Inside from the Inside

Do you feel compelled to personally write a check to any black person you see, if you are white, because 200 years ago your ancestor may have profited from the slave labor of the black person’s ancestor?  That’s what reparation is in the minds of many, and it is not appealing to anyone in that form.  Nor does it solve anything.

Yet it cannot be denied that the advantages enjoyed today by white Americans across the board, in comparison to black Americans, can be traced back to that initial state of affairs involving the first African slaves brought here against their will.  What are we going to do?  I’ve been advocating in these pages that something big and expensive and unpleasant [for those of us footing the bill] needs to be undertaken, preferably in the area of education, in order to form future generations of leaders that are more race-inclusive; people understandably are non-responsive to this kind of provocation.  But what if it’s actually profitable to do so?

Leonard Pitts had a CNN piece with far more legwork put into it than anything I’ve done.  He’s seen firsthand the fruits of educating the supposedly difficult to educate; he’s witnessed the miracle of simply expecting more from those without expectations and, lo and behold, getting more!  The truth of his statement is obvious:

In 1972, one expected a man when one heard the word “surgeon.”

Much as, in 2009, one expects a white kid when one hears the word “scholar.”

People will deny this, will say all the right and politic things. But the disclaimers will be as thin and transparent as Saran Wrap. Black, white and otherwise, we are all socialized by the same forces and all carry, by and large, the same unconscious assumptions. One of which is that a certain level of achievement is black and another is white. [emphasis mine]

It is usually not doable for hard-working, low-earning parents to spend as much time with their kids as those with more resources are able to do (whether the more affluent choose to or not, at least they have that choice).  But that is no reason to expect less from those same children.  Certainly, it would be understandable if you did get less, but it is a crime to EXPECT less.

Coupled with the expectation of more is a cost to actually provide a better shot, and this is where “reparations” come in:  it is a fact that there is a disproportionate number of black Americans in prison, in poverty, in virtually every negative economic and societal statistic.  Improving the opportunities of people in these tougher situations would directly result in black Americans getting a disproportionate amount of improved opportunities – but it would actually be profitable to do so, according to the founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone, Geoffrey Canada:

Someone’s yelling at me because I’m spending $3,500 a year on `Alfred.’ ‘Alfred’ is 8. OK, Alfred turns 18. No one thinks anything about locking him up for 10 years at $60,000 a year.

A big part of what we’re trying to do at Inside from the Inside is to move beyond the “there’s not a race problem in America” phase (a sentiment that I believe was rather easy to debunk in the minds of rational people) and actually get people involved in the discussion to come up with solutions rather than arguing about whether or not there’s even a problem to be solved.  It’s everywhere you look:  I know for a fact that on my drive in to downtown Dallas today for work, I will stop at the backed-up traffic at the light for people to walk across the street from the parking lot over to Lew Sterrett Justice Center.  There will be many, many people at that crossing area, and almost every single one of them will be black.  Not 13% of them, or whatever the percentage of Americans are black; no, it will be on the order of 90+% black.  And I also know that when I walk the streets of downtown around the office buildings, the vast majority of people in suits will be white, and the black people I see won’t appear to be in any “leadership” vocations; they will be riding the buses, driving the buses, maintaining the buildings, swimming as fish in a sea of low-paid, long-houred unskilled laborers, where their numbers will once again be vastly out of proportion.

The only thing, the ONLY thing, that will change this is education for people who aren’t getting educated.  Education costs money, education takes commitment from adults and communities.  That’s what I really, really want to be talking about and doing, because that’s what will transform the state of expectations and race relations in this country.

Tags: Leonard Pitts, what do you expect of black students