that, “Students in high poverty schools have less experienced instructors, less access to high level science, math, and advanced placement courses, and lower levels of state and local spending on instructors and instructional materials.”
But even if there were a national will to address these issues, that would still leave untouched the underlying issue of the breadth and depth of racism in this country. That is the legacy of slavery and it still impacts both whites and Blacks. Economically, it keeps our country from maximizing its potential. Spiritually, it keeps us from achieving our full humanity.
We must use the opportunity of masses of whites coming together to protest the treatment of Blacks by police, and predominantly white legislatures responding, to focus attention and discussion on the much more difficult issue of acknowledging and undoing the continuing destructive impact of racism in America.
This may be our last chance to truly transform and reenergize our country so that the statement in the Declaration of Independence becomes based in reality, not just aspirational: that, “All men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among men.” Our last chance to achieve Martin Luther King’s dream that all of us will be able to join hands and say, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
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* I should note that I use the term “Blacks” rather than the possibly more politically correct “African-American” because I don’t approve of these hyphenated euphemisms. We are all Americans; that should go without saying. The hyphenated form, by qualifying people, whether African, Latino, or Asian, seems to connote a less than full American. I also capitalize “Blacks” out of respect for the defined group of millions of Americans, citizens with a powerful history and culture, that it represents.
