Racial Fairness On Trial

by Clarence Page - December 7th, 2006 - Real Clear Politics

For those with long memories, the case of Joshua McDonald is particularly poignant. Joshua is a white Louisville student who was assigned to a kindergarten that was a 90-minute bus ride away, past a closer school which Jefferson County school officials said already had enough white students that year.

That's painfully ironic. Linda Brown, a black third grader in Topeka, Kansas, was forced to take a long bus ride to school every day past a closer neighborhood school that did not admit blacks. The landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation decision bears her father's name.

Where have we Americans come, we must ask ourselves, when the decision to help black kids like Linda Brown who were turned away from schoolhouses in the name of segregation is used to turn Joshua McDonald away in the name of desegregation?

This is a compelling article. Clarence Page is a good writer and there are some really interesting quotes in it. Everyone who cares about education in America needs to read it.

The issue he discusses is one of expectations. Parents who demand and expect that their children will excell insist on schools that demand and expect that their children will excell.

So why is it that after half a century, there are so many poor black children who are failing? My opinion, it is a culture that says it is not their fault and therefore we must let them fail. Let them fail? Why? Why are we not insisting that if their parents don't believe in education, that we demean and humiliate the parents until they do. Or maybe we can find a more positive way to change their minds. However it is not okay for parents to insist that their children be allowed to fail. It is our society they are ultimately damaging. Clarence Page has it right when he says "Instead, we could be motivated, as some school districts already have been, to move to the next rational step for our liberation: the integration of low-income, low-achieving students into a higher-achieving future. It will take more than a bus for us to make that trip."

That is right. It requires an expectation that these children will learn. The starting point is taking away from parents the right to let their children fail by their; insisting that it is okay for their children to not study, it is okay for them to misbehave in class, it is not their fault and you cannot expect them to succeed. That is non-sense. The only difference between Condoleeza Rice and many of the children in our schools who fail is an expectation they can succeed.

That expectation must start now. The only difference between success and failure is expectations versus excuses. These children are not dumb. They are simply groomed for failure by expectations of the culture around them. For a start ask the question why is Bertie County at the bottom in test scores when we used to be way higher. Our schools are failing our children when the administration accepts the excuses of parents. Why can't we isolate the children of parents who will not allow teachers to excersize discipline into seperate classes so there are some classes where teaching can occur? The time for excuses is over. It has been over for most of 50 years. When are we going to start saying, "STOP THE EXCUSES, TEACH THESE KIDS NOW!"