Gilberto dP wrote:The same is true in schools. Studies have shown that black students often receive harsher punishment for the same behavior. Maybe it's racism, maybe it's because the rate of these behaviors is higher in these schools and the amount of resources is lower so the principal and other staff just run out of patience and energy. It's not hard to imagine that being suspended or expelled from school isn't helpful to outcomes later in life.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/a ... ls/548084/
Hannah-Jones: I never talk about school inequality in terms of “diversity” because I think it’s a useless word. I think it’s a word that white people love. When I say “curated diversity,” it means white parents like a type of diversity so they’ll still be the majority and there won’t be too many black kids.
White Americans, in general, are willing to accept about the ratio of black Americans at large: 10 to 15 percent.
I think both of these are true. I would also note that, as usual, the lawyers are somewhat to blame. Teachers and administrators are to some extent personally liable for injuries suffered by children under their care. I can't safely break up a fight between 3 6th grade boys, even if I feel compassion for their circumstances, which in my experience on one occasion was that one was a war refugee from Yemen, one was a low income black kid, and one was a white kid who found his drug-addict mother dead. So, I have to scream for a male administrator to come help. Luckily, at the school where I taught, one of the male administrators was a 6'4" black man, and the other was a super-fit 6' white guy, both in their early 30s. Since I sometimes filled in for the school secretary in the office, I know that these men had to deal with a constant flow of emergencies or perceived emergencies. They had no choice except to adopt a fairly draconian suspension policy. In fact, when I requested that I please not be assigned above the 5th grade level, and then staffing shortages placed me again with these boys, the principal came in and told the class at the start of the day that anybody I had to send to the office for any reason would be immediately placed on 3 day suspension. It's like the difference between being on the front line as a medic and working at some Veteran's hospital back stateside.
As Hannah Jones mentions above, and Colin Woodard makes very clear in his "American Nations", the race problem in America is one of caste, not just class. The class mobility issues can be addressed in a manner that will effectively also directly help white members of the underclass. My suggestion for increasing class mobility, one that is being explored by the school board in the low-income district where I taught, would be focus on greatly expanded opportunities for vocational training and apprenticeship starting at very early age, and involving private enterprise in making the problem its own solution. My suggestion for decreasing perception of racial caste is anything that will increase acceptance or even applause for the expanded practice of inter-racial dating and marriage. Separate but equal does not work. The problem with reparations, IMO, is that it will tend towards drawing a bolder line just as this line is becoming increasingly fuzzy. This is a systems-theory level issue.
So, in accordance with systems theory, let's ask the opposite question. How would greater exposure to black Americans and black culture possibly benefit white Americans? Well, Black Americans are better at sports, disproportionately gifted in the arts (inclusive of many practical arts such as cooking and garden design), and they are sexier than white Americans (obvious when you consider the fact that almost every white American/British entertainer known for sexiness borrowed heavily from black culture.) It has been my experience that many black children who are remedial readers are very good at mathematics. This makes sense since math skills and music skills are known to be correlated, and it's difficult to overcome lack of early exposure to white standard English.
One of my musician sister's tirades is that white American children are early deprived of the experience of rhythm. We have very little poetry or soul in our uptight, busy-busy, rule-of-ruled-paper, petty hierarchical meritocracy. We have utterly abandoned our oral tradition, place our infants alone dark rooms in barred cribs to wail themselves to sleep, so that they can learn as early as possible the lesson that self-reliance is harsh reality, and stiff-upper-lip is mandatory. So, obviously, the world will be a better place when every culture conforms to this model. Odd though, when the topic of unnecessary early death comes up, nobody mentions that the suicide rate among American white men is almost twice that of black men, and the number of suicides overall is 3x as great as homicides, and on the increase vs. decrease.
If I as myself whether my DS29 would be more or less likely to commit suicide if he married a black woman, my answer would be less, but I can't provide any statistics or spread-sheet analysis to answer the "why?" Just gut-feeling or intuition, and perhaps some attempt to alleviate my maternal fear or guilt that perhaps I shouldn't have always attempted to distract him with a picture book or puzzle when he wanted to yell and run up and down the aisles on the city bus when he was 2. I clearly remember one time when the middle-aged black male bus driver observed his behavior and laughed and said to me "Your boy's got spirit!" So, whenever possible I try to return favor, engage in mutually beneficial cross-cultural trade, and maybe tell the single mom of a very spirited black boy, "Your child displays a gift for mathematics that he could potentially develop.", and I definitely say it to the boy himself.
Of course, my opinion that racism is idiotic on multiple levels, varying cultures should be appreciated, but not preserved like museum pieces, does not detract one iota from my post-feminist quite sexist perspective which informs me that virtually ALL homo sapien males of every possible skin tone are thugs and they should be sent out to the woods to chop at logs, or at least forced to do laps around a track for at least 1.5 hours every day if no productive use for their labor is available.
Maybe I shouldn't post from the dentist's chair.