According to a new study, black students in their first year of college perform better academically when paired with a white roommate than with a black roommate. (Science News)

What to make of this? Natalie Shook, lead author of the study, said black students may adjust better because they live with someone who can help them adjust to college and its challenges.

While black students benefit from having a white roommate, white students don’t necessarily benefit from having a black roommate. For white students, the academic ability of the roommate is more important than the person’s skin color.

I went to a predominately black college, so I have no frame of reference. My youngest sister, on the other hand, roomed with white students. She said she could see how the study yielded such a conclusion.

“Watching them study helped me learn how to study,” she told me. “That was the main thing.”

Update: Points to consider, via Facebook friends – The study’s findings might indicate a fundamental flaw in race preferences (which involves lowering standards to admit a certain percentage of blacks) in college admissions. Black students may be poorly matched to their schools compared to white students. Did the researchers isolate for class background and academic preparation, i.e., are black students who attended private high schools better prepared for the college setting, etc.

Here’s the study’s abstract. You have to subscribe to the journal to download the full study.

I think it’s a waste of time and resources to push for changes in the way government schools educate children. Don’t fight corruption and indoctrination. Get your kids out of there.

If you’re a homeschooling parent or considering homeschooling, check out This Old Schoolhouse magazine (see right sidebar and click on the ad). I recommend the magazine not only because it’s one of my advertisers; it’s a wonderful resource I’ve mentioned on the blog before. Other homeschooling resources:

• Classical Homeschooling
• HomeschoolBlogger.com
• The Well-Trained Mind
• Home Education Magazine
• Trivium Pursuit

Related posts:

• Christians and Government Schools
• Empty-Headed Education
• Black Homeschooling on the Rise

If you’re a homeschool blogger or read homeschool blogs and other web sites, leave a comment with the name of the site and/or URL. Support homeschooling!

“The redneck culture proved to be a major handicap for both whites and blacks who absorbed it. Today, the last remnants of that culture can still be found in the worst of the black ghettos, whether in the North or the South, for the ghettos of the North were settled by blacks from the South. The counterproductive and self-destructive culture of black rednecks in today’s ghettos is regarded by many as the only ‘authentic’ black culture–and, for that reason, something not to be tampered with. Their talk, their attitudes, and their behavior are regarded as sacrosanct.”

Later…Ugly numbers from The San Diego Union-Tribune:

“Statewide in English/language arts, only 30 percent of black students and 29 percent of Latino students scored proficient or better. In contrast, 62 percent of white students and 66 percent of Asian students scored proficient or better…In math, only 26 percent of black students and 31 percent of Latino students statewide scored proficient or better, while 54 percent of white students and 68 percent of Asian students scored proficient or better.”

More here (type “dontbugme” for username and password). An excerpt:

“[I]n some cases, the poorest white students are doing better than Latino and black students who come from middle class or wealthy families…The so-called achievement gap — the difference in performance between groups of students — has long been chalked up to a difference in family income. It makes sense that — regardless of race — students whose parents have money and speak English would do better in school, on the whole, than students whose families struggle with employment, food and shelter.

“But this year’s test scores show that the difference in academic achievement between ethnic groups is more than an issue of poverty vs. wealth.”

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I’m convinced that no amount of money or faddish educational theories or finger pointing will meaningfully improve the academic performance of minority students or significantly narrow the achievement gap between whites/Asians and blacks/hispanics.

The District of Columbia Public Schools receives one of the nation’s highest per pupil expenditures (I think it’s $14,000 per pupil now), and the school system, predominantly black, consistently ranks in the academic basement nationally.

The Home Problem

What we have is a home problem, not an institutional problem. I don’t know how much effort, realistically speaking, working single parents with low educational attainment themselves can put into educating their children outside of school. Is it unrealistic to expect these parents to make sure their kids understand and complete homework? Is taking the kids to places like museums and libraries on weekends and during the summer (See Lasting Consequences of the Summer Learning Gap in PDF) an impossible task? Is encouraging them to read books instead of watching that blasted television a lofty ambition reserved for educated and/or high-income households?

In my opinion, it isn’t.

The home problem goes deeper, though. I suspect that children of divorced or widowed parents perform better academically than children of never-married parents of any income level. Children living with married parents (with biological, residential fathers) certainly are better off than the rest. But since 70 percent of black babies (up to 80 percent in some cities) are born to unmarried parents — and the chance that these kids will ever live with their biological fathers is nil — too many black children will never have this advantage. They’ll never know what it’s like to live with the two people who made them, to see how an intact family unit functions, and to learn what it means to be a parent and provider.

No matter how loudly people wail about the “shameful” academic achievement gap, it won’t narrow in a discernable way until black parents adopt a new attitude and new skills to help their children improve. I’m one of the few people who’ll say publicly that genetics plays a part, but genetics alone don’t determine who we are and where we end up. Some racial groups naturally perform better than others. That’s an observable fact. But individuals can and should make intelligent and sound life choices along the way, and individuals can and should go above and beyond what they think they’re capable of.

Take my words with a grain of salt. I’m not an expert. I’m not even a parent. I’m just a reasonably aware person determined not to be limited by my race or people’s perceptions of me.

Beyond genetics is environment, or culture. I have seen a general apathy toward education among certain blacks. Then again, should these families focus on educational attainment? Perhaps there should be a trade school renaissance in this country, where non-college bound students can learn practical skills to acquire self-supporting jobs.

Poor Whites Outperform Better Off Blacks

That’s quite a long intro to two articles I wanted you to read. The first, “Student scores level off in state,” is another story about the academic achievement gap, but this is the important part (emphases added):

But O’Connell ratcheted up the debate Wednesday. Educators and civic leaders, he said, must break the commonly held assumption that Latino and black students’ low scores are due largely to the effects of poverty. For the first time, O’Connell compiled statistics that showed black and Latino students who are not designated as poor are performing below white students who are at or near the poverty level.

“These are not just economic achievement gaps; they are racial achievement gaps,” he said. “We cannot afford to excuse them; they simply must be addressed.”

People have been guessing and studies have been showing for years that as a group, black kids from “wealthier” backgrounds still perform worse than Asians and whites from “poor” backgrounds. If you believe poverty causes low educational attainment, then freed slaves who somehow managed to educate themselves and achieve great things and countless immigrants who come to this country dirt poor yet outperform everyone else must be aberrations.

Here’s a question: Do the “poor” white and Asian kids mentioned in the article come from intact families?

The article sneaks in this gem: “Studies on teacher quality conducted by the group, for example, found that poor white students often have better access to more experienced, educated teachers than wealthier black and Latino students.”

I don’t know what “have better access” is suppose to mean. How do poor white students have better access to more experienced and educated teachers than wealthier minorities? The poor white kids certainly aren’t going to private schools. They’re stuck in the same government schools as everybody else, aren’t they? So where does this “better access” come from?

Wealthier (White) Neighborhoods Don’t Produce Better Black Students

I’m surprised a story like “Neighborhoods’ Effect On Grades Challenged” was published in a paper like the Washington Post. In essence, a study (PDF) showed that moving poor, underachieving black kids to wealthier neighborhoods doesn’t improve their academic performances on average. Why would anyone imagine that it would? Social engineers believe that whatever wealthier families have that made them wealthier and more socially adept will rub off on poorer families.

We’re dealing with habits, ethics, and values conducive to success that have been passed down through generations. Moving a family living on government aid and devoid of the kind of values it takes to succeed educationally and professionally isn’t going to do squat for the poorer family. But what effect, I’d love to know, does moving Section 8 families into wealthier neighborhoods have on wealthier families’ property values or the families’ living standards or on their children’s academic performances?

As expected, researchers offer up plenty of excuses why kids from poor families don’t improve academically after they’re shipped to wealthier neighborhoods. Sociologist William Julius Wilson said the wealthier neighborhoods were still “highly racially segregated.” In other words, the kids didn’t improve because they were surrounded by too many black people. Implications?

Other researchers said that when poor families moved in, the people around them got poorer. Does that mean property values dropped, rendering the pre-existing families less wealthy? I guess they don’t count.

Here’s the bottom-line:

You can move poor blacks into wealthier neighborhoods filled with white folks; you can pour billions more dollars into closing the achievement gap through the institutional approach; you can teach black kids myths about “black” Egyptians and how the Greeks stole their culture; you can teach in ebonics; you can come up with yet more idiotic educational theories; you can continue dumbing down the curriculum and decreasing the g-load on tests so it only appears minorities are improving; you can keep telling black kids they live in a racist world in which they’ll never catch a break; or…

…you can face reality. As long as blacks keep having babies without providing children stable, intact homes, as long as black parents keep turning a blind eye to the anti-intellectual strain that runs through the black subculture and in their own homes, and as long as they continue looking to the government to work miracles and fix problems, absolutely nothing will change.

But that’s just my two cents. Do your own thinking.

Related posts:

• Urban Prep
• Seattle Still Saddled with Race
• Your Children, Your Responsibility
• Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls

Did I mention how much I loathe the term “African American”? Anyway, the theme is “Healthy People, Healthy Families: Connecting Marriage Research to Practice.” From the e-mail:

“The African American Healthy Marriage Initiative is an outreach effort to promote and strengthen the institution of healthy marriage in the black community. ACF has partnered with national, civic, faith-based and community organizations to offer marriage education services to Americans who may not have such opportunities in their neighborhoods.

“Sessions during the conference include good news about African American fathers; the three anchor institutions of family, education and faith; and military couples with children and the impact of separation on their relationships. Speakers scheduled to appear include Ronald Mincy, Ph.D., of Columbia University , School of Social Work ; Robert Franklin, Ph.D., presidential distinguished professor of social ethics at Emory University ; Wilson Goode, Sr., director of Amachi and former mayor of Philadelphia ; and Jerry Regier, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, ASPE, HHS.”

The conference will be useful to someone, I’m sure. It’s sad things have gotten so bad in the “black community” (as far as marriage is concerned) that the government has to hold conferences like this.

I forgot to link to “The frayed knot” this morning. Check it out.

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It’s a shame that the government has to take up the slack for so many slack black men and women who have little regard for getting marriage and creating a home before having babies.

It’s embarrassing that some — not all — black people insist on blaming third parties for every conceivable problem in their lives when everything that’s happened to them has been the result of their own foolish choices and dumb decisions.

They seem ignorant of the harm they’re causing their own children, yet they’re highly aware of the harm others might be causing them.

My stance against such slothfulness and immorality has hardened since I started this blog. Three out of four black babies in this country are born into illegitimacy, which causes untold number of problems, worse than any “racism” ever could. With weak family structures, no stability, no spiritual foundation, no man around to guide and protect them…

I wish people needed a license to have children. There’d be far fewer black babies born, but the ones who were born would have a greater chance of growing up with residential fathers. I’ve said before that people who value marriage and get married before having children are different than people who don’t. A child should be born only to married people.

I can’t say enough about this topic, and I’ve said plenty here, here, here, and here. (Also see “Marriage and Caste,” by Kay Hymowitz, and “Fatherless Boys and Foolish Feminists,” by me)

A post on Joanne Jacobs’s blog prompted this post. While reading “School gives boys the key to becoming real men” (free registration required), I realized that if fatherless black boys are going to have any chance at all for success and good life outcomes, they’ll have to receive guidance from outside their homes.

The children at Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men, an all-boys charter school in Chicago, are getting from others what they can’t get from their fathers: learning what it means to be a man. Ninety percent of the boys come from “single-parent households.”

(Side note: Unlike everyone else, I make distinctions between women who have children but never married, women who married, had children, and divorced, and widows with children. The latter two shouldn’t be thrown into the “single mother” category. They are divorced mothers and widowed mothers. Referring to all of these mothers as single mothers is technically true, but it blurs the line between women who at least tried to do it the right way and make stable homes for their children and women who didn’t.)

I got that “lump in the throat” feeling as soon as I started reading the article. In desperation, one mother wrote, “Please pick my son. We need you,” in the margins of the Urban Prep application. Her boy, like most of the others, is fatherless. Her son’s father died of a heroin overdose, and it’s unclear whether they were married. My guess is that they were not.

It’s never too late to reach a child and help him turn his life around, but these adults…the things people do to their children. Her son is a teenager. Didn’t she understand years ago that boys need men? Couldn’t she foresee that her son would be wayward and angry, seeking the wrong kind of guidance and male bonding because of his absent father?

People don’t think. They don’t consider consequences of their actions. They don’t plan or assess possible outcomes of their decisions. It’s easier just to live in the moment, wallow in ignorance, and then become desperate for help after problems are entrenched.

I wish each of those boys well. Most of all, I hope that somebody, somewhere — even the government, at this point — instills in them the value of marriage and building a stable home and taking care of their offspring.

Probably for the first time in their lives, the boys at Urban Prep are learning that boys need men. I pray they learn well and avoid repeating the errors of their absent fathers.

Update II: I forgot to mention a study that showed black students from intact “religious” families perform better in school than their counterparts.

Also, choice is key. Libertarian Andrew Coulson notes that “the school system itself affects parents’ and students’ attitudes towards education. The current system gives parents no power, no control, no responsibilities. When parents can choose their kids’ schools – better yet, when they HAVE to choose their kids’ schools – they become more savvy and more involved.”

See his post at Cato-at-liberty on poor and marginally educated parents choosing schools for their kids. I reviewed a book of essays about the late libertarian Milton Friedman. One essay discussed private schools in Third World countries. I wrote:

The existence of private schools for the poor [in Third World countries] tends to weaken the argument against school vouchers that poor parents are unable or unwilling to pay for their children’s schooling. [James] Tooley proposes that, in the absence of government intervention, “grass-roots privatization of education” might possibly spring up in the United States as it has in developing countries.

Read the review.

Also see Measuring Catholic school performance.

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Sometimes, the truth needs to be uttered by one of your “own” before you believe it or act on it.

A group called Policy Bridge, a non-profit organization in Ohio, released “The Rap on Culture” (PDF), a 16-page report on “anti-education” in the black subculture. Perhaps the report and subsequent discussions finally will convince blacks with children that they’ve got serious issues to deal with, and white guilt-tripping, taxpayers’ money, and government intervention will get you only so far.

[Although the study focused on black students in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, the findings apply to black students all over the country. Given the disparities in graduation rates, test scores, etc., it's not difficult to extrapolate from the data.]

“The Rap on Culture” focuses on a huge contributing factor in black student underachievement: destructive elements in the subculture, namely, a virulent “anti-intellectual” strain that all but guarantees the academic achievement will never close and may end up increasing as black children grow up to be adults who can’t compete in a global economy.

Yes, It’s All About Race

Whenever I say that underachievement, criminality, illegitimacy, generational poverty, and a tendency toward government dependency (and not just welfare; an entitlement mentality also is a form of dependency) are caused by something within black subculture, somebody somewhere calls me a self-hater.

(The researchers and many others use the word “culture” to describe the black community. I use “subculture” because we are part of the overall American culture. Black Americans are not a unique culture; we are uniquely Americans, and characteristics and features developed through the years and/or retained through oral tradition are subcultural, not cultural.)

But when black liberals say it, preferably backed by numbers and cold hard facts, suddenly it takes on new meaning. Perhaps it’s the way I say it, or that I say it, or that I say it in public space. Who knows, who cares. The kids — and not ignorant adults — are my main concern.

“The Rap on Culture,” which proposes the cause and cure for black student underachievement, begins on the right note:

The furor over radio talk-show host Don Imus’ slurs aimed at the Rutgers women’s basketball team sparked a national discussion of the racist and sexist language and imagery that pervade hip-hop and rap music and the urban culture. What seems to have been largely ignored in this debate are the anti-education messages that have led so many African-American youth away from the academic achievements exemplified by the talented Rutgers women. It’s interesting that this uproar over urban culture has erupted at a time when Congress prepares to debate whether to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, which was enacted in 2002 to improve educational opportunity and accountability. In pushing his plan for education reform in 2001, President Bush spoke of the need to end the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” What if those “low expectations” not only refer to schools and teachers who fail to hold minority students to high standards of academic achievement, but also describe a devalued view of education in the black community itself? What if something about the culture enveloping black students, particularly those in low-income, urban environments, impedes academic progress?

Of course, the “what if” propositions are rhetorical. There is a devalued view of education in the black community. There is something about the subculture that works against excellence in education. It fosters a strain of “anti-intellectualism” or “anti-education,” a term used by the researchers. Blaming poverty or white racism or discrimination is easier and less embarrassing, but it is futile. Even poor students of other races outperform black students from upper-income households.

The researchers are honest enough to admit the issue is race, not class or poverty. They write:

“Talking about social class is much easier in this country than talking about race; it doesn’t pick at a scab covering centuries of pain,” they write. “Defining the achievement gap in largely economic terms may make for an easier discussion, but it may have contributed to a sense of hopelessness when it comes to education reform: If you want to ensure that all children achieve academically, then it would seem that you first need to eliminate the challenges of poverty. That view, without a doubt, is outside the ability of schools to fix and contributes to a sense that the problem of low educational attainment is intractable.”

As the researchers note, trying to “fix” poverty is a waste of time if the goal is to narrow the achievement gap. It is not the government’s job nor does it have the power to fix poverty. Some people are and will remain poor because they refuse to do any better. Unfortunately, such people continue to procreate, dooming children to at least a childhood of poverty. (As adults, they can overcome it.) What in the world can the government do to motivate people to get off their butts and go to work or stop making babies if they’re unmarried and don’t have jobs? Not much.

Poverty is correlated with academic underachievement, but the relationship between underachievement and a subculture of “anti-education” is much stronger. For more information on anti-intellectualism, see John McWhorter’s excellent book, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America (which the researchers also cited in the study). McWhorter is a black college professor who works with all races of students and has observed concrete differences between black students and everyone else. I won’t rehash or summarize it here. Buy the book.

Recommendations

Among the proposed solutions to the subcultural problem of anti-education are these:

• Creating a distinct category under No Child Left Behind for black boys
• Extending the school day and school year in “distressed communities”
• Attracting more black male teachers to serve as “role models” with incentives
• Setting aside funds for programs designed to keep black boys from dropping out of school

(Potential problems with these recs: Civil Rights Act violations. Will the funding be set aside for racially exclusive programs, or will policymakers use code words like “underserved” and “underrepresented”?)

And finally, in the second set of recommendations, the researchers get to what’s really important:

• Parents (and teachers) need to raise expectations
• Parents need to be more involved with their children’s education
• Turn off that darn TV!

Is this necessary:

• Teachers need to be free to come up with creative approaches to teaching black boys

Perhaps. And even further down in the recommendations, although it should have been at #1:

• Schools must set and insist on high standards of conduct in the classroom. Students must be orderly and respectful. (See Self-Regulation Skills and the Academic Achievement Gap)

Because the majority of black kids in this country are born to illegitimacy and grow up in homes and neighborhoods without residential fathers, a necessary parental element is lacking. Because of this subcultural slackness, the government, once again, has to step up as savior to black people. When will it end?

I suppose that in the end, it doesn’t matter who is doing the saving as long as kids are saved.

Post-Civil Rights Pessimism

I can’t say that I’m hopeful about blacks turning inward to deal with these issues. With at least two generations of blacks having come of age since the Civil Rights era, re-educating and training people to rely on themselves and clean up their own messes is an insurmountable task. Government, especially the federal government, is perceived to be fixer of all ills. Despite what people say in public, it’s strongly believed behind closed doors.

How does one convey to a entire generation of blacks that they must look to the government to do no more than keep law and order, clean the streets, pick up trash, make sure contracts are honored…that sort of thing? How does one teach people to develop a healthy distrust of government intervention and involvement in their lives when they’ve been weaned on it as if it were a lactating mother?

In a society where the stigma against a big belly and no ring has disappeared like so much vapor, how does one convince young people to stop fornicating and making babies while unmarried? Or to build stable families, when their parents and grandparents weren’t married? Instead of passing down the kind of values that will push their kids to success, they’ve passed down a plethora of pathologies that require them to play catch-up for the rest of their lives.

Mini-Lecture

Family is where it begins and ends, not government programs. Men and women – individuals who make babies with no intentions of getting married – bear a huge portion of the blame. Such negligent and slothful behavior sets up the unfortunate children for a lifetime of deprivation. And I’m not talking about lack of food or lack of clothing. Without a father in the house, children are practically sitting ducks for all kind of ills: criminality, drug use, incarceration, academic underachievement, and on and on. Without a stable, intact family, these children have no nest, so to speak, in which to grow and develop and learn the values that will help them become people who in turn value marriage and education.

Black people have only themselves to blame, not the white man who enslaved their forefathers, not the white sales clerks who look at them “funny” in stores, not Republicans, nor any other white person who lives today or who has ever lived.

I focus so much on family instability because I believe it is the most pressing issue facing black Americans today. Almost every racial disparity is linked to it in some way. It is the height of hypocrisy for black people to demand anything from anybody when they don’t give their own children what they need.

Addendum: Typos? I’ll correct them this afternoon. Gotta jet…

Update (1:03 p.m.): A commenter writes:

“I came across your blog a few months ago and have become a faithful reader because I finally found someone “like me” who believes as I do. I am a young(31), Christian, black teacher of 1st graders (majority black also), who is in the rare minority of women of my race who are both married and waited until after marriage to have my first child.

“I have very strong views on this topic. I agree that it is sad that blacks want government to do everything for their kids except have the sex for them to conceive them. I’m very fired up, but I’ll try to be brief! On a daily basis, I see kids in my school cursing, talking loud, not prepared with basic school resources such as pencils and homework, and showing a general lack of self worth. I also see many angry parents cussing out staff on a weekly basis. Saying all that, we have 5 parents in our PTO, but we have a school of over 400 kids. Parents, not government, have to make the change; but they don’t want to. We also have a government office in our school because so many of our parents and the community are on assistance. Any hour of the day, I can look outside my classroom door and see young girls, with strollers, going to an appointment.”

Read the rest.

I was going to develop the piece below as a column, but since it’s gotten somewhat stale, I’ll post it here instead. Hey, that’s what blogs are for!

Is sending students to a “white privilege” conference with government funds intended to be used to close the academic achievement gap an appropriate use of those funds?

That’s what Seattle Public Schools (SPS) will soon find out. The U.S. Department of Education is investigating the race-obsessed school system to determine whether its use of a Smaller Learning Communities Program grant to send students to the annual White Privilege Conference was improper under the terms of the grant. (Source)

The grants are to be used “to support the development of small, safe, and successful learning environments in large high schools as a component of comprehensive high school improvement plans.” How a white privilege conference fulfills this purpose is a mystery.

According to the conference web site, its mission is to offer “a means to develop and sustain ongoing work to dismantle this system of white privilege, white supremacy, and oppression.” Although the conference is “not about beating up on white folks,” why else would people gather to discuss such ideas as “white man’s pornography,” “transforming whiteness in the classroom,” “multiple systems of oppression,” homosexual “oppression,” and to denigrate that whitest of white traits, individualism?

“White privilege” is the idea that whites enjoy certain benefits that stem from decades of discriminating against blacks. Whites who may not consider themselves racists still benefit from a racist system.

Feminist Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley Centers for Women, describes white privilege as “an invisible package of unearned assets” that is “like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks.” (Source – PDF)

According to the “White Privilege Checklist,” you may be benefiting from white privilege if you answer yes to the following:

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.
3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.
4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

The rest of the list includes statements about traffic stops, IRS audits, and…flesh-colored bandages.

SPS has had its share of race-obsessed faux pas. Last year Caprice Hollins, director of the system’s Office of Equity and Race Relations, declared on the web site that long-term planning, goal-setting, and speaking proper English were white values and implied that holding black students to these standards was “cultural racism.” Last month, school board member Darlene Flynn suggested that superintendent candidates have a “clear understanding of institutionalized oppression.” (See Seattle’s Guilt-Tripping Battles)

After much ridicule, Hollins deleted the offensive web page, and Flynn’s suggestion was downgraded to “institutional factors contributing to the achievement gap.” But the message was loud and clear.

Parents ought to be ashamed for allowing bureaucrats to politicize black underachievement and blame whites instead of erecting a mirror in front of so-called underprivileged minorities. In an op-ed in The Seattle Times, Seattle writer and blogger Matt Rosenberg noted that the white privilege conference has little, if anything, to do with helping black students improve academically. They’ll be well-equipped, however, in useless, politically correct finger-pointing. “What we have here,” writes Rosenberg, “is an institutional evasion of personal responsibility.” (Source)

Perhaps we should cut SPS some slack. After all, it’s easier to send kids to white privilege conferences, babble about so-called institutionized oppression (though Caprice Hollins herself could find not one example of it in the system), and tell black students it’s OK to speak ebonics in the classroom than it is to demand that more black parents get involved with their kids’ educations and to hold black kids themselves responsible for achievement. The latter is unprofitable and probably not much fun.

Pointing out the obvious is too controversial. Seventy percent of black babies are born into unstable homes. In 2005, only 35 percent of black children were living with two parents. But we’re to believe that white privilege – and not family structure – is a greater cause of concern?

A focus on trendy, mind-numbing ideas as institutionalized oppression takes the responsibility for excelling out of the hands of black students and their families and throws it into the ubiquitous white bogeyman’s lap. It’s unfair to whites and to blacks, not to mention unproductive.

The Department of Education should find that SPS improperly used taxpayer funds by sending students to a white guilt conference.

I’m curious to know your opinion of “white privilege.” Are you a beneficiary or a victim? Share your experiences.

Addendum: Is “white privilege” a myth?

Update (5/19): A commenter mentioned a study about “black-sounding” names on resumes, where there was a disparity between interview callbacks for people with such names and people with non-black names. In a study called The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names (PDF), researcher Roland Fryer quoted another study, which found that “resumes with traditional names are substantially more likely to lead to job interviews than are identical resumes with distinctively minority-sounding names.”

Fryer writes: “The results suggest that giving one’s child a minority name may impose important economic costs on the child. In our data, however, we find no compelling evidence of a negative relationship between Black names and a wide range of life outcomes after controlling for background characteristics.”

Fryer said there were three ways to interpret the call-back interview disparity:

(1) Black names are used as signals of race by discriminatory employers at the resume stage, but are unimportant once an interview reveals the candidate’s race, or (2) Black names provide a useful signal to employers about labor market productivity after controlling for information on the resume, or (3) names themselves have a modest causal impact on job callbacks and unemployment duration that we are unable to detect.

Fryer found that black names are a strong predictor of socioeconomic status. People who give their babies black-sounding names tend to be unmarried, uneducated, and poor. Additionally, the woman with a black name was likely to repeat the pattern. What’s happening is that black-sounding names are correlated with disparities, but those disparities aren’t necessarily caused by racism, as so many people love to think. Fryer concludes (emphasis in original):

More generally, this paper takes first steps toward an attempt to understand what role Black culture might play in explaining continued poverty and racial isolation. With respect to this particular aspect of distinctive Black culture, we conclude that carrying a black name is primarily a consequence rather than a cause of poverty and segregation.

As Fryer would agree, having a black-sounding name doesn’t seal your fate. Your life is what you make it.

There is no data to support the assertion that white people in hiring positions turn away people with black-sounding names because they don’t want to hire black people. Many factors go into hiring decisions, but it’s much easier and less painful to think you didn’t get an interview because of your skin color rather than lower-quality credentials relative to other candidates.

Personal note: As you’ve noticed, I have a black-sounding name. My mother named me after another La Shawn, a black little girl she thought was very pretty. (My mother was married to my father, and he’d just started his business. They didn’t have much money, but weren’t “poor” as the word is defined these days.) Growing up, I didn’t think about whether my name was black. It was simply my name. I’ve never been ashamed of having a black-sounding name, and I always introduce myself as “La Shawn,” not “Shawn,” and insist that people spell it correctly. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to correct people. No, it’s not “Le Shawn” or “LaShawn” or “LaShaun” or “LeChan” or “Lashawn.”

Is it possible that I didn’t get called for interviews because of my black-sounding name? Sure. It’s also possible that I didn’t get the calls because I was competing against better qualified candidates. I think that explanation is more likely.

It definitely doesn’t matter now. The people who threw my resume in the slush pile did me a favor. I’ve always wanted to work for myself, and working in jobs I didn’t really like or that didn’t suit me frustrated me enough to take a risk and start my own business.

Last week, school board members refused the request. From the article:

Baltimore County public school officials have said that adding Muslim holidays to the school calendars is unlawful and “irresponsible,” marking another setback in attempts across the region to add the holidays…School officials, however, stood firm by a state law that disallows public schools from endorsing any religion, saying the school calendar can include scheduled closures only for holidays that cause low attendance rates countywide.
…
The anti-discrimination committee has pushed its request for the past several years, calling it an issue of equality because schools recognize Jewish and Christian holidays.

So it isn’t a matter of discriminating against Muslims. If followers of Allah become a large enough majority that schools are half-empty during Muslim holidays, the state may choose to close schools. Is it all about…economics?

Being the very opinionated person I am, my view (that the religion of Islam is incompatible with the West) is on the record . What’s yours?

Related posts:

• Phyllis Chesler’s Islamic Education
• Holocaust Omitted From History Lessons
• In Defense of Virgil Goode
• A Religious and Unconventional War
• Gunpoint Conversions and Martyrdom

Some of those visitors expressed condolences, while others used the tragedy as an opportunity to rant about gun ownership and possession in the U.S. and how banning guns would solve the problem of violent crime. Not only is that untrue, but it sounds downright un-American to me, no offense to the foreigners.

I just don’t understand that kind of thinking. Like locks on doors, gun control works for honest, law-abiding people. Just ask D.C. residents. But the nature of a criminal is to commit crimes, that is, break laws, and laws against possessing and owning guns will prevent honest and law-abiding people from possessing and owning guns, not criminals. The logic is so simple a child can follow it. What’s wrong with so-called adults?

I don’t need fancy studies and statistics to tell me that gun-toting thugs would think twice about mugging or attacking someone if they believe the person might be armed. In a state with concealed carry laws, the chances probably are greater that a random person might be packing.

In her latest column, Michelle Malkin draws a parallel between universities disarming students physically and intellectually. She’s right on the money, especially on the intellectual issue. American universities were once places where students could engage in rigorous debate, no matter how controversial the subject matter. College is supposed to teach people how to construct sound arguments and defend their views.

But these days, if you look at somebody funny, you’re in trouble. Because of the oversensitivity of so-called minorities, spirited debate and discussion are essentially muzzled. That is, unless you’re trashing America, Western Civilization, and the “dead white males” who built it. Pampered saps just can’t dig the irony.

Anyway, Michelle begins:

There’s no polite way or time to say it: American colleges and universities have become coddle industries. Big Nanny administrators oversee speech codes, segregated dorms, politically correct academic departments and designated “safe spaces” to protect students selectively from hurtful (conservative) opinions — while allowing mob rule for approved leftist positions

Instead of teaching students to defend their beliefs, American educators shield them from vigorous intellectual debate. Instead of encouraging autonomy, our higher institutions of learning stoke passivity and conflict-avoidance…And as the erosion of intellectual self-defense goes, so goes the erosion of physical self-defense.

Indeed. I don’t know if our foreign visitors will return, but I’m opening this post to a “debate” on gun control. If you don’t care either way, feel free to discuss “debate control,” the dumbing down of America’s universities so minorities won’t get their feelings hurt. The juxtaposition may seem strange, but I see similarities.

Update: I like this from “mlfoley’s journal” – “I often disagree with her (but read her anyway to get news tidbits, information and a look at “the other side”) but La Shawn Barber hits the nail on the head about the cries for gun control after the Va Tech tragedy.”

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t need to be surrounded by admiring people who agree with me. Civility is my only requirement. I hear from people who disagree with most of my work, yet, they’re compelled to read for various reasons. If you want to express disagreement in the comment section with something I wrote, pretend you’re speaking to me face-to-face in my living room.

Resources:

• Google News on VA Tech and gun control
• The Failure of British Gun Control (PDF), by Clayton Cramer
• GunCite – links pro and con
• Gun Control Debate – Yahoo! Full Coverage
• People don’t stop killers. People with guns do

There’s a new study in a journal called Child Development about early learning skills. It seems to state the obvious, but I’d like to read it. From now on until the end of the world, academics, educators, politicians, and others will be discussing the academic achievement gap and how to narrow/close it. According to the study, a child’s “self-regulation skills” are associated with his abilities in his early education. From the article:

Although intelligence is generally thought to play a key role in children’s early academic achievement, aspects of children’s self-regulation abilities-including the ability to alternately shift and focus attention and to inhibit impulsive responding–are uniquely related to early academic success and account for greater variation in early academic progress than do measures of intelligence. Therefore, in order to help children from low-income families succeed in school, early school-age programs may need to include curricula designed specifically to promote children’s self-regulation skills as a means of enhancing their early academic progress.

One of the study’s authors said, “Children’s ability to regulate their thinking and behavior develops rapidly in the preschool years.”

The bottom line, it seems, is that children must learn to control their impulses, learn to behave, sit still, and concentrate on their work in order to perform well in school. Author Abigail Thernstrom believes such skills are of primary importance, particularly for children in inner city schools. She says children in these schools can and do succeed, but qualified the statement:

Superior schools in today’s inner cities counter the isolation of black kids from mainstream norms by…[insisting] that their students learn how to speak standard English; show up on time, properly dressed; sit up straight at their desks, chairs pulled in, workbooks organized…walk down halls quickly and quietly…listen to teachers politely and follow their directions precisely; treat their classmates with respect; and shake hands with visitors to the school, introducing themselves.

Although the study’s conclusions are obvious, some parents may not associate these traits with success in school. There is the very human tendency to blame others for problems, failures, and deficiencies, and parents — especially black parents — must look beyond the bureaucrats and politicians and to themselves and other black parents (like Club 2012) to help their kids excel in school.

I requested a review copy of the study so I can write about it more knowledgeably. I’ve never asked for a “review copy” of a study before, so I have no idea whether I’ll get it. In the meantime, check out my latest column, “Parental involvement, family stability and the achievement gap.”

Update: In response to my Examiner column, Heritage Foundation fellow Patrick Fagan (I met him last year at this event) sent me a PDF copy of his study called Why Religion Matters Even More: The Impact of Religious Practice on Social Stability.

Update II: Good Lord. Summer vacation, says Seattle schools, is racist. Danny Westneat, a level-headed white parent unencumbered by guilt, lays it out. Good read.

Giving government schools more money, blaming whites, eliminating tests — these things make people feel good, but they don’t help kids learn, retain what they’ve learned, apply what they’ve learned, and excel. See my latest Washington Examiner column, “Parental involvement, family stability and the achievement gap.”
—————————————————————————

It sounds unbelievable, but black parents in Pinellas County, Florida, are suing the school district over the black-white academic achievement gap.

Black students need programs “uniquely tailored” to them, they claim. Although black and white students are sitting in the same classrooms receiving the same instruction, pursuant to Brown v. Board of Education, black parents contend, with a collective straight face, that Pinellas County Schools failed in its duty to provide an “adequate education” for black students.

The people involved in the case that I contacted said the plaintiffs didn’t indicate what sort of programs were “uniquely tailored” to blacks. Let’s speculate: textbooks with lots of pictures? teachers who speak ebonics? a curriculum laced with watered down, intellectually light instruction designed to raise self-esteem? elimination of tests that measure academic progress and knowledge?

As soon as I find out, I’ll let you know…

Related posts:

• Race-Based School Assignment Cases Before the Supreme Court
• Clueless Bureaucrat “Stunned” By Irate Parents
• Urban Journalism Workshop Now Open to All Races

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.

…according to a new report from the Educational Testing Service.

Specifically, three factors are converging in a “perfect storm” that is turning the American labor force into a highly illiterate one, profoundly impacting our ability to compete: 1) the educational and skills gap between the races, 2) a global economy that rewards the educated and highly skilled; and 3) the influx of non-English speaking hispanic illegal aliens into the workforce.

Download the PDF version of “America’s Perfect Storm: Three Forces Changing Our Nation’s Future.” The report also includes a brief history of the U.S. economy and the role education has played. I suggest you read it and draw your own conclusions because this post provides only a snapshot of its findings, interspersed with my highly biased commentary. This post by no means includes all arguments and points mentioned in the report or arguments relevant to education, jobs skills, poverty, the economy, or whatever else you can think of.

This Christian Science Monitor story summarizes the report.

Educational and Skills Gap

According to the report, blacks and hispanics “lag considerably” behind whites and Asians in educational achievement. The high school graduation rate for blacks is 50 percent, hispanics 53 percent, whites 75 percent, and Asians 77 percent. Although the U.S. ranks near the top in per-pupil spending, it ranks in the middle among international achievement.

(In the case of Washington D.C., among the nation’s highest in per-pupil spending, consistently ranks near the bottom nationally.)

Exacerbating the educational and skills gap is the fact that “minorities” continue to have disproportionately high out-of-wedlock birth rates. These parents tend to lack high school diploma’s and come from fatherless poor households themselves. They repeat the cycle, giving birth to children likely to be poor and have children out-of-wedlock. The scenario will play out generation after generation. From the report:

[C]hildren raised in low-income, single parent families often suffer from a number of critical cognitive, health, and nutritional deficits that are likely to limit their future academic achievement and educational attainment.

White Americans may care about the deficits, but whites everywhere else don’t. Black Americans won’t be able to appeal to white guilt in the global economy. Now that illegal aliens are replacing native-born blacks in low skilled industries, the employment outlook for lower educated blacks is becoming worse. Consequently, getting an education and acquiring higher level job skills are more important than ever for black Americans.

Trivia: Did you know that foreign-born blacks performed better on the prose literacy portion of national literacy surveys than native-born blacks?

Global Economy

In an increasingly outsourced labor market, owed in part to innovative technology (especially information technology, i.e., computers, broadband), international trade agreements and the like, the demand for highly skilled workers is growing. From the report:

There also has been a dramatic shift in the composition of the job distribution in America toward professional, management and management support, technical, and high-level sales positions. Many of the faster-growing private-sector services and financial industries employ a greater proportion of individuals in these college-labor-market occupations. At the same time, changes in technology and the mix of industries in manufacturing have also increased the demand for workers with these skills.

In other words, the global economy favors innovation and highly literate workers with college degrees. If Americans mired in a cycle of poverty, which contributes to low educational attainment, don’t reverse the trend, they will be virtually left out of the global economy, contributing nothing and living on government crumbs.

Trivia: In 1979, the expected lifetime earnings of men with a college degree were 51 percent higher than for men with only a high school diploma. By 2004, expected lifetime earnings were 96 percent higher.

Illiterate Illegal Aliens

Back in the day, immigrants flocked to the United States, ready, willing, and able to become assimilated, English-speaking Americans. They prized not only America’s opportunities but what America symbolized. These immigrants didn’t just want a good job or higher standard of living. They wanted to be productive and proud Americans.

Today’s “immigrants,” mostly from Central America, have no such ambitions. They come to the U.S. for the employment opportunities and to take advantage of America’s social services. They know what suckers we are for the “disadvantaged,” and they use our own generosity and laws against us.

Not only are illegal aliens pouring across the border, they’re reproducing at higher rates than the native population. Since the federal government is uninterested in carrying out immigration law, illegal aliens are here to stay. This new wave of “immigrants” is uneducated, poor, lacks good English-speaking skills, has disproportionately higher rates of out-of-wedlock births and crime. While black Americans have the convenient white boogeyman to point to as the cause of all their troubles, illegal aliens aren’t really complaining or blaming anyone for anything. At least not yet.

Lower skilled Americans are the ones most negatively affected by illegal aliens. From the report:

Over this same period, nearly half of the projected job growth will be concentrated in occupations associated with higher education and skill levels. This means that tens of millions more of our students and adults will be less able to qualify for higher paying jobs. Instead, they will be competing not only with each other and millions of newly arrived immigrants but also with equally (or better) skilled workers in lower-wage economies around the world.

Wrap-Up

Just focusing on blacks for the time being, I’m convinced that living in a stable family is necessary for the success of a black child today. There are certainly exceptions — the poor black child with an uncaring parent rising to the top academically and professionally — but generally speaking, that’s not the way it works.

Back in the day when blacks as a group valued education more than they do now, even poor blacks did what they had to do – work two or three jobs – to pay their way through schools or send family members to school.

Somewhere along the line, the black “self-help” mantra shifted to a “government action” mantra. Subsequent generations lost the self-help motivation. That, in my opinion, has been devastating. In a global economy, it’s more important than ever that people start taking advantage of opportunities sitting right in front of them. Those on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder can no longer afford to sit back, mired in ignorance and victimhood. They are being left behind, and there will be fewer white people around who care.

Get this through your thick heads: No government program will ever close the educational achievement gap (Correction: Only if the program dumbs down the standards) or wipe out poverty. Individuals must take responsibility for their own situations and find the motivation and determination to alter their own life course. Parents must push their kids to stay in school and succeed (even in a lousy school), but that is assuming the parents care about their kids staying in school and succeeding in the first place. The kind of people who make babies without the foresight and intelligence to form families first are less likely to motivate their kids.

Children of these parents have a tough road ahead of them. They learn warped values in a subculture that claims to care about education but doesn’t practice it. In their world, everything comes down to one thing: victimhood and government handouts. No one taught them that they are indeed masters of their own destinies. No one taught them that education is valuable in itself, let alone where it can take them in this life. I have no sympathy for the adults in this scenario, only for the children of these dolts.

My disgruntled critics love bringing up the fact that “white people do it too” when I write about illegitimacy and crime. It’s a stupid response, really, because we’re talking about proportionality, a concept liberals understand when it comes to race preferences and entitlements but suddenly become ignorant about when the discussion drifts toward crime, poverty, and out-of-wedlock birth statistics.

Yes, social pathologies are found in all races and in all socioeconomic classes, but they’re found not only in greater proportions in the black community, the damage they cause is much worse. For example, during the “free love” era of the 1960s, sexual standards were relaxed, as was the stigma against getting knocked up. Whites were better equipped to absorb the negative impact of sexual permissiveness (increased rates of sexually transmitted diseases, fatherless children, etc.) than blacks. In a group with higher poverty and illegitimacy rates to begin with, the loosening of moral standards was akin to letting loose an aggressive virus.

People are always whining to me about solutions. Solutions. “What don’t you offer solutions instead of criticizing black folks, La Shawn,” they drone. The thing is, I always offer solutions and suggestions, but those solutions and suggestions aren’t what they want to hear. Absent from my list are any references to white people or slavery or government action.

Blacks have within themselves the power to stop committing crimes, stop having sex outside marriage, and to hold a job, any job, learn new skills and network with people who can steer them toward higher paying jobs. These things are not lofty or unrealistic. They are highly do-able and necessary if blacks, especially blacks with lower job skills and educational attainment, want to improve their lot, compete in the global arena, and live decent and productive lives.

Addendum: Some people just can’t help themselves when it comes to the “white people do it, too” refrain. It’s some sort of reflexive yet misguided and pointless defense tactic. Nothing in this post implies that whites don’t “do it, too.” But…oh, never mind. Whatever I say will be ignored anyway.

Related:

• Review of Enough, by Juan Williams
• Review of Raising Boys Without Men
• Hispanics vs. Blacks: The Battle For ‘Preferred Minority’ Status

My libertarian pal Casey Lartigue responded to Fenty’s letter here.

While at that day job, I was itching to write about local politics but couldn’t. Since leaving, the itch went away. Now it’s back. I’ve decided to blog more city government and what I don’t like about it.

For instance, after reading this Washington Post story, “D.C. Schools Considering Unusual Deal With Nonprofit,” I was shocked to learn that neither the Post nor any other major newspaper seemed concerned that EdBuild, a non-profit formed and operated by elected officials, is on the verge of landing a fat, no-bid government contract ostensibly to improve academic performance in schools and modernize facilities, for which is has very little experience, although more qualified companies were rejected. There is a $2.3 billion pot at stake. EdBuild’s founders served in Mayor Williams’s administration, and Fenty just hired one to serve in his. The connections are deep, yet no one is raising ethical or conflict of interest objections.

So I did a bit of investigating of my own and wrote “The EdBuild-D.C. government connection.”

If you have information on insider dealings and political connections between the D.C. government and EdBuild or other organizations, e-mail me in confidence: barbersview [at] yahoo [dot] com.

More to come…

***

Yesterday afternoon I faced the possibility of going on a talking head cable news show today.

The topics were going to be such sensational, plucked-from-the-headlines stuff as the black guy found hanging in the carport of a “white female friend” in Mississippi (Was it suicide because the girl dumped him, or a racially-motivated lynching, or retaliation from a rival for the girl’s affections?) and a teenaged lesbian who wants to start a homosexual club in her school and take her girlfriend to the prom. The school said no to both. As expected, she’s suing.

Because of Bush’s Iraq speech last night, the cable news show decided to bump the segment in favor of Iraq talk, but I was so intrigued by the “gay club” topic, I wanted to generate a discussion about it here.

As some homosexuals are wont to do, they confuse disapproval of their lifestyle with hostility or intolerance. I don’t hate homosexuals and wouldn’t dream of harassing them; I just don’t like how they’ve chosen to live their lives. But that’s their business and their right. I don’t impose my views on them, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to keep my mouth shut while they push for special rights and impose their views on me.

Yasmin Gonzalez, a student at a government school in a socially conservative Florida town, wanted to use school grounds to organize a club to promote “dialogue and tolerance” about homosexuality. (Source)

This case is unusual in that the majority of people in the town seem to be Christians or at the very least, opposed to the homosexual lifestyle on moral grounds. According to the article, the school engaged in a bit of deception to keep Gonzalez from forming the club: We don’t allow clubs…wait a minute…yes we do, but there are too many clubs — that sort of thing.

My answer to the cable show host’s questions would have been along these lines: If the school allows other groups to meet on campus after hours, I can see no rational reason for denying the Gay-Straight Alliance. While I’m opposed to the lifestyle, I don’t think a government school can prohibit homosexual clubs for the same reasons I don’t think it should prohibit faith-based clubs.

(In “Incompatible Kerry’s Immaculate Deception,” I briefly discuss the confusion over so-called separation of church and state.)

I strongly advocate Christian parents taking their children out of government schools and homeschooling or sending them to private Christian schools.

I feel for Christians who can’t afford private schools and for whatever reason aren’t equipped to homeschool. I don’t believe in fighting the government for piecemeal concessions like “prayer in schools.” Children don’t need permission to pray. It is a private matter that can be done without formalities and protests, which in my view cheapen and obscure the whole purpose of prayer.

At the same time, I do believe taxpaying parents have a right to complain and seek change in government schools. I just don’t think it’s worth the effort for Christians to get themselves worked up over problems in a corrupted, Democratic party-controlled (teachers unions), monopolized, government propaganda machine like the public school system.

Stephen L. Carter, writing in Christianity Today, has a different view. In “Give Parents a Say,” he seems to be urging Christian parents not to give up on government schools, suggesting that these schools should return to their local roots in serving communities and families, Christian and non-Christian alike. An excerpt:

These schools served local communities and the families of which those communities were composed. To speak of “public values” in those days would have been to speak nonsense. The community chose what to teach, and that was that. Of course, many of the choices were terrible, and some were actually oppressive. Yet the model of schools serving not “the public” but families continues to have a certain resonance.

Perhaps we should not reject this model out of hand. Perhaps, instead of viewing public schools entirely as functions of the larger government, we should see them as joint ventures between the government (and its public values) and the local families it serves (and their local values). Rather than alienating parents unnecessarily, perhaps we can find sensible compromises between the all-or-nothing strict separationism of the federal courts and religious domination.

As someone who’s grown up under “Big Government,” the idea of limited government being a foreign concept, I can’t even comprehend the idea of taxpayer-supported schools serving “local communities and the families of which those communities were composed,” and I grew up in a small southern town!

The idea of “localism” is great in theory, but with teachers unions, an arm of the Democratic party, fighting to maintain domination over government schools, the battle would be bloody and in my view, not worth it. Christians, just take your kids out of government schools and educate them the way they should be.

Questions:

1. In the case of Yasmin Gonzalez, who wants to form a homosexual club and take her girlfriend to the prom, what is your opinion, whether Christian or not?

2. How should Christian parents react if they’re offended by certain curricula or policies in government schools?

3. How relevant are the biblical concepts “render unto Caesar” and “submitting to the authorities” when it comes to Christian parents and children and government schools?

Clarification (11:29 a.m.): Some readers might be misunderstanding #3. I am not implying that Christian parents are biblically required to “render” their children to the government. What’s in view is Christians forking over taxes to pay for government schools. I believe parents who send kids to non-government schools should be exempt from supporting them. I’ll be clearer next time…

Related post and articles:

• I’m A Libertarian On Education
• Liberals and Their Advice
• “Pro-Choice” For D.C.’s Black Students (original title)
• Review of Liberty & Learning: Milton Friedman’s Voucher Idea At Fifty

Links:

• Classical Christian Homeschooling
• Homeschooling with the Trivium
• Homeschool Christian

I watched her show about a year ago to live-blog her dressing-down of James Frey, the Oprah Book Club darling who told big lies about his life in his disgraced memoir, A Million Little Pieces.

Oprah is in the news again. She recently built a girl’s school in South Africa, the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, to the tune of $40 million. Part vanity project, part personal therapy, part charity, the school will educate impoverished young African girls for free. (Newsweek)

The school is downright luxurious compared to what the girls are used to: 22 acres, a beauty salon, high-quality sheets, spacious rooms and closets, china. Understandably, some natives think the school is a bit too opulent, especially for girls who come from extreme poverty. People love to tell other people how to spend their money. Sure, Oprah could have built a very nice school for a fraction of the price, but she wanted the girls to have lavish surroundings because “beauty does inspire.”

“I wanted this to be a place of honor for them because these girls have never been treated with kindness. They’ve never been told they are pretty or have wonderful dimples. I wanted to hear those things as a child,” Oprah said. (This is the “part therapy” I mentioned earlier.)

Some may wonder why Oprah didn’t build such a school right here in the U.S. and why she hasn’t taken a similar hands-on approach. Although she’s given money to inner city schools, she said she stopped visiting them. American children — or should we say poor American children, inner city American children? — don’t value education the way kids in other countries do. Oprah said (emphasis added):

“Say what you will about the American educational system—it does work,” she says. “If you are a child in the United States, you can get an education.” And she doesn’t think that American students—who, unlike Africans, go to school free of charge—appreciate what they have. “I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there,” she says. “If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.”

And parents bear a large portion of the blame for these attitudes. Love of learning, in my humble opinion, begins in the home, not in a government school classroom.

One reason I get so angry when black Americans whine about racism and blame it for all sorts of things, from the academic achievement gap to illegitimacy to black incarceration rates, is that many blacks across the rest of the planet would give anything to come to the U.S. and live like the poorest black Americans (who have air conditioning and cable TV!).

We Americans, black and white, are so spoiled. We take for granted things like free government education, proper sanitation, an economic system under which we can make a decent living if we actually work, private ownership rights, access to safe, plentiful, and relatively cheap food — the ingratitude is sickening.

[A commenter "corrects" me. Government schools are not free; they are supported by taxpayers, as I am aware every time I fork over large portions of my income to the government as a member of the self-employed cabal. Pardon the imprecise expression.]

The main impediments to success in America are entrenched generational pathologies, like broken families, that must be overcome, and the failure to take advantage of America’s rich opportunities. If you’re willing to work, you can get a job. It may be low-paying or “beneath” you, but it’s a start. As you acquire skills and develop good work habits (and not just show up), you can move up. You can go to school part time and learn a trade, or become an apprentice for someone willing to help. I tend to be hard on people because my tolerance for sloth and excuse-making is quite low. If you haven’t done all that’s in your power to improve your life, don’t blame anyone else for your pitiful circumstances. I have little sympathy for you.

Well, I’m just about done. Read Clarence Page’s column about Oprah’s school, “Oprah’s Truth Does Not Hurt.” He agrees with her comments about inner city children but says her “poke” at materialism of poor black students “delighted conservative commentators.”

I take issue with his generalization of “conservative commentators” (and by implication, conservatives in general). They may be “delighted” that a black person as high-profile as Oprah said publicly what they discuss only in private lest they be branded racists. The so-called delight lies in the hope that inner city blacks will take Oprah’s remarks to heart and learn to value a good education.

But Page is a liberal, and what else can you expect from one of them?

Oh…sorry about the generalization, Mr. Page.

Addendum: Just to clarify, I think Oprah has done a good thing, opulence and all. I don’t know if I made that clear in the post.

Related posts:

• Turn Off That Idiot Box!
• The Mission: Middle-Class vs. Lower-Class Families
• Professor Laments Lack of Well-Read Students
• Are Government Schools “Hiding” Blacks’ Test Scores?
• Black Homeschooling on the Rise
• Prince George’s County: Grade F
• Acting White
• Black Marriage