Patrick Welsh, Washington Post, October 18, 2009
“Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?”
In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class of 12th-graders who had done horribly on a test I had just given. A kid who seldom came to class—and was constantly distracting other students when he did—shot back: “It’s because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study.”
Another student angrily challenged me: “You ask the class, just ask how many of us have our fathers living with us.” When I did, not one hand went up.
{snip} It hit me that these students, at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, understood what I knew too well: The lack of a father in their lives had undermined their education. The young man who spoke up knew that with a father in his house he probably wouldn’t be ending 12 years of school in the bottom 10 percent of his class with a D average. {snip}
My students knew intuitively that the reason they were lagging academically had nothing to do with race, which is the too-handy explanation for the achievement gap in Alexandria. And it wasn’t because the school system had failed them. They knew that excuses about a lack of resources and access just didn’t wash at the new, state-of-the-art, $100 million T.C. Williams, where every student is given a laptop and where there is open enrollment in Advanced Placement and honors courses. Rather, it was because their parents just weren’t there for them—at least not in the same way that parents of kids who were doing well tended to be.
In an example of how bad the fixation on race here has become, last year Morton Sherman, the new superintendent, ordered principals throughout the city to post huge charts in their hallways so everyone—including 10-year-old kids—could see differences in test scores between white, black and Hispanic students. One mother told me that a black fifth-grader at Cora Kelly Magnet School said that “whoever sees that sign will think I am stupid.” A fourth-grade African American girl there looked at the sign and said to a friend: “That’s not me.” When black and white parents protested that impressionable young children don’t need such information, administrators accused them of not facing up to the problem. Only when the local NAACP complained did Sherman have the charts removed.
Achievement gaps don’t break down neatly along racial lines. Take Yasir Hussein, a student of mine last year whose parents emigrated from Sudan in the early 1990s, and who entered the engineering program at Virginia Tech this fall. “My parents were big on our family living the American dream,” he said. “One quarter when I got a 3.5 grade-point average, the guys I hung around with were congratulating me, but my parents had the opposite reaction. They took my PlayStation and TV out of my bedroom and told me I could do better.”
{snip}
But Yasir’s experience isn’t what community activists and school administrators at T.C. Williams or around the country focus on. They cast the difference between kids who are succeeding in school and those who are not in terms of race and seem obsessed with what they call “the gap” between the test scores of white and black students.
This year, community groups in St. Louis and Portland, Ore., issued reports decrying the gap. After a recent state report on test scores in California schools, Jack O’Connell, the state’s superintendent of instruction, said the gap is “the biggest civil rights issue of this generation”—a very popular phrase in education circles.
But focusing on a “racial achievement gap” is too simple; it’s a gap in familial support and involvement, too. Administrators focused solely on race are stigmatizing black students. At the same time, they are encouraging the easy excuse that the kids who are not excelling are victims, as well as the idea that once schools stop being racist and raise expectations, these low achievers will suddenly blossom.
{snip}
“The real problem,” says Glenn Hopkins, president of Alexandria’s Hopkins House, which provides preschool and other services to low-income families, “is that school superintendents don’t realize—or won’t admit—that the education gap is symptomatic of a social gap.”
Hopkins notes that student achievement is deeply affected by issues of family, income and class, things superintendents have little control over. “Even with best teachers in the world, they don’t have the power to solve the problem,” he says. “They naively assume that if they throw in a little tutoring and mentoring and come up with some program they can claim as their own, the gap will close.”
{snip}
Original article
Email
Patrick Welsh
at patrwelsh@gmail.com .
(Posted on October 20, 2009)
Comments
“Hopkins notes that student achievement is deeply affected by issues of family, income and class, things superintendents have little control over. “Even with best teachers in the world, they don’t have the power to solve the problem,” he says. “They naively assume that if they throw in a little tutoring and mentoring and come up with some program they can claim as their own, the gap will close.”
Throw the same tutoring in to the White kids and see what happenes.
Certainly if black men would take responsibility for their sexual promiscuity and stay with their offspring it would help. But genetics would still be a factor.
This piece makes the valid point that fatherless children are unlikely to achieve academically what children with at-home fathers can accomplish.
The real racial question presented by this acknowledgement is where are the fathers and why are these kids growing up without one?
“where are the fathers and why are these kids growing up without one”?
They’re suffering under the racist system. (sarcasm off)
It suggests the obvious question, why isn’t Africa or Haiti a center of learning and science?
Um so in Africa, Blacks make model fathers? Has the author ever heard the life story of Barak Obama I wonder…. For that matter does the concept of fatherhood even exist in africa? I thought in mother Africa the policy is “it takes a village to raise a child” i.e. you let the little scamps be raised by the women of the village while the identity of the father is unknown.
And over hear in the USA why would these young Detroiters necessarily be better off anyway with the sperm donor hanging around?
Does the author think that all black men who sire children are just good natured Bill Cosby types, rather than convicted felons, unemployed deadbeats, and shiftless loafs that many of them undoubtedly are? One would assume if you are the kind of guy who impregnates a woman and then vanishes, then you probably would be lacking the basics qualities that you would want in a role model.
They like to blame social class for the gap when it is the inherent low IQ of the people in the lower social class and the poor behavioral choices they make due to their low IQ that has them in the lower social class to begin with.
“It’s because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study.”
Give me a break.
If this kid knows this is the problem, he should know that he’s the answer, dad or no dad.
This excuse has been used before and it still doesn’t cut it. It’s what it is, an excuse.
Any teacher will tell you if he/she is honest that blacks dont care about learning. Whether it’s genetic or cultural, it’s irrelevant. Most black students spend their time today in school hooked on to an ipod or MP3. Hip hop numbs their mind.
The article is true - to a degree….
The racial background of a group determines the average of the group.
But.
The presence of a father in the house is the strongest predictor of the child acheving there educational potential.
A dullard is still a dullard, but a controlled and educated one. A smart kid in a black single parent house has little hope, but one with a father to “kick some ass” and keep the kid out of trouble has some chance of making middle class.
Were blacks any smarter back when they had 2 parents in the home? How about in Africa? Don’t they have a whole village raising the kids? Are they any smarter?
There were about forty black families in my city. This was from the 1940’s to the ‘50’s. Only one family had no father and that was because he was killed in an inndustrial accident. Only one family had more that two children and that was because the parents were caught with a change-of-life baby. All of the families had a working father who lived with his family. To my knowledge, not one black kid ever got in trouble in school or with the law. They dressed, talked, and acted like the white kids. Last I heard, they all had pretty good jobs and kept up their homes and families. Enter the federal government and all hell broke loose.
“If black children had fathers at home, there would be no racial achievement gap.”
Yes, how true. That’s why there was no achievement gap 50 years ago and prior to that time.
See how easy it is to solve the problem of low intelligence? Just make the bro stay home and the problem takes care of itself.
Why, in fact, if the fathers stayed home throughout Africa, the average group I.Q. of blacks would be 120 instead of 70.
I think everyone here would agree that a black family with the father and mother under one roof would outperform one without both parents under equal circumstances. A very popular idea amongst many professionals is that the very progressive welfare state created in the 1960’s destroyed the black family and has crippled its growth. This idea has a very strong correlation and it seems common sense to assume it holds a powerful effect.
Would blacks be near on par with whites if the fathers stayed at home? A lot of evidence suggests otherwise such as comparing to blacks around the globe and before the 1960’s. Either way the break up of the black family and the IQ gap is further evidence that more damage than good is done when diversity is forced upon peoples. As far as their token african having a 3.5 its common knowledge that we usually only accept the brightest from foreign countries and he doesn’t represent the norm.
Shaun
Fathers in the home? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight!! This is ludicrous drivel. many black families DO have fathers in the home. But different kids may have different fathers! And the father usually leaves when he is kicked out for beating the mother or beating/sexually abusing the kids. The black with a “father in the home” may be suffering sex abuse,violence and God knows what. Black males arent MEANT to stay with the family—they arent white!Another idiotic we are all the same illusion!!
I’ve never yet managed to find a study comparing fatherless children to those with fathers that properly controls the “race” variable. Anyone able to recommend any?
A good point, but then why do subsaharan black africans still have a lower IQ than even african-americans despite “having fathers at home”?
Charges of “racist” hurled at the author in 4…3…2..
If more black kids had fathers at home it would help black academic achievement, but while it would reduce the black-white gap there is no reason but foolish liberal hope to believe that it would eliminate it. Naturally those same liberals created the welfare system that rewards black women for having children out of wedlock.
I.Q. predicts academic success with a high degree of precision. Many studies fix the mean I.Q. of those who call themselves African-American at 85. It follows that 50% have L.Q,’s less than 85 - a significant handicap in the contemporary work place and many other fields.
If they had fathers, the average Black kid could get an 8th grade education and learn one of the simpler trades. But the way the economy looks, White college grads will be needing those jobs. The Blacks’ chance has come and gone. Anything that might realistically be done will be too little, too late.
Or…you could just put an end to this ridiculous charade once and for all, and admit that there is no achievement gap, but and IQ gap, and that, coupled with the attendant black cultural misbehavior and dysfunction explains everything. There - was that so hard?
“My students knew intuitively that the reason they were lagging academically had nothing to do with race, which is the too-handy explanation for the achievement gap in Alexandria.”
What planet is this guy living on? Can he name one public official who explains that race is the reason for the gap? You have to come to amren.com or read J.P. Rushton to find a place where race is pegged as the reason.
Patrick Welsh has been writing these sort of whiny articles for the Washington Post for years. It is always about how minority group children require special programs, more attention, more spending, more counseling, more this or that …. whatever … to come up to an educational par with whites. Why, oh why, do some whites look upon equalizing the educational outcome of minorities as the new holy grail for western civilization?
Perhaps these people should find something more pleasant to do with their lives than pretending the emperor has new clothes. Please, please get a life and stop trying to make a cat bark (so to speak).
Having an actual father who lives in the home would be helpful … but that ain’t gonnna happen.
It’s always some other reason beyond the multitude of studies, tests and endless empirical evidence that contributes to the dismal educational scores of Blacks. I’m sure in the near future, after all else fails, they will blame corn syrup additives in the orange soda they consume.
(And have no doubt White racism will be blamed for the dastardly conspiracy.)
I note in the article that Asian students’ scores were not posted at the Cora Kelly Magnet School, only Caucasians, Hispanics and Bantus. Why not? I think it’s because, if a fourth race (Oriental Asians) were thrown in the mix, then it would serve notice that achievement gaps are partially based on race. It would show the “disadvantaged” Bantus and Hispanics that “somebody else” is outperforming whitey, and would underscore the gap even more.
But, by making this only about three races, the school system can keep up the fiction of whitey holding down the Bantus and Hispanics.
This article is one of the rare accurate descriptions of a major cause of low student achievement. Having been a teacher at the high school level in a suburban Chicago school district, I became convinced that the lack of a two parent home was a primary factor in poor student achievement. Almost without exception, a student who had poor attendance, was disruptive, or was poorly motivated, came from a single parent home. The correlation is indisputable, but the media, the governments, and even the schools refuse to comment on it. This “political correctness” works to exacerbate, not solve, the problem!
The kids from Africa might be doing better because they’re in the top tier of Africans whose parents had the skills and education to migrate to the US.
The average African is doing worse than the average African American.
Average mathematics score of eighth grade students, by country: 2003http://nces.ed.gov/timss/TIMSS03Tables.asp?Quest=3&Figure=5
It certainly is about family support and encouragement and NOT race. There is a white boy down the road who has two sisters.
When I was a child, just being around my Dad watching him work on things and never being told “not to touch” when it came to tools and such, as I got older I realized how much I had absorbed and how much I knew how to do. This young man does not have even this.
Not having a father figure at home is only part of the equation for the failing grades of the children. The real dilemma that blacks and Hispanics face in “making the grade” is having an IQ that is capable of achieving it.
Unfortunately, blacks and Hispanics will be judged against Whites and Asians when it comes to academic achievement results. Having low IQ parents in the home won’t change the outcome.
His argument would hold water if his classroom were full of gifted but fatherless children who functioned poorly in school.
I suspect the IQ average in the room is ca 80.
I was a fatherless, chaotic child who funtioned ver poorly in school (I was terribly bored).
I went on to ger my PhD from an Ivy university.
black fathers would help, but it will never close the gap in cognitive ability.
Yes. The problem is that these kids don’t have a father. There was a man who had sex with their mother. That’s all.
I worked in a school that was 70% hispanic and 30% black. Of the Hispanic kids, the majority were okay, but about a quarter of them were totally getting assimilated into the gang-banger lifestyle. But the Black kids, oh my gosh! To a kid they were wild, crazy, indisciplined and some were just plain nuts.
I have good rapport with kids in general, so I was able to keep a functional class going, but it was so darn hard. I eventually transferred to a 100% Hispanic school, and about 75% of the kids are actually good. I think that the problems of the Black community are definately related to disfunctional culture, and it won’t get any better, any more than white-trash culture can improve, because failure and disfunction are cultural patterns passed among the generations.
Hence, I don’t even think everything is about race, per se, but more class differences. The great thing about America has been that determined individuals can claw their way out of their commuity’s disfunction and find a better way of life. The problem today is that since America is being overwhelmed by illiterate wretched masses from every jungle and mountaintop of the Third World, our resources are being stretched to the breaking point, making low class values (and the government dependancy that goes along with it) seem the norm.
Sadly, I am seeing an increasingly large number of white kids (and immigrant kids from good families) copying ghetto culture, flashing gang signs, speaking in Ebonics and acting the fool. I, also, feel hopeless about the future of this once proud country, and I wonder if the cycle of history is merely turning.
The Roman Empire fell when too many Germanic barbarians (fleeing the Huns) were allowed to settle in the Empire proper. They were supposed to leave their weapons at the border, but few of the tribes did, and after a few dozen years, the more uncivilized Germans realized that the fruits of Roman labor laid all around for the picking. By then Rome had been riven by many disatrous civil wars. Some of the German tribes were even integrated into the Roman army by then. Well, when they realized they were stronger than the Romans, the Germanic tribes en masse rose us and began to pillage all over the place.
When I look at the contry today, and hear how Third Worlders will be the majority of the country in 2040 or 2050, and how they are increasingly in the army and envious of what the native born have - well, the writing is on the wall. Will a new and more vibrant civilization arise many centuries from now after our fall and subsequent Dark Ages?
In the past, the world was much cleaner and less populated. There were resources and intelligences to exploit to build something new, like in Renaissance Europe. When I see the overcrowded world and diminishing resources of all types, I think the only solution is to colonize the stars and only allow people who meet certain civilizational criteria to enter.
Another student angrily challenged me: “You ask the class, just ask how many of us have our fathers living with us.”
I wonder, why these students don’t angrily challenge their mothers and fathers and don’t request explanation of this sorry state of affairs.
It’s not just the fatherlessness, it’s the entire ghetto culture that punishes kids who want to learn (“acting white”).
A white child without a father in the home can still be self-motivated (or motivated by the mother) to study and achieve. Apparently not so with black children.
Personally, I think it’s the negative peer pressure that is handed down from generation to generation.
It’s not just fathers; it’s got to be GOOD fathers.
Doubtful at best. Black kids having Black fathers at home is hardly a guarantee of anything. All-too-often the father is uninterested in the kids’ scholastic performance. At worst, he could be a drug user, drunkard or a criminal waiting to be caught.
Let’s also recall the reality the Industrial Revolution, along with the vast amount of knowledge amassed, the experimentation and tinkering that ushered in steam power… it DID NOT happen in the Congo but in Europe, specifically 18th Century England.
I got a chuckle the other day browsing through books at Barnes & Noble. I picked up and looked through a book “Early Scientists” or some similar title. Guess what? The liberal fools have not yet found a way to replace those great thinkers with black faces yet. But predictably, the liberals will do their best to ensure impressionable young people don’t get their hands on that kind of reading. After all, it would certainly conflict with the politically correct propaganda students are being pumped up with… from Kindergarden on through college.
” And the congregation said,” AMEN “.In a society that pays NFL baby factories 1.5 million a year, and makes middle class reproduction almost impossible due to taxation, we are surprised that 75% of all black kids are yard youngins. This Sunday as you pay 125 per lousy seat on the 15 yard line, remember that when 22 men line up 45 single parent kids are cheering them on.
There is no thing like having absolute no parents - there will be adult supervision under some form or another. A child on its own will die.
End of WWII - millions of children in Germany had no parents (strategic bombing campaign, war effort etc.). In a jiffy Germany grew again (Marshall plan - do not overestimate its worth against pure hard graft) - even after extreme post WWII famine in some quarters.
Eastern Germany, under communism (even more extreme poverty and hardship after WWII) turned into the most well-off Eastern block country.
Everywhere there were no parents. There weren’t even psychologists to council the war casualties, they were dead.
But those children made it.
Well I believe that the Jackson family (Michael) had their “father” in the home…..right??? Look at how all of them are more or less dysfunctional.
Here is the whole package in a nutshell: Liberalism is American Nazism, white people are its victims, the Democratic Party is its political home, the mass media is its center of power, and black thugs are its stormtroopers. Yes, blacks would perform better if they had fathers at home, and more to the point if they tried to conform to the standards of the white community; no they won’t ever come up to the best examples of white societal performance. The larger point is that blacks act the way the Liberal establishment encourages them to act, or at least tolerates. (You might say their bigger father has been absent for the last 45 years.) There was a crime explosion in the 1960s the heart of which was blacks taking racial vengeance on whites in the street that could only have happened because the Liberals coming into power signaled their tolerance for it, and indeed gave it government protection. Liberals get benefits from sponsoring black bad behavior, apart from the emotional satisfaction it gives them it helped push though the massive increase in government power (their power) and centralization. Anyone who is old enough remembers the calls from blacks and leftists to pass legislation or “it’s gonna be a long, hot, summer. ” Leftists fairly quickly dropped such threats, just too openly racist and fascist, but blacks continued to make them for decades. Bad black behavior and performance is in part biological, but the worst of it is largely political, it stems from the beliefs and policies of the dominant left, and a determined effort from Republicans and establishment Conservatives not the see the obvious white-hating racism in those policies and beliefs.
While having a father at home is an asset it is certainly no guarantee that a kid will be sucessful. My husband and his older brother did not have a father around much after the age of about 8 (my husband does not remember having his dad around) They had a bit of a crazy childhood (living on a ranch without running water or electricity in the early 1970’s in NoCal) Both of them have done pretty well, my husband graduated college and has a good job, his brother did not go to college but is very intellegent and also has a good job. I am sure that life would have been different if their dad has been around but more to the point, they had the intellegence to make their own way.
I may be in the minority, but I don’t believe that blacks’ IQ’s are the main reason for their failure. Their self-proclaimed ‘culture’ and conduct, in my opinion, is the primary explanation for their lack of advancement. I still feel that blacks could achieve more if they had the more caring and principled home environment that most whites do, regardless of the number of . It’s not just the absence of fathers in the home, though that is obviously a key component. Many children raised in one-parent households grow up to be productive adults. Black children could still do much better than they do even in a fatherless household if their MOTHERS had a more responsible parental attitude: more civilized behavior, a truly loving and nurturing devotion to their children and a sincere interest in their education and well-being rather than the unconcerned, me first attitude that they do have. Black women’s screaming and hollering, their ghettospeak filled with obscenities, their trashy dress, their sense of entitlement, etc. is even more influential on a child when it comes from the only adult example that the children have. Black women’s lack of being a responsible role model themselves is an even more significant cause of failure of black youths. If they WERE more responsible, they wouldn’t have so many short-term, volatile, sexual relationships with such horrendous examples of young adult males.
“If more black kids had fathers at home it would help black academic achievement, but while it would reduce the black-white gap there is no reason but foolish liberal hope to believe that it would eliminate it.”
Reduce black/white gap? Not true. The average scores would be the same, but there would be more blacks scoring up to the point they do now. Black fathers cannot raise I.Q.’s even if they never left home at all. The gap would remain the same, unless the schools started cheating which is an altogether very real possibility.
Per the Bell Curve, only 16% of African Americans have IQ’s about 100 points.
Only 2.3% of all African Americans have an IQ of about 115 points.
Anything above 115 is an anomaly for blacks. If you notice from the Bell Curve graph, black I.Q.’s go up to about 120, then kind of fade out altogether. I’m betting also that the majority of those who do score in the vicinity of 115 are mostly mulattos.
Work done in Africa has shown that the best and brightest are in the 95-100 range on average. Personally, I suspect black I.Q. scores in America are slightly inflated due to much manipulation of the tests, because so much wailing was done by blacks contending that the original tests were racist.
Where have I heard that before?
Hmm. Well, I’m a white girl who was raised by a single mother, yet grades are exceptional. Guess that throws this theory out the window…
Stupid men father stupid children; stupid men tend to show no interest in their offspring. This accounts for much of the realtionship between far away fathers and their offspring’s lack of scholastic achievment. I know that all social scientists recieve training in statistics, so Phd’s in Education know the difference between cause and corelation. Therefore this is another specious and assine attempts to explain away racial differnces scholastic achievement.
“It’s because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study.”
What a lie. I don’t believe any of the kids said that.
This is a new liberal tactic: comparing US blacks with Africans, so that (a) we can continue to deny the importance of genes and (b) import more African blacks, and further dilute the white majority.
It’s not just fathers; it’s got to be GOOD fathers. -Shawn
Yes, but isn’t that the problem? If they were good fathers, they wouldn’t be absent in the first place. Their absence is evidence that they probably aren’t the kind that would be good to have around (maybe they are on bad terms with the mother, or want to avoid supporting the child, or are highly promiscuous and don’t know about the child). “Good fathers” are not just a commodity that can be doled out to families. Who they happen to be reflects the value judgment made by the woman who entered into a relationship with the man, and who, once pregnant, decides to carry her baby to term.
There was actually an article Amren posted just a few months ago that got to this very point:http://tinyurl.com/yhpjhct
From the article: “We’re seeing more and more single African-American women who are not finding men,” Caldwell says. “There’s a lack of qualified black men to get into relationships with.”
So black women ARE aware of the lack of good potential fathers, and, still desiring children, are finding new routes that are most beneficial for the child under the circumstances. Assuming that any male child raised by a single black woman is doomed to failure and future absentee fatherhood is extremely pessimistic and would lead to the conclusion that black women should simply remain childless — for the good of the children.
There are racial differences of course, but cultural differences should not be underestimated. Those cultural differences were exaggerated with the creation of the modern welfare state in the mid 1960’s, and the rates of fatherless black children skyrocketed immediately. Blacks used to get married at the same rates as whites, and now they don’t. Daddy was replaced by a welfare check and became obsolete.
Unfortunately, the only way liberals will be forced to recognize this is as a last-ditch attempt to head off the coming mountains of genetic evidence. Mark my words, in the next couple of decades, liberal explanations for black failure will start to sound a lot like conservatives in the 1990’s.
What to do about it? First, we must recognize that modern black culture is thoroughly rotten. When a limb is thoroughly rotten, you amputate it. When a culture is so rotten that it automatically infects all the children within it, you must remove the children from that culture. Specifically, schools that are explicitly for fatherless black kids would help. Do not send them home at night. They will learn bad habits and will not do any homework. Raise them in disciplined academies out in the countryside, with no exposure to rap or ghetto culture. Relatives may visit, but only briefly. Combine this with the elimination of the welfare state, and let private charities and churches handle dysfunctional people as they used to. Stop rewarding bad behavior, in other words. It’s not a perfect cure, but it would be an improvement I think.
Unfortunately, any program like this would be struck down as flagrantly unconstitutional and illegal. And it will not even be considered until we get past the nonsensical idea that all cultures are equal—never mind that all races are not equal.
Rex Kramer:
KIPP academies are almost what you want — borderline orphanages for black middle schoolers. And even with all those advantages, and all that expense, and the luxury that KIPP has to expel troublemakers, the results have been less than stellar: The average test scores of black KIPPers is CLOSE to the white average, and by that, I mean all whites, troublemakers included.
I am a white female in my twenties…so what I am about to say did not happen in 1930.
I was raised without a father in a city that many people consider a war-zone and in a family riddled with abuse of all kinds. Food was a luxury and we often went without utilities and I read my books by candlelight. My clothes were thrift store clothes. I was underfed and needed medicine I could not afford.
I graduated top in my class when some children from other races from much better family and economic situations in life did poorly, blaming their own lack of initiative on other sources, whether it be the neighborhood, racism, etc. There were white classmates who did the same thing, to be fair. It’s more about mindset than race (but I think some groups encourage this mindset more than others) I dealt with the same things they did in day to day life where we lived, and worse. I also could never claim to be discriminated against or claim some other special protected status. So I would tell anyone who claims that my white skin gave me some advantage in life to stuff it. Even when applying for college I found it much harder than my minority counterparts to get scholarships and grants. So much is available for different ethnic groups and races. My GPA had to be that much higher to compete for the money that I could actually qualify for due to my parentage. Nonetheless,I used education as my escape.
I had no help or encouragement from family. I was told I would amount to nothing. I now have two college degrees. I own my own home. I did it myself. I saw the life I wanted and made it happen. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t at times overwhelmingly hard and that I wasn’t scarred from my childhood in some ways…but there comes a point when you just have to stand up and take accountability for your own life. Not everybody gets taken care of as children in this life, sad but true. The more time you waste obsessing over things that others have that you don’t means less time spent building the life that you actually DO want.
They get free laptops? Program after program? Initiative after initiative? What I would have done with such help in high school (and college)! I would have appreciated and honored that help so much…not said it wasn’t enough.
It’s terrible that these kids don’t have dads, but does that mean their lives have to be over before they begin? Every failure must be attributed to something they can’t possibly change so they don’t have to take ownership of the situation. Is being a victim so rewarding and fulfilling? It wasn’t for me. It was depressing and paralyzing to my self-worth, integrity, and an insult to the intelligence with which I was born.
I’m sorry these kids don’t feel that way. I know it hurts to go it alone,it can be lonely and scary and they will fall down a lot…but there comes a time when you stand more than you fall and you can look back and see all you have built. In a perfect world no one should be without support or have to be their own sole motivator, but it’s not perfect.
I would say to these kids that they need to pick themselves up and cast off anything that would take their power and self-determination away from them: the victim mentality, the neighborhood,the abuse, their deadbeat dads,their identity as a inevitable constant victim of racism, and even their own family if need be…put blinders on and just put their noses to the grindstone. Don’t let the naysayers win before you even begin the battle by doing nothing or telling yourself you can’t because of ______.
It’s sad and wrong that they have to, but these kids need to do this if they are to become productive adults…if that’s actually what they want.
The writer might as well as of have argued that eating fried chicken and drinking grape Koolaid caused low achievement. Children of upper middle class blacks where both parents are present still don’t do well in school. The real cause is race, not the lack of a father.
A good point, but then why do subsaharan black africans still have a lower IQ than even african-americans despite “having fathers at home”?
Do we know Sub-Saharan black fathers stay at home?
