What do African Americans want?

[George Jefferson²]

REPARATIONS! WE WANT OUR REPARATIONS FOR SLAVERY!!!!











Not Really, we'd probably settle for white people to just stop screwing us over.

So much credit it's on a black card.

[AH]

REPARATIONS! WE WANT OUR REPARATIONS FOR SLAVERY!!!!











Not Really, we'd probably settle for white people to just stop screwing us over.

I'm not trying to screw anyone over!  I promise!

There was this really interesting case (can't remember the name) after the Japanese Internment where the major argument for not wanting to give them repirations (which they ultimately got) was that African Americans would start asking for them for slavery and they'd get more money than the Japanese, then Native Americans would want them and they'd need more money than the African Americans.  Pretty funny (in a not funny at all sort of way).

mugatu-- it's a number of reasons.  the primary reason that comes to mind is that there is supposed to be busing for low-income students to high-income areas (yea, b/c low-income neighborhoods aren't generating tax revenue to fund schools) and that's not happening or if it does happen, the "white flight" goes along with it.

edit: Also, forgot to mention the obvious, that rich people pay for schools their kids don't attend all the time (private secondary school, then send their kids to fancy undergrads, rather than in-state schools where tax dollars contribute to the tutition).  The only real exception I see are those states with lots of quality public schools (CA, VA, MA, for example).

[verbal]

REPARATIONS! WE WANT OUR REPARATIONS FOR SLAVERY!!!!

an interesting thing is that most intelligent african americans realize that this is a bad idea. Native Americans r the perfect example of this. drug abuse and poverty r higher for native americans than any other group. allowing a subset of a population to live by a different set of rules or implying that a certain group needs more help than another group to suceed always leads to disaster.

their is a study that has been nationally published and retried several times over the last 15 years.  u take a 4 grade reading class. u split them up into 3 groups evenly dividing up the reading level of the students into each group. u tell one group that they r ot good at reading and u r going to try to work with them. u tell the second group that they r average at reading and u tell the third group that they r gifted.  at the end of six weeks u give the kids a reading text. the kids in the first group do the worst. the kids in the second group do better than the first and the kids in the first group do better than everyone.  this study is used to prove that encouraging kids to do well causes them to do better in school. i think it should be applied to society as well. if u tell a group of people they cant succeed on their own eventually they will believe u. this is my biggest problem with AA.  I am in favor of giving people from disadvantaged socioeconomic backround a little boost though.

ok so that was my serious answer. I was originally just going to throw out my joke so ill put it below for people now.

what do black people want? 40 acres and a mule

[AH]

So the bussing? That improves education? I thought that was primarily for desegregation, you know, so people know there are people different from them and that's ok.

A poorer neighborhood cannot necessarily provide the tax stream necessary for a good school system, but there are ways to go to good high schools. Why do there have to be metal detectors at select school? Why are the kids bringing weapons to school that have to be confiscated? Is the school environment really bad and that's why a lot of poorer kids drop out?

I think it mostly has to do with economics. I don't think quite so much gets added to the equation, because I've known a lot of dumb rich kids, but I think a lot of the negatives that being poor are excluded.

Bussing was for desegregation, current bussing practice is to move low-income students to better-performing schools (as determined by standardized testing) which 9 times out of 10 are in a high income community.  Doesn't improve education overall, just on an individual level.  Doesn't actually work most of the time.  Check out NCLB.

Yea, I went to one of those school and even had to miss classes some days because of threats targeted at white kids (ironically).  Fortnately, one of the kids who threatened the student body told me "not to worry" when he showed me his piece in bio.  At least I know I'm in good with the hoodlums!

Kids aren't necessarily dropping out because they don't feel safe as much as they aren't inspired to make anything better of themselves.  For example, my counselor told me I would be lucky if I got into a community college. I can't explain why some kids brin weapons and even if I could the answers wouldn't need be universal.

[AH]

Really, what inspire kids depends on the kid, I think it would vary a lot from school to school (under the assumption students in a similar region have similar needs, which of course culd be way off).  Committed teachers who offer help and advice, outlets for success (such as AP classes) and opportunities to  show success beyond what is seen in Cribs I think is a start.

I have no idea why she said that.  I was one of a grounp of about 25 in the honors program and had the highest SAT in the school (still a pretty mediocre score).  We had heavy institutional racism from day one, so that may have attributed to it (a teacher told my mom in college that all white girls looked the same to her), but maybe she just generally didn't like me.  that's really the best I can muster.  Can't imagine what she wrote in the dean's letter to colleges though.

[TinaTina]

Look where the crime is, mostly black.  African Americans make up 13% of the population and what % of crime do you think that they commit?  Im not racist, I am well aware that there are degenerate white people too, I just want to live in an area where there are high class people.  These are just some thoughts.
[/quote]

Wow...if that ill-informed statement were an LSAT choice it'd be flagged for several "wrong-answer-type" attributes.  I'd say everyone has a fairly decent idea of where large populations of African-Americans can be found in this country.  So start by subtracting New York, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, New Orleans, Baltimore, and relatively small sections of some of the other southern states and already your concept of blameworthiness for crimes committed in this country seems just a tad skewed.  This is a large country, are we to believe that with regards to the rest of the country, Native Americans/Pacific Islanders/Asian Americans - being as they consitute such a large percentage of the total population - are engaged in crime sprees that would push the level of crimes committed by non-white to the proportions you're implying.  Some facts:

Data from the 1998 UCR indicate that differential
rates of arrest for crime are related
to race (see Snyder, 1999). Arrests of white
juveniles (under age 18) constituted 71 percent
of all juvenile arrests compared with
26 percent for black youth. American Indian
or Alaska Native and Asian or Pacific
Islanders account for 1 and 2 percent, respectively
(Federal Bureau of Investigation,
1999). Black youth were overrepresented,
given the fact that they make up 15 percent
of the juvenile population compared with
79 percent white and 5 percent other races.

Now this data pertains to juveniles...but for the sake of argument let's assume, that every AA juvenile moves on to being an adult offender, there still is a virtual mathematical impossibilty that crime is "mostly Black"  Quite the opposite it would seem.  I now turn your attention to the section where it mentions that realtive to their numbers the percentage of crime committed by AA is very high but surely we can all agree that this is due to several complex causation factors none of which anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of the social sciences...and I'm no expert...would ascribe to black people being classless.

[AH]

Not to mention that those are ARRESTS.  How many black kids are targeted for arrests while the police let white kids go for the same offense?

[chidochido]

WoW, you make a lot of generalizations. To answer your question blacks want not to be and are tired of being Poor.  The education system sets us up to be poor and robs our children of economic ambition and financial literacy.  Also since we were not afforded the same land ownership possibilities as the early settlers and the fruits of the Homestead Act, wealth does not run in most of our families. The blacks that have money are first generation and worked hard for what they have. All we want is freedom and opportunity as a whole to experience the American Dream of economic prosperity.

How do you fix the education system?  Or, if not, what is wrong with the education system?

This is a complex issue. There are lots of things wrong with national education issues, mostly having to do with us being out-hustled by emerging and established education systems in the east. This is where you start to get problems with outsourcing, which are only exacerbated by the bush policy of denying visas to talented foreign students in the name on national security...
...as far as the education as it relates to economic disparity for minorities, that is a much easier problem to find a solution to. All you have to do is invest! Looking at the educational research it is NO SECRET that hiring qualified teachers and especially having smaller class sizes (which again means more $ for teachers and to build schools with, which is expensive) lead to higher achievement, regardless of race. I mean, that's the edge that most private schools and home-schooled children have if you think about it: more contact with their teacher. I teach in nyc and I have 35 kids in each class. Ask me how much time I can give each one of them in a 45 minute class...
...the answers are right in front of us but the people in positions of power aren't willing to put the money in. It's simple, really.

ps. If interested, look up info for New York City's Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which is trying to get billions in funding for nyc public schools from the state. Our REPO governor Pataki is trying to block it, but it shows the kind of legal work that I will be doing some time in the future...

[AH]

That would be really difficult.  You would need to pay teachers a LOT more (and attract teachers who actually care), funnel money to education (not football), overall the facility and course offerings.  A lot of it is changiong students attitudes, which may be harder than all of the above. 

[chidochido]

Well, the reasons for under-funding are complex, much more so than what I laid out in my tiny post earlier, but it boils down to people not wanting to pay for other people's kids (especially black and brown kids) to get a good education. If you've ever worked in state or national politics, there is a lot of that going on with people from affluent areas trying to keep 'their money' from trickling into the cities or metropolitan areas, which is usually where the POC live...
...I agree that attitudes need to change. Every school and even every classroom is a micro-community/institution/corporation that needs to be reinvigorated every once in a while. The only thing is, when a sports team sucks, you pay for the talent or bring in the best coach you can. When Sony starts to suck ass, they bring in a champion CEO from the west. When a school or district sucks, they make the school day longer (just more of what is not working), blame the teachers, or just give up on it...you need INVESTMENT!