I do not expect that sharing these thoughts will lead to
much discussion, or have a high viewer count.
I suspect that the vast majority of those human particles clumped
together in the shape and likeness of what can categorically be called human
beings, and due to the hue of their epidermis, are subcategorized as African
Americans, will lack the intellectual capacity or the mental endurance to read
and have already stopped reading. If
you are the vast minority – say the one or two – who are not part of my target
audience but will endure this experience to the end, I solute you and concede that
while much of what I am about to express will be understood by you, some of it,
because you are not the target audience, will go over your head. Therefore I describe my target audience as
those who represent the tenth of the members of this community and of those,
the tenth who will read this completely to the end. It is those few, isolated and irrevocably “Conscious
Black Men and Women” who are my target audience, and their thoughts I solicit
in response. With that being said, I share the following experience.
A few days ago, I sat on the bus, in the back due to the
extensive leg room, when it became populated with an influx of teenage
students. Among those students was a
black man dressed in an olive colored three piece suit and bowtie. I suspected that he was a member of the
Nation of Islam. Usually, I ignore the
passengers entering and exiting the bus, keeping my attention and focus on the
chess game that I often play using of my cellular phone. This particular day, however, was different
in that I was mentally drawn away from my chess game and gravitating to the
conversation that the black man – whose name is Bob – had with one particular
member of the youth. The words that
captured my attention were “… they don’t teach real business in schools.” My ears perked and although I tried to
harness my mental energy, it grew in defiance against me. Bob and the youth continued their conversation
where Bob expressed his belief that the school system wasted his time in the
attempt to teach him algebra, geometry and trigonometry. He said “I’ve never
used any of that stuff in my life.” His
consent was that the educational system has an obligation to teach relevant
material to survival and “life skills” needed for the student function in
society.
It would have been easier for me to zone out his comments,
as I often do when I hear these black men who rant over the blah blah; white
people this, white people that; black people are victims of white America. But the fact that his audience comprised of
five adolescent males disturbed me. I
felt compelled to comment, not so much with the thought that I wanted to “save”
those five from misguidance but that I wanted to present to that one youth who
I imagined to be straddling the fence from trying to get through high school or
turning to the typical life lived by the typical black American male. I invited myself inside of their conversation,
stating that it would be impossible for a person to work as a pharmacist or as
a doctor if they did not understand the concept of proportions. Without such basic knowledge, they would not
be able to administer medicines. This
basic concept is taught in geometry and converts to future employment for those
who earn over $70,000 per year. His rebuttal
was that “I never wanted to be a pharmacist.”
I responded with a question regarding his familiarity with the stock
market of which he admittedly had very little.
I explained that the knowledge of the Fibonacci sequence plays a vital
role in technical analyses used to determine and predict investor sentiment. The Phi and Fibonacci are concepts that are
taught in geometry. Coincidentally, of every black / African American person I
know, I am the only one who can say that he has stock in any particular
company.
I went on to explain – for by now I had the attention of the
youth – that for as long as a group of people insist on using government
facilities to supplement their lives, they have little to no right to demand
how the government chooses to do so. The
school system is designed from the very beginning to supply society with the
people needed for future goals that theoretically benefit the society as a
whole. This means that public school
systems, funded with public monies, must act in the interest of the public as a
whole. Subsequently, it is not and never
was designed to uplift a single race of people – and it never will, nor should
it ever. I explained that his notion
that white America keeps “the black man down,” is misled in that when a hand
stretches out to receive something, it is automatically at the bottom, under
the hand that gives. Our society has a
need for the criminal. There are over
ten million Americans employed who would not have jobs if there was a
nationwide drop in crime by 20%. Schools
must ensure that there will be a criminal element in society.
I knew a Chinese family in Chicago who owned a store on
Madison Street, near Pulaski Road. This
family had another store on the Southside near 95th Street and
Western Avenue. The major product of
sale was shoes and 95% of their customers were black people. One of the owners explained to me that she
sold her business in large part because the customers stopped coming. The Chicago Police department decided to
crack down on drug dealers in the community and as a result, many people in the
West Lawndale community especially were taken away. The Chinese family, who had fed their
children and educated them at the best high schools using money that was given
to them from drug sales in the black community, was affected by the reduced
crime rate. Consequently, they pulled
out of the community and invested in owning warehouses. As for the West Lawndale community, it took
some five years before the crime recovered; it is with no doubt that the
combination of poor education and the re-admittance of convicts in the
community aided in the recovery.
When I say poor education, I take very little issue with the
educational system. It is designed to do
as it does and it does so very well. We
cannot hold the school system hostage for the legislature – our elected officials
– who pass laws that limit the public education system from doing what it could
do to reverse or alter its course of action.
It is the overall view of society that Special Ed students sit in the
same classroom with those who are not.
It is the overall sentiment that Emotional/Behaviorally Disturbed and Learning
Disabled students in self-contained classes are kept together. The blame does not rest on the teachers who
have to work under restraints. If Black America
is not happy with the public school system, then it must leave the public
school system and dedicate with total resolve in creating a school system
designed for the goals and needs of the black community. This is no different from the Greek Orthodox
schools, the Jewish schools and even the Catholic schools. Otherwise, as I stated to Bob, you don’t have
the right to tell the government what it should or should not do as it gives to
you. There is no government statute – to
the extent of my research – that makes a quality education in public schools a
requirement. Therefore, if the provision
of a quality education is not required by the state – in that the legislative
and judicial systems do not have the wherewithal to define a quality education –
what then is the true purpose of the public school other than meeting the needs
of our future and present society?
As for Bob, his point of view is common among black people,
and I understand it. He believes that
public schools should bear the burden of teaching the black adolescent how to
balance his checkbook, find an apartment, and complete a job application. I believe that while some districts have
Consumer Ed classes, the bulk of that responsibility falls under the category
of “Parenting.” I am sensitive to the
fact that there are many black children with incarcerated parents. The increase in female inmates in the black
community is a problem if one considers the likelihood that those mothers in
prison were the primary nurturers and that an overwhelming amount of female
inmates are mothers to multiple children.
Such a dilemma creates a class of black people who are less sensitive to
the responsibilities of a parent or the cultural and social functions of a
family. But this is not new to a segment
of the black population. This is an extension
of the slave system – in part. In that
system, the slave did not have a right to a family or mother and it is highly
noted that families were separated. Such
was common among the field hands and less common among the house slaves who
were afforded the opportunity to value the family structure as well as the
education.
The differences in the treatment of slaves in that system
have more implications to the formation of the different classes of black
people today. Those differences,
although ignored by both blacks and whites alike are key to understanding the
black community as a whole. I will
explain this roughly by speaking of the differences. As Malcolm X once explained in a very generic
way the differences of the field slave and the house slave, the house slave had
a relationship with the white families that the field slave did not have. What Malcolm X did not articulate to his
advantage was that the house slave was more apt to kill his white master than
the field slave. There was a need for
the house slave to be intelligent. The
house slave functioned in some cases as a bookkeeper for tobacco and cotton
farmers, inventory supervisor, cooks, carriage drivers, and butlers. In some
cases, the house slave was afforded the opportunity to understand the
management systems of today’s work force in as much as the modern corporation models
its functions based on the plantation functions of the 18th and 19th
century. The house slave needed to have
a particular intelligence and for this reason, among a few others, the house
slave was not allowed to intermingle or procreate with the field slave. In this case, the house slave was afforded
the opportunity to consolidate and monopolize those genetic materials connected
with the higher spectrum of intelligences; thus creating not only a class
difference among the black community but a genetic separation. It serves no political advantage for the
imposing white American communities as well as the influx of Asian people to
acknowledge this. The black community
has historically come to see and identify itself by terms and characteristics
given or shared by the white community.
Even in its feeble attempt to connect with Africa, the black American
community as a whole missed the obvious reality that it is separate and apart
from any community on earth and within that are at least two totally genetically
separated and distinct subgroups that I like to think of as ethnicities. Although it is advantageous for sociologists
to classify all blacks Americans as one monotheistic group, the fact that black
Americans were genetically bred is indisputable; and just as an Alaskan
Malamute and a Rottweiler are both dogs, it is mutually agreed upon that they
are two totally and separate types of animals with distinctions common to them
alone.
In such light, when W.E.B. Dubois stated that education is
wasted on the Negro, he was not far from making an inaccurate statement. The Bobs of this world represent the field
slave; a distinct group of black Americans (categorically speaking) who will
always be disgruntled and never have the wherewithal to make a change in his
society. Such was the slave who waited
for the white master to give him his provisions instead of doing what so many
emancipated blacks did after the Civil War and take the land, develop it and
make profits. It was those field slaves
who received emancipation, through very little efforts of their own and have yet
to realize that the link between freedom and independence. Bob has become my symbol of that subgroup of
black Americans who cannot be helped by the philanthropist and the well-intended
Christian organizations who pity them.
These descendants of the field slave who refer to themselves as Niggers
and to their women as Bitches are genetically bred to be as they are and
coupled with their desire or lack of desire to do little more than await orders
or be fed by public funds or from the efforts of others, there is no help on
this earth that can save them from themselves.
