Foster Dickson's Blog, page 96

Shut Up, Doomsayers!

Human beings love an apocalypse. These kinds of mythic anticipation are as old as recorded history. Each religion has its own version of what the end-times will look like, when the existential dilemma is finally solved, when we will be allowed to know, for certain, the point of all this worldly confusion and suffering. All the way up to our modern times— now, we’ve got our blockbuster action films about every massively destructive force from tidal waves to runaway robots! Yet, in this age of data, when “the aimless blade of science slashed the pearly gates,” this new incarnation of our collective end has taken an even more frightening new turn.

Staring in the face of the global-warming dilemma, the ecologically minded doomsayers have coined our modern apocalypse. But this one has no redemption attached to it. By contrast to an environmental collapse, in a mythic Christian revelation, Jesus will return, and the Rapture will yield widespread salvation for the good and righteous among us. But in this scientific version, we all lose—the world falls apart, resources grow scarce, whole species fail, and millions of people, animals and plants die. In this prophetic narrative, the Earth spirals downward into a massive Mad Max movie, where gasoline and water are worth more than gold; the world crumbles, and life becomes a Darwinian nightmare where the strong will survive by hoarding the crumbs. I don’t want, or need, to hear that horror-story cautionary tale.

But don’t get me wrong—

I believe in global warming, and I believe the planet is on a dangerous trajectory, and I believe that human behavior is causing it. I also believe we can change what some say is our future.

Just don’t assault my will-to-live with a barrage of ICYMI tweets and news-article teasers about the “Doomsday Clock” or other forthcoming catastrophes. If the people in charge of business and politics in this world won’t solve the problem, then it’s up to us common folk to do it without them . . . Kyoto Accord or no Kyoto Accord.

Ordinary people have got to start this environmental healing process by shouting a massive “Shut up!” at both doomsayers and climate-change deniers. These extremists are playing politics with our lives and the lives of our children. The future of the planet’s natural resources cannot be determined by an economic-environmental fiasco, a la The Lorax, and it can’t be a scare-tactic used to grab readers and drive up ad revenue.

It’s easy for me, personally, to ignore the ridiculous arguments made by climate-change deniers. Unless some graphic artist is manufacturing those satellite images of the waning polar ice-caps, this is really happening. But the doomsayers . . . to the ones whose admonitions are supposedly trying to wake us up to the truth, I also say, “Shut up—” unless you’re going be leaders in a grassroots movement that will turn things around.

Tell us ordinary folk what to do. Leave off your jeremiads, and focus your energy on leading us out of this wilderness. Gather up your scientific and sociological data – the stuff in your articles and white papers – and propose changes to our everyday lifestyles: start composting, using rain barrels, and recycling . . . then drive your car less, charge your phones less often, turn off the AC or heat when the weather allows, and join a CSA. We won’t want to hear your hard truths, but you’ve got to say them anyway, and let those of us who do listen work with our friends and neighbors to get them on board, too.

Just don’t tell me I’m killing the polar bears and the baby sea lions, but neglect to tell me how I can mend my evil ways. How can we do this? you ask. Education is the key.

Journalists, find the facts of wasteful and energy-wasting habits, double-ultra-fact-check them to be sure, and share your findings with us. And give us a positive twist: include solutions! (Heck, it’s not too hard to write a positive article.)

Educators, make Environmental Science a required course to graduate from high school, because cognizant environmental attitudes in the general populace are going to be as important to our perpetuation as literacy and numeracy are to our economy.

People, listen to what you’re told and resign yourselves to amending your habits. Plain and simple.

Politicians, talk to corporate heads and tell them that consumers are getting wise to the effects of pollution and other malfeasance. Business people understand one thing in the boardroom: money. And if they think their status as polluters will cost them revenue, they will listen. And if people are educated enough to make good choices with their buying power . . . then our powerful economy can save, rather than harm the environment.

In the human imagination, the apocalypse will wipe the slate clean and expose the Truth once and for all. The hard part is losing the world we recognize, but the reward is Heaven or something like it. In the Catholic Mass, when we recite our creed, we end by saying, “. . . and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” We look forward to it, not out of any morbid desire to see the world end, but because we have faith in a life better than this one. Our human nature tells us, loud and clear, that destruction must be followed by rebirth or rejuvenation, which is what the eco-doomsayers don’t offer us at all.

Filed under: Civil Rights, Education, Local Issues, Social Justice, The Environment

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #54

“As I patched the barn with scrap lumber, pig-tight but ugly, I was forced to confront my own prejudice. I had come to the farm with the unarticulated belief that concrete things were for dumb people and abstract things were for smart people. I thought the physical world – the trades – was the place you ended up if you weren’t bright or ambitious enough to handle a white-collar job. Did I really think that a person with a genius for fixing engines, or for building, or for husbanding cows, was less brilliant than a person who writes ad copy or interprets the law? Apparently, I did, though it amazes me now. I ordered books from the library about construction, plumbing, and electricity, and discovered that reading them was like trying to learn a foreign language, the simplest thing – the names of unknown tools or hardware, the names for parts of structures – creating dead ends that required answers, more research. There’s no better cure for snobbery than a good ass kicking.”

– from The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food and Love by Kristin Kimball

Filed under: Education, Food, Literature, Reading, Teaching, The Environment, Writing and Editing

Three Books #4: The Modern Deep South

The modern Deep South just invites long-term study and contemplation, especially from its residents— who, unfortunately, usually just accept it for what it is. Mired in controversial and often contradictory ideals, the post-Civil Rights Deep South bears the unfortunate burden of attempting to be graceful losers, which we often shoulder by creating new un-winnable and isolating political circumstances.

For more than a century and a half, the region’s leaders – the ones who have been crafting public policy – have been shaped by a shameful defeat in the Civil War, further shame from the Radical Republicans’ Reconstruction, even further shame by having to accept the New Deal, and even further shame having to accept more defeat during the Civil Rights movement. The themes of the Deep South’s socio-political meanderings could possibly be summed up by Alfred E. Newman’s smiling question, “What, me worry?”

So why do our region’s cultural values have to be rooted in obstinate stubbornness, nonsensical paradoxes, and wild fantasies about a comeback— or worse in the pretensions that the region never actually fell at all? It’s a mammoth question. And understanding what led us to this point might aid in overall comprehension. Three books that I suggest for learning more about the modern Deep South are: Bloody Lowndes by Hassan Kwame Jeffries, Thirteen Loops by BJ Hollars, and The New Mind of the South by Tracy Thompson.

The first of three of the books focuses on the mid-1960s. Hassan Jeffries’ Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt, published in 2009 by New York University Press, provides a solid and readable narrative of what-came-next. Having suffered across-the-board defeats with its Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party candidates, the young SNCC activists focused their energies during and after the Selma-to-Montgomery on Lowndes County, the extremely poor rural county between Dallas and Montgomery counties. Unlike the nonviolent efforts of the early 1960s, this effort would very different.

Jeffries begins with the chapter “Conditions Unfavorable to the Rise of the Negro,” a stark description of a starting point, in which he provides some historical background, offering his reader a survey of the brutal racism that led to the county’s nickname, “Bloody Lowndes.” From there, the grassroots activism of organizing in a majority black county with a spread-out population, who are dominated in every way by white power structure, takes shape. The dangerous and time-consuming tasks of canvassing house-by-house and developing candidates for local elections constitutes the beginnings of the Black Panther Party. The goal, in the 1966 elections, is to put black people in local offices.

By focusing on a fairly narrow subject within a short span of time in a small geographic area, Jeffries’ book succeeds in showing us how the small movements occurred. Certainly, the 1955-1956 bus boycott, the 1960 sit-ins, the 1961 Freedom Rides and the 1965 march were important, but the small, local efforts were the glue that held those large events in place, keeping the pressure on a Jim Crow politico. If Civil Rights pressure had only been incremental and sporadic, the movement might not have succeeded. These small, local movements shaped their own communities in distinct ways. (For more on these smaller freedom movements, I’d also suggest the book Groundwork, edited by Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodward.)

My second suggested book on the modern Deep South, BJ Hollars’ Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America, published in 2011 by the University of Alabama Press, also starts out in the early twentieth century but spends the majority of its pages on the early 1980s, examining the circumstances and effects of the lynching of Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama. Men with ties to the Ku Klux Klan were quickly identified, tried and convicted of the very public and seemingly random crime that was supposedly a retaliation for a legal victory by the Southern Poverty Law Center over the United Klans of America.

Michael Donald was a fairly ordinary young African-American man in Mobile, until he became the chosen target. A very under-the-radar kind of guy, quiet and unassuming, Donald worked a menial job and enjoyed playing basketball. However, one evening in March 1981, on his way to buy a pack of cigarettes, Donald was kidnapped, beaten, killed and tied to a tree where anyone could see him. His death is often called, somewhat spuriously, “the last lynching in America.”

Hollars’ book offers readers a look inside the post-Civil Rights Ku Klux Klan, a group whose position in Southern society had been severely diminished by the movement. The author, once again, traces the events of a brief period of time in a specific locale. Writing in a somewhat-ephemeral, somewhat-journalistic way, the style reminds me of the über-short paragraphs often found in New York Times op-eds. Through Thirteen Loops, we see how the official sanction of Klan violence had waned; responding to white-on-black violence eighteen years after Birmingham church bombing, law enforcement had become less tolerant of the Klan’s way of “sending a message” by the time of the Michael Donald lynching. Henry Hays, the son of reputed Klan leader Benny Jack Hayes, was sentenced to death for Donald’s murder, and he was executed in 1997; by contrast, Michael Donald had a street in Mobile named for him in 2009.

Then, after you’ve had the wind knocked out of you by those other two books, Tracy Thompson’s The New Mind of the South, published in 2013 by Simon & Schuster, points you more amicably, but no less honestly, toward the present and future. First of all, don’t let the title fool you— this book doesn’t pick up where WJ Cash’s 1941 classic left off. The tone, style and message are all very 21st century. That said, Thompson’s conversational writing style carries the reader through the quagmires of modern Southern life, baggage and all, but in the voice of an amiable friend. In short,The New Mind of the South reads like a really long newspaper column.

Where the first two books focus on Alabama subjects, Thompson sets hers primarily in her native Georgia. With such telling chapter titles as “It’s Complicated” and “The Big Lie,” The New Mind of South comments on where the Deep South is today, decades after the (legal) end of Jim Crow. In “Salsa with your Grits,” Thompson discusses the effects of immigration on the region, and in “Jesusland,” she describes the nuances of Southern evangelical Christianity. Her book ends with a rather long chapter simply titled “Atlanta,” the South’s major megapolis— other than Nashville.

The strength of Tracy Thompson’s The New Mind of the South lies in her ability to interweave many subjects, even citing and quoting sources, in an accessible, readable way; the downside of the book – at least for me – is that she sometimes gets too cute and seems to be going wink, wink as she’s talking to us. Above all, though, her insights are solid and worthy of attention, managing to discuss a lot in less than 250 pages.

In these three recent nonfiction works, a student of the modern Deep South has three eras to survey: the mid-1960s, the early 1980s, and the early 21st century. As always, other books could be appropriate for a list like this one. Academic treatments like The New South, 1945 – 1980 by Numan V. Bartley and The Selling of the South by James C. Cobb were possibilities. So Dixie by Curtis Wilkie or Dixie Rising by Peter Applebome, both of which are more accessible. I also thought about including Allen Tullos’ Alabama Getaway, which is an incredibly sharp book, but I didn’t want all three to be about Alabama.

The real question to be asked about the modern Deep South is: where do we go from here? With the 2010s being the fiftieth-anniversaries of 1960s events all over the region, the need for comprehension about those events is distinct. These books could help with that  . . . if you read them.

Filed under: Alabama, Black Belt, Georgia, Literature, Reading, Social Justice, The Deep South

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week: 1st anniversary edition

This is quote of the week is #53. I’ve been sharing these for a year now, and to celebrate the anniversary, I give you a word of wisdom from one of my favorites:

“He used to say I was an incurable optimist, but it wasn’t optimism, it was the deep realization that, even though the world busy digging its grave, there was still time to enjoy life, to be merry, carefree, to work or not to work.”

— from Quiet Days in Clichy by Henry Miller

Filed under: Literature, Reading, Teaching, Writing and Editing

Deep Southern Gardening: My Old Yellow Dog

My old yellow Labrador retriever, Bailey, turned fourteen last November. He went completely deaf more than a year ago, he has visible cataracts, and his underside is covered in lumps that might be tumors. Most Labs his age have gone down in the hips by now, but other than a periodic stumble, the only noticeable sign of Bailey’s old-ness are his white face and his new habit of pooping wherever he darn well feels like.

That crazy old dog just keeps on ticking. Bailey eats like a horse, comes in the house by going up and down the stairs unaided, goes on short walks, and even runs after me in the backyard every once in a while.

If you type in “lifespan of a Labrador” into Google, the average comes up as eleven years. One generous source says that twelve to thirteen years is typical. At fourteen years and three months old, Bailey is well past his prime. Willard Scott ought to put up his picture, on The Today Show, next to a jar of Smucker’s.

I bought Bailey as Christmas present for my then-fiancee, now-wife back in 2000. We had just bought our first house, an old white Victorian with a wrap-around porch, and she had recently lost her family’s old golden retriever. (This picture of him when he was about four or five.) We’ve had him our entire marriage, and he has always – always – made sure that I can’t really finish any gardening project in the backyard.

Bailey has never been an escape artist and has never even growled at anyone, much less bitten. Though this peaceful and loving beast has been a great dog for our kids to grow up with, he has been hell on my hobby. I’ve seen that dog eating from his bowl when a bird lighted on the edge, and he moved aside so the bird could get in there, too— but he knows how to tear up a yard! Bailey ruined my earliest efforts at composting by digging up the pile as soon as he saw me throw scraps down, and he has dug up most of the plants I’ve put down. He peed on our every one of our hostas until they all died, and he has worn his walking paths in the grass. He rotates his sleeping spots so that he always has a patch of fresh periwinkle to lie in— kill one spot and move to the next. To this day, in his dotage he still digs dozens of small holes every time it rains really hard and the ground is saturated.

So I’ve learned: if you can’t beat him, join him. Each fall when I rake the yard, I rake the leaves into his sleeping holes. In our symbiotic love-hate relationship, he gets a soft spot to lay in, and I get my leaves mulched!

One day soon – who knows when – that old yellow dog is going to be gone. For all of the times that I’ve cussed him for undoing my hard work, I’m going to miss my furry archenemy, this creature whose deepest instincts contradict my more civilized desire for the order and beauty of a well-kept yard. This picture is from last July, when a muddy Bailey, fresh from digging after a rain, was chasing my in-laws’ shih tzu puppy.

When I also typed in “14 year old Labrador” into Google, almost every result on the first page was about putting some suffering dog to sleep. I’m not there yet, because he’s not. But no matter how he goes, on his own or with help, I doubt if I’ll ever again do yard work without thinking of him, at least for a moment.

Filed under: Alabama, Family History, Local Issues, The Deep South

Some Other News from Around the Deep South #11

Welcome to the eleventh installment of “Some Other News from Around the Deep South,” my quarterly look at news stories from around the region that may not have gotten so much attention.

We may still be reeling down here in Alabama and Mississippi from all four of our teams losing their bowl games, but life goes on . . . The national championship game in January ended up as a struggle between two teams—well, that both aren’t from the SEC. For us down here, it’s kind of like that old question, if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? About that game, we have to ask: if the Big 10 champion and the PAC 12 champion play for the national championship, does anyone care? Anyway . . .

We’ll start this time in South Carolina, where in mid-December a court threw out the 1944 conviction and death sentence of a fourteen-year-old boy named George Stinney. (Read Reuters’ coverage of the judge’s decision.) Stinney’s disconsolate and sadly expressive black-and-white mugshot has become the face of inordinately cruel sentences given to young black men accused of crimes against white victims, particularly in the pre-Civil Rights South. In the final years of World War II, Stinney was convicted by an all-white jury of killing two white girls, ages eleven and seven, who had been playing and picking flowers earlier that day. The factors of his likely-coerced confession to white police, the lack of a defense at trial, the all-white jury, and the harshness and swiftness of the sentence have combined to make Stinney a symbol of Deep Southern injustice.

Also in mid-December, in South Carolina, Republican state legislator and retired police officer Mike Pitts pre-filed a bill to “decriminalize marijuana,” a strange wording since it will still be illegal if the bill passes. The bill would make marijuana possession a minor crime with fines as the penalty. According to coverage from Spartanburg-based TV station WSPA, Pitts made the following remarks about his rationale:

“I never once had to fight a pothead. I never once had to chase a pothead. They just did not create problems. The only problems they created were for themselves,” he says.

Pitts clarified in the coverage that he is not in favor of legalizing marijuana, which he believes would be a mistake.

However, a group called Mississippi for Cannabis wants just that. On New Year’s Day, Jackson’s Clarion-Ledger reported that the group is collecting signatures “to try to have an initiative placed on the November 2016 ballot.” The report tells us:

If the ballot initiative get the necessary signatures and is approved by voters in referendum, it would make it legal for adults to possess cannabis in unlimited quantities, to use as they wish, just like alcohol or cigarettes. However, it would have to be kept from minors.

To be expected, the plan has its opponents, among them Mississippi’s head of corrections, formerly the head of drug enforcement, who says it will “lead to drug addiction.”

Finally, from Mississippi, this one from the ICYMI files: in November, Smithsonian magazine did a really nice article on the Great Flood of 1927 that is written in an unusually poetic style and includes some haunting images from the time. “Flood of Time” by Jeff McGregor describes a new film by Bill Morrison about “one of America’s greatest natural disasters.” Most modern Americans are familiar with the flooding from Hurricane Katrina in 2005; this flood, which involved the Mississippi River overtaking its banks, covered a much wider geographic expanse along the river’s route.

Moving on, al.com’s Brendan Kirby authored two nearly identical pieces, published in early January, in which he tries to explain why Alabama’s and Mississippi’s $7.25 minimum wage is actually higher than California’s $9.00 wage, due to the differences in cost of living. Ignoring the surreal nature of the two pieces’ eerie similarity, the Alabama-focused piece tells us:

After adjusting for cost of living, the $7.25 hourly minimum wage mandated by the federal government is worth more in Alabama than the $9 minimum wage in effect in California . The $7.25 in Alabama is worth the equivalent of $8.23, while California ‘s higher rate is worth just $7.97 in adjusted dollars.

(To access the Mississippi-focused piece, click here.) Through the rest of the dense, fact-heavy piece, various states’ minimum wages and costs of living are compared to each other in fits and snatches. What is left out of this discussion is the acknowledgment that $7.25 per hour, even in low cost-of-living Alabama, only yields a full-time worker $290 per week before taxes . . . so a full-time, minimum-wage employee would bring home less than $1000 per month. We can argue economic theory all day—it’s still poverty wages, which is the reason for wanting to raise it.

Staying in Alabama, The New Yorker’s Paige Williams focused her attention, in the magazine’s November 17, 2014 issue, on the state’s peculiar habit of allowing judges to sentence people to death even after juries have recommended life.  “Double Jeopardy,” a piece of long-form journalism, uses the case of Shonelle Jackson, who was sentenced to death for a killing in Montgomery, to discuss the wider legal, ethical, governmental and political issues of Alabama’s death penalty. About its practice of allowing judges to override jury recommendations, Williams writes:

In thirty-one of the past thirty-two years, Alabama ’s judges have condemned someone to death through override at least once.

Nearly seventy Alabama judges have single-handedly ordered an inmate’s execution, and collectively they have done so more than a hundred times. Thirty-six of the nearly two hundred convicts on death row are there because of override.

The New Yorker piece continues by giving the reader glimpses into the minds of retired and current judges, who attempt to wax philosophic about the problems, including the expansive disparities in sentencing along racial lines, before returning in the end to Jackson, who is still incarcerated and awaiting execution.

On a brighter note coming out of Alabama, Tuscaloosa native Deontay Wilder won the WBC heavyweight championship in boxing earlier this month. USA Today’s coverage of his title-winning victory explains:

Wilder (33-0, 32 KOs), from Tuscaloosa, Ala., becomes the first American to hold the heavyweight belt since Shannon Briggs in 2006. He’s the first undefeated American heavyweight champion since Riddick Bowe in 1993.

Congratulations to “the Bronze Bomber”!

On another bright note, the early January report “22 new laws go into effect in Louisiana today” shares news of this progressive addition to that state’s code:

Another new law allows sixteen-year-olds to register to vote. But they can’t exercise the right to vote until they reach age 18.

When they reach age of 18, registrar of voters sends them a card telling them they can now vote.

Similar in concept to the Motor Voter Bill, the state will use their eager attendance at the DMV to register these young people to vote, then remind them later when it’s time to do it. In my opinion, this law could and should be replicated in every state (where it isn’t already).

Last but certainly not least . . . when you type in the name of any Deep Southern state in the News tab of a search engine, the majority of what you’ll get is about football— even in the off-season. This college football-related last story comes out of that.

The Sporting News online ran a story titled “Worker behind Alabama flag prank commits suicide” in early January. According to the report, a construction worker in Texas was fired from his job, working on renovations to Texas A&M’s stadium, for inappropriate Facebook posts about botching the work and for hanging a University of Alabama football flag on the stadium. After being fired, the circumstances of what he done were traceable by other potential employers, and he could no longer find work. According to the article, the man killed himself last September.

While his college-football University of Alabama fanhood didn’t cause his death, the Deep South is known for its rabid rivalries. The common assertion is that football is a “religion” down here. I’m just sayin’ . . .

As January ends, we in the Deep South begin the long march to next August when football begins again. In the meantime, we will pass our days by hunting in the winter, going to our kids’ little league games in the spring, going to the lake and the beach in the summer. For now, we’re hunkered down against what we consider to be “cold,” and I’ll catch you again in the spring with installment number twelve.

Filed under: Louisiana, Mississippi, Social Justice, South Carolina, The Deep South, Voting

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #51

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday earlier in the month:

“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

– from “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr., written April 16, 1963

 

Filed under: Alabama, Civil Rights, Social Justice, Teaching, The Deep South, Writing and Editing

#blacklivesmatter

#blacklivesmatter— it’s all over social media, and we’re seeing it on posters, flyers, and graffiti. This sentiment – coming from our heightened consciousness about race, responding to the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, but also from pop culture sources, like the films “Dear White People,” “Twelve Years a Slave” and “Belle” – has ignited a heated discussion that is good for our nation, even though the circumstances that are bringing it about are not.

As Americans face these recent controversies, black communities’ historic issue with law enforcement remains a focus. While these matters are definitely important, I would like to see others also surface as a result of this broad and far-reaching discussion.

As I see it, part of the problem of race in America, which needs to be addressed honestly, stems from the fact, for white people, that being told that you’re hurting people is hard to hear. That message may be especially difficult for the millions of white Americans who don’t know or ever personally encounter a single black person, and consequently don’t regard issues of race as systemic and with daily repercussions. According to recent census data, 13.2% of the nation is “black,” which means about one-in-eight Americans. However, the black population is not evenly distributed geographically. In Alabama, the black population is about 23%, and in Montgomery County, where I live, the black population is the majority racial group, at 56.3%. However, in Maine, the black population is 1.4%; in Nebraska, 4.8%, and in Utah, 1.3%. Some white people have a long way to go to understand what they’re being told right now, but the rest of us, who live in diverse communities, have a role to play, too.

The millions of white Americans who are discomfited by #blacklivesmatter messages, especially those living in homogeneous communities, need to join the national dialogue first by listening. Yes, as a white person, it is hard to hear some of what is being said. Though we can never fully know what it’s like to be black, we can listen. Then, we can accept difference, and we can respect the validity of other people’s perceptions and ideas. Change can start there: by listening, even to assertions that are hard to hear.

Another aspect of our national character that needs to arise out of the #blacklivesmatter discussion involves racial disparities in education. In March of last year, The Nation‘s Steven Hsieh wrote “14 Disturbing Stats about Racial Inequality in American Public Schools,” and here are three of those “disturbing” facts:

“2. Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students.”

“4. Black girls were suspended at higher rates than all other girls and most boys.”

“13. Black students were more than three times as likely to attend schools where fewer than 60 percent of teachers meet all state certification and licensure requirements.”

(To connect these facts to Michael Brown and the events in Ferguson, read Nikole Hannah-Jones’ “How School Segregation Divides Ferguson— And the United States,” from the New York Times on December 19, 2014.)

In examining the racialized aspects of our education system, we need to concentrate on the realities of the historic disparities. Looking at the Census.gov document “Table 229. Educational Attainment by Race and Hispanic Origin, 1970 – 2010,” we see some glimmers of hope over a forty-year period, but problems remain. From 1970 through 2010, the percentage of black people with a high school diploma increased from 31.4% to 84.2% – which means that rate nearly tripled – but the most recent percentage still lags behind the white rate of 87.6%. Unfortunately, the discrepancy in the area of college education between black and white people is greater, at 19.2% versus 30.3% respectively. So about one-in-three white people has a college degree yet about one-in-five black people does. These factors are directly related to Hsieh’s “disturbing” facts.

By contrast, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ statistics on Inmate Race, black inmates make up 37.4% of our prison population, a rate that is nearly triple the rate of the nation’s black population as a whole (13.2%). Coupling the above facts with this one, a direct connection between education and opportunity should be obvious. Again, see Hsieh’s facts . . . that’s where it all starts.

Looking further deeper into the social and economic truths of American life,  the American Psychological Association’s Public Interest Directorate on “Ethnic and Racial Minorities & Socioeconomic Status” provide these factors:

“• African American children are three times more likely to live in poverty than Caucasian children. “

“• African Americans and Latinos are more likely to attend high-poverty schools than Asian Americans and Caucasians.”

“• African Americans are at higher risk for involuntary psychiatric commitment than any other racial group.”

The root issues extend beyond the classroom, into the real world. The factors that have led to the swelling frustrations are real, no matter who claims that America is a meritocracy where self-determination is the rule. That may be hard to hear for people who believe that hard work alone yields a person his or her socio-economic position. But, put simply, we have to start by listening, and considering that our social structures set some people up for failure.

As national-scale examples of our racialized culture, we can look at one of our most powerful institutions: Congress. Of our one-hundred US senators, two are African American, both men, one Republican and one Democrat— so the US Senate is 2% black. Of the 435 seats in the House, forty are held by African Americans, twenty-seven men and thirteen women, all Democrats— so the House is 9.2% black. Adding it all up with forty-two black office-holders out of 535 total seats, Congress is 7.8% black. (Source: Roll Call) How, in a nation with a 13.2% black population, can that be? Well, because a lot of these uncomfortable assertions are true.

Yet, the causes for hope exist, too. The demographics of American voting is changing. For more information about that phenomenon, you can read the Census Department’s “The Diversifying Electorate— Voting Rates By Race And Hispanic Origin, 2012 (And Other Recent Elections).” In Table 2, we see how the numbers of Black, Asian and Hispanic voters increase with every election cycle. As more diverse peoples show up to vote, out leadership will change with them.

Black lives do matter, because every life matters! And I hope that these protests – both in the streets and online – will incite a critical consciousness in more Americans about the adverse side-effects of our social and cultural realities. Many white people may continue to be resistant to these messages, because no one likes to see himself as an oppressor. However, progress will come when these frustrations are heard and answered with action and change.

For my part, I have to side with many race-conscious thinkers who say we are not in a post-racial society and that change is still needed. However, I cannot agree with hyperbolic assertions like “Nothing has changed since the Civil War,” or “Our country hasn’t moved forward since the 1960s.” Those inflammatory statements aren’t true. Once we deal honestly with race, discarding both denial and hyperbole, especially in the fundamental area of educational opportunities, we will make even more progress— and our nation will be all the stronger for it.

Filed under: Civil Rights, Education, Social Justice

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #50

“I finish every single novel I start. If I happen upon the first line of 1,000-page novel, I of course don’t feel compelled to read to the end. But as a matter of personal policy, when I decide I’m going to read a novel, I read the whole thing.”

– the opening paragraph from “Finish That Book!” by Juliet Lapidos, published in The Atlantic online in November 2014.

Filed under: Reading, Teaching, Writing and Editing

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week #49

“By creating artificial needs like wanting good grades or making approval from teachers based on one’s academic and behavioral performance, schools manage to create a means of both frustrating most students and rewarding a few (sounds like America, doesn’t it?), but, nonetheless, everyone is always concentrating on the exams, obedience to teachers, and the future capability of earning a living.”

– from the chapter “Oppression by the Schools” in The Oppression of Youth by Ted Clark, © 1975

Filed under: Education, Reading, Social Justice, Teaching, Writing and Editing