In the wake of Cosby-like arguments damning black people for their condition, I thought it would be helpful to actually talk about the case of a single person who’d done all the right things, but still couldn’t get ahead. Listen to her story here.
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That was real talk Lester.
Your commentary discussed a scenario with which I have much familiarity—overlooked or undermentored Black talent.
Although I believe our schools and the political systems that discourage long-term and consistent advocacy for them share much of the blame for overlooking or under-mentoring Black talent in poorer neighborhoods, I also think more Black professionals who know how a Black student’s potential can be realized must step up even more—work directly with Black junior high, high school, and college students—until better solutions are implemented.
Many poorer Black students do not have parents or mentors that are able to give them valuable academic and career advice or assistance. I frequently press my professional friends to contribute an additional fifty hours per year to Black student-focused community-service and social networking projects that aim to fill the social capital gaps that hinder our overlooked and under-mentored Black students.
Why do these gaps in knowledge about exactly how to prepare for professions that require more than high school or junior college vocational education still exist? Some of it exists because parents irresponsibly fail to educate themselves so they might wisely advise their children. Some of it exists because parents fail to stick their noses into the inner-workings of their children’s public schools. Yet, some of it exists because parents, especially single mothers, simply don’t have the time and energy to educate themselves sufficiently or stick their noses into schools—they barely have enough time to sleep in between their several jobs. And, too much of it exists because folks at our public schools, beholden to the whims of politics, give up on our Black students who find themselves among the lower rungs of socioeconomic strata (rungs that are disproportionately Black).
I have dealt with enough Black students and their parents to rationally assume that there are plenty of Black students with incredible potential that goes uncultivated because our schools don’t believe in them or refuse to mentor them. Lack of resources at these schools, while it certainly can decrease the morale of students, teachers, and administrators, is not a sufficient cause for this apathy and neglect, as I have observed caring high school administrators fill social capital gaps for Black students at the most modestly-resourced schools. This leads me to believe that structural hurdles—those that cater to political whims and power grabbing more than students’ interests—and racism—something I believe at least partially explains the voluntary neglect of and apathy towards Black students in poorer communities—are very real problems that have nothing to do with the cultural ills that the panacea-seeking “Black leaders†claim are the ills Black Americans should focus on most.
For now, I prefer to focus most on ills that Blacks don’t directly control. Once those go away, I think it would be easier to gauge just how much Black-caused ills are harming Blacks.
Right on the money Doc ,I remenber not to long ago a high school student was giving imformation (wrong)about choices of schools;there must be a cadre of mentors.
in black run spaces like the school i’m referring to, there are usually a dearth of resources that are external. urban school systems aren’t working with a lot anyway, and magnet schools within those systems get more than other schools. but even within magnet schools there is a pecking order. kids with connections and resources get more resources. kids without them get fewer.
so in majority black spaces like this, black teachers, principals, and counselors are directly responsible for the way their resources (which are poor to begin with) are distributed. if someone like this kid falls by the way they neglected their responsibility (even if, because of structural factors, it wasn’t their fault).
Lester:
You make excellent points about these majority Black spaces. And, I agree, in these predominantly Black spaces, Black teachers, principals, and counselors should be held responsible, as they are the tip of the failing spear.
I also suspect aversive or intentional racism, against Blacks by non-Blacks, occurs at the level of discretion where non-Blacks get to determine which Blacks are given power over these schools. If non-Blacks give certain Blacks discretionary power (often as payment to supporters for political favors), while knowing these Blacks will probably continue to enable disdainful practices that unnecessarily overlook and under-mentor Black youth, then, while the Black teachers, principals, and counselors are quite complicit in this shameful assault against Black youth, the non-Blacks who hired the failing Black leaders are to be held responsible as well. And, if they are Black politicians who are hiring these failing Black teachers, principals, and counselors, then the voting citizens who gave the Black politicians the power to neglect Black youth have only themselves to blame.
Additionally, I believe intra-race racism occurs as well as inter-race racism in some of these failing predominantly Black spaces. Blacks, who at some point during or before their careers with these school systems, decided to give up on Black youth or became convinced that most of the Black youth simply were beyond help, became intra-race racists. And, I suspect most of these are aversive intra-race racists, serving as unwitting or cowardly enablers of the their schools’ degenerative apathy towards and neglect of overlooked and under-mentored Black students.