This post is dedicated to every black liberal who has ever said I never write anything positive about black folks or offer solutions to problems disproportionately impacting blacks. Most of the time, positive news and solutions are implicit in my posts, though sometimes I’m explicit.
For instance, suggestions like, “Get married and build a nest before you have children” or “Take responsibility for your own lives and accept the consequences of your actions” or “Take responsibility for your children’s education” apparently are not detailed enough for some people. And I never mention white people or what they ought to do to help blacks or what they owe blacks, which seems to tick people off the most. Since I can’t please everyone, I aim to please no one.
When I read “Black Parents Seek to Raise Ambitions” this morning in the Washington Post, I almost cried. Why? An excerpt:
Twelve-year-old Alex Carter is an A student who loves science and reads a book a week. So it surprised his father when he announced last year that he didn’t want to enroll in an honors class that his teacher recommended for the following term.
“That class is for the smart people, the nerds,” Alex told him. His father replied, “Well, who are you?”
Alex is a junior league football player, an avid golfer and a lifelong suburbanite. He’s also one of only a handful of African American students in his seventh-grade class at Eagle Ridge Middle School in Ashburn. He dreams of becoming a professional athlete like his dad, Tom, who played cornerback for the Washington Redskins. But as he nears his teenage years in a predominantly white school in Loudoun County, his parents are concerned that he could abandon academic pursuits because he thinks they are better left to his white classmates.
How did young Alex come to believe academic pursuits are for white people? Blame the subculture or gangsta culture or the mainstream media or the rain, if it makes you feel better. The point is that the kid’s head was in the wrong place. But instead of invoking the “legacy of slavery” or classroom bias or a lack of government funds (although some urban school districts tend to have the country’s highest per pupil expenditures) or any excuse with the word “racism” attached to it, Alex’s parents did their job: took matters into their own hands and pre-empted a potentially huge problem:
That’s why Tom and Renee Carter joined last year with about 15 families, including the parents of nearly every black male sixth-grader, to push their sons to graduate on time in 2012 with options for the future and without lowering their expectations or test scores along the way. They call it Club 2012.
The group holds monthly house meetings, twice-weekly homework sessions, “rap sessions” between fathers and sons, and social or community service activities. The parents speak often with teachers and administrators, many of whom come to parent-organized events.
A mainstream media story about black parents taking responsibility for their children’s education without any mention of the same old tired historical grievances rhetoric or guilt-tripping whites for their help or their money…
Happy Friday! 
Groups like Club 2012 should spring up all over the place. Black parents in Loudoun, Virginia, banded together to combat what they saw as a self-perpetuating and self-defeating cycle of underachievement. The group should serve as a model for all parents, and I hope readers send the story link to others.
Groups like Club 2012 work only if parents, not the government, care about how their kids are doing in school and do something about academic issues. Narrowing the academic achievement gap will take more than complaining and demanding money. It will take the hard and sometimes grudging work of parents getting in their kids’ business, charting their progress in school, and asking others for help, not demanding it, if they can’t manage it on their own.
There is nothing wrong with asking people for help, but these days, certain folks don’t understand the difference between asking and demanding. It may shock some of you to read this, but nobody owes you a darn thing.
But I digress. These parents saw a need and came together to fulfill that need. They understand how powerful the most negative aspects of the subculture are, and they’ve committed themselves — not the government’s money or promises — to making sure their children don’t succumb to anti-intellectualism.
Kids in Club 2012 are getting etiquette lessons (underrated but very important social skills) and going on field trips, and parents help one another keep up with what the kids are doing. As a result of hands-on intervention, grades have gone up.
I would guess that most parents in Club 2012 are married. Long time readers know how I feel about marriage, how much I respect the institution, especially the benefits it bestows on children. Groups like Club 2012 can and do exist with single parents, but I’m certain that a group comprised of stable, married members has more resources and is more effective.
Marriage is good not just for children, but for entire communities. The social capital, if you will, that results from living in strong, stable communities with fathers in the household can’t be simulated or replaced by so-called male role models or “big brother” programs. If you don’t have a residential father or strong, decent men in the family, such programs are better than nothing. Whether you agree with the data or not, children are better off living with married parents.
Let’s recap: Get married and build a nest before you have children to give them the best start in life, take responsibility for your own lives and accept the consequences of your actions, and take responsibility for your children’s education and form community groups like Club 2012. That wraps up my positive-news-about-blacks-and-solutions-to-problems post.
