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Old August 24th, 2014 #21
Alex Linder
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AIDS Workers Battle Myth and Ignorance
Source: News24.Com, http://news.24.com/13/10/2000 12:05 – (SA)

Aids Workers Battle Myth and Ignorance

Johannesburg – While confusion over Aids spreads in South Arica where the government disputes the causal link between HIV and the disease, health workers say they already have their hands full trying to counteract ignorance and myths about the pandemic.

The most serious among these, they say, is that men can be cured of Aids by raping a child, or having sex with a virgin.

Another myth gaining currency in rural areas, according to health workers involved in prevention programmes, is that HIV/Aids was created and spread by apartheid chemical warfare expert Wouter Basson in an attempt to wipe out black people.

In some communities, xenophobia comes into play, with people believing HIV/Aids is the result of witchcraft being practised on them by immigrants from other parts of Africa.

According to Barbara Kenyon, co-ordinator of a rape project in eastern Mpumalanga province, the number of children being raped because men believe this will cure them of Aids has “skyrocketed” since the beginning of the year.

Government figures show already 4.2 million South Africans are infected with HIV, while health workers claim about 1 500 new cases of infection are occurring daily — partly because of some men’s belief that sleeping with a virgin will cure them of Aids.

In parts of Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces in particular, meanwhile, the Basson myth is creating a nightmare for health workers trying to convince communities to change their sexual behaviour in order to prevent HIV infection.

“People in rural communities in particular are spreading the myth,” said Dawn Jackson, head of the Aids Training Information Counselling Centre (ATICC), an initiative of the Port Elizabeth municipality.

“It is proving a real challenge for us.”

According to the myth, Basson, who headed the apartheid government’s chemical and biological warfare programme in the 1980s, developed the HIV/Aids virus in Pretoria and then sent his agents to seek out South Africans being trained in guerrilla camps in various parts of Africa.

The guerrillas, most of them members of the now-ruling African National Congress which at the time was seeking the violent overthrow of the former white minority government, were surreptitiously injected with what is also known as “Basson’s virus.”

On their return to South Africa, the guerrillas fell sick and passed on the virus to those around them, the myth goes.

Many believe that Basson, who is currently on trial in the Pretoria High Court on 61 charges, including murder, attempted murder, drug dealing and fraud relating to his activities as head of the chemical warfare programme, is still personally directing the spread of the disease.

Witnesses claim the cardiologist developed special lip balms, roll-on deodorants, shampoos, chocolates, beers and whiskies and used them to distribute poisons like cyanide and diseases like cholera to enemies of the apartheid state.

This, community workers believe, is the origin of the HIV/Aids myth.

According to Wendy Leeb, an Aids researcher for the KwaZulu-Natal legislature, ignorance, too, plays a part.

“If I ask a group of teenagers if they use condoms, many of them would tell me “yes, the first time”, but he/she was clean and thus, not capable of harbouring HIV.”

Many communities, she said in a recent research paper, maintain a cloak of silence over the disease, refusing to name it.

HIV is referred to variously as “you-know-what”, the “amagama amathatu” (the three words), the “new sickness” and the Helen Ivy Vilakazi.

When death occurs, she said, the cause is usually cited as “pneumonia.”

Government Aids experts, health workers complain, are doing little to counteract the myths, with much of the national debate currently being over whether HIV is the sole cause of Aids.

President Thabo Mbeki, who scoffs at the view, believes it is being propagated by international pharmaceutical companies bent on making profits out of victims of the disease. – Sapa-AFP
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #22
Alex Linder
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Births to Unmarried Women by Race
Source: U.S. Bureau of Census; U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means

Births to Unmarried Women by Race

All Races Whites Blacks
Year Number %* Number %* Number %*
1960 224,300 5.3 82,500 2.3 138,744 23.0
1965 291,200 7.7 123,700 4.0 162,215 27.9
1970 398,700 10.7 175,100 5.7 215,100 37.6
1975 447,900 14.2 186,400 7.3 249,600 48.8
1980 665,747 18.4 320,063 11.0 325,737 55.2
1985 828,174 22.0 432969 14.5 365,527 60.1
1989 1,165,169 27.1 593,911 19.0 457,480 64.2
1990 1,165,384 28.0 647,376 21.0 472,660 65.2
* Percent of total births for race, married and unmarried
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #23
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Black America at War
Source: FrontPageMagazine.com | November 5, 2001

Black America at War

By David Horowitz

We live in an age of lies manufactured by progressives to discredit America and its promise and to do this, above all, by sowing racial and ethnic hatred – in particular by spreading destructive myths among black Americans to make them hate their own country.

One of the most widespread of these myths is that black Americans fought and died in extraordinarily high proportions in the Vietnam War relative to the rest of the population. This was ostensibly the result of American racism and is a reason given by many blacks (a leftwing minority to be sure) for why they are so ready to betray their country in the current war and line up with Osama bin Laden and his friends.

This came up the other day in an e-mail exchange with a black friend of mine. The short answer (and truth) is that the only ethnic group that died in greater numbers than their proportion in the population in the Vietnam conflict was whites.

Here are the facts:

During the Vietnam War era (draft era to be precise) blacks of military age made up 13.5 percent of the total population, but only 9.7 percent of the Vietnam era military forces were black.

88.4 percent of the men who actually served in Vietnam were white.

10.6 percent of the men who actually served in Vietnam were black.

86.3 percent of the men who died in Vietnam were white.

12.5 percent of the men who died in Vietnam were black.

86.8 percent of the men who were killed in actual battle were white.

12.1 percent of the men who were killed in actual battle were black.

In sum, while the percentage of blacks of military age was 13.5 percent of the population, they accounted for 12.1percent of the deaths in Vietnam.

The black soldiers who gave their lives for freedom in Vietnam should be honored by all of us. But we should all remember to honor the country – America – which is the only country in the world – black nations included – where an ethnic minority is guaranteed protection against being sent to be slaughtered for the color of their skin or their ethnic background.

I hereby open the pages of Notepad to all those – black and white – who have slandered this country over the death rates in Vietnam, should they wish to apologize.

Sources for these figures are based on: Department of Defense, US Casualties in Southeast “Asia by Grade and Military Service, Hostile and Non-Hostile Deaths from 1 January 1961 through 31 December 1978 by Race (unpublished).

David Horowitz is editor-in-chief of FrontPageMagazine.com and president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #24
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Black Pupils Lag Despite Economic Status
Source: The Washington Times, Monday, Oct. 2, 2000

Black Pupils Lag Despite Economic Status

Recent nationwide studies comparing blacks’ learning abilities with those of other minorities and whites have come up with some shocking results, which cast substantial doubts over cherished cure-alls such as greater federal funding and smaller class size.

• After decades of steady progress in the 1970s and 1980s, black children’s test scores fell significantly behind in the 1990s – during the tenure of the Clinton-Gore administration, with its emphasis on pouring more and more federal money and regulations into public education.

• Black students have made some gains during recent years.

• But when compared with their relative position to some other minorities and whites, they continue to score far lower on the SAT, the ACT and the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) exams, which have charted the progress of students nationwide in core subjects since 1969.

• Economically privileged black children who share the same advantages as their white peers, including smaller class size, also are doing poorly, according to the Clinton-Gore administration’s own Department of Education.

• It reported also that the gap is not confined to center-city, low-income, high-crime areas, but is fast becoming a suburban issue as well, as increasingly more blacks, attaining affluence, flee from the urban cores just as whites do.

• By way of illustration, in 1971 reading scores on national assessments for students of black parents who had gone beyond high school were 44 points lower than those of white students with parents of similar education levels.

By 1990, blacks had narrowed the reading gap to 27 points.

But by 1999, after seven years of the Clinton-Gore administration, the gap had widened again, to a 36-point difference.

It all has traditional educationists scratching their heads. Conventional-wisdom fixes aren’t working.

Two of the non-traditional explanations being offered frequently now are:

1. Expectations that teachers and school administrators have of blacks are far below their expectations for other minorities and whites.

There is mounting evidence that when students – regardless of race or economic background or neighborhood – are pushed to higher achievements, they respond favorably.

According to Paul Hill, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington in Seattle:

“Black kids on average, especially in cities, are in schools that offer much-less-demanding curricula and don’t push the kids as fast. They don’t force them to exercise reading, analytic and mathematics skills like schools in the suburbs and schools with larger numbers of whites.

“You can see when black kids get into Catholic schools and schools that are highly demanding, they generally do about as well as anybody else does.”

He said that poor blacks attending non-public schools “usually end up with the same grades, test scores and scholarships” as other students there.

“A lot of it has to do with the intellectuality of the schools,” he said.

2. Regardless of race or economic status, children whose parents get involved in their education and insist on pressing them to meet higher expectations do better in school.

Kevin L. Martin, a black Maryland businessman raised in the District of Columbia, where his mother held him to high scholastic standards, reprimanded black leaders such as Jesse Jackson and members of the Congressional Black Caucus for not advocating personal responsibility and empowerment instead of a larger federal role in education.

“Until these so-called black leaders get out of that Democratic mind-set of treating African-American children as victims, and hold these parents as well as the schools accountable, African-Americans will continue to fail in education,” Martin said.

A member of the advisory council for Project 21, the National Leadership Network of Conservative African-Americans, Martin criticized those black parents who do not get involved in their children’s education.

“That is why their children get the worst of everything,” he said.
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #25
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Black Pupils Losing Out in Drive to Raise Standards
Source: The Independent News, http://www.independent.co.uk/, October 27th 2000

Black Pupils ‘Losing Out’ in Drive to Raise Standards

By Ben Russell, Education Correspondent

Startling new evidence that ethnic minorities are losing out in the drive to raise school standards was published by inspectors yesterday.

Researchers expressed alarm after an analysis of exam results found black children falling further behind their white counterparts as they progressed through school.

In one borough, black children were 20 percentage points ahead of the local average on baseline assessment tests carried out when they started primary school. But by the time they took their GCSEs, they lagged more than 20 points behind the norm.

A report, commissioned by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), said: “That any ethnic group could enter school 20 percentage points in advance of the average but leave 21 points behind opens up an important area for educational debate on ethnic minority achievement.”

Analysis of test and exam results in a further five boroughs also found black pupils were falling behind as they progressed through schools. The report does not name the boroughs concerned. All ethnic groups had improved standards, but the overall gap between Afro-Caribbean and Pakistani pupils and whites was nearly double that of a decade ago.

The report pointed to research which has “consistently highlighted ways in which black pupils are stereotyped and face additional barriers to academic success”.

The researchers, David Gillborn, of the London University Institute of Education, and Heidi Safisa Mirza, of Middlesex University, added: “Available evidence suggests that the inequalities of attainment for African-Caribbean pupils become progressively greater as they move through the school system.”

The report was based on the first test comparisons between the races. But researchers expressed concern that only six authorities could provide full test comparisons.

Chris Myant, of the Commission for Racial Equality, said: “We are beginning to get some statistics to back up what educationalists have been saying for some time, which is there is relative under-achievement and may be problems with some groups as a result of their school experience.”

The Schools minister Jacqui Smith said “more needed to be done” but added a new monitoring system would track pupils through school and help officials to target support.
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #26
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Black Youth Culture Blamed as Pupils Fail
Source: The Guardian Observer, London, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education, Sunday August 20, 2000

Black Youth Culture Blamed as Pupils Fail

Gaby Hinsliff and Martin Bright

A respected black academic last night sparked a furious debate after he claimed his community was ‘not interested’ in intellectual activity and blamed black youth culture for the poor school record of Afro-Caribbean boys and girls.

In an exclusive interview with The Observer, Tony Sewell, a university lecturer who has just finished an inquiry into soaring levels of exclusions among black pupils from a London school, claimed that too much concern with money and consumer goods was almost as damaging to black pupils’ chances as racism.

He warned that fashionable black youth culture inevitably crossed over to white teenagers, and said tackling it would benefit all pupils. ‘What we have now is… not only the pressure of racism, but black peer grouping [which] has become another pressure almost as big as institutional racism was.’

Black children had gained much-needed self-esteem from their youth culture becoming part of the mainstream, he conceded. ‘But that culture is not one that, for example, is interested in being a great chess player, or intellectual activity.

‘It is actually to do with propping up a big commercial culture to do with selling trainers, selling magazines, rap music and so on.’

Sewell’s comments provoked an angry response from others in the black community and ignited an acrimonious debate about the real causes of under-achievment in British schools. Black community leaders accused him of encouraging a ‘blame the victim’ culture.

The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) is already investigating a string of allegations that head teachers unfairly excluded black children. Official figures show that this is four times as likely to happen to Afro-Caribbean children as to whites. A report to be published tomorrow by the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is expected to criticise the UK.

Lee Jasper, who advises London Mayor Ken Livingstone on race relations, said: ‘Tony Sewell… is somebody who gets attention for saying the things that well-meaning white liberals would naturally agree with.

‘I don’t believe that any community can suffer the levels of unemployment and missed education that we have had without suffering from the kind of problems that are now apparent.

‘It is a “blame the victim” culture yet again – if it’s not the Government saying it’s lone mothers that are the problem, it’s the aggressive nature of black kids.’

British schools were suffering a ‘race crisis’, particularly over exclusions, said Jasper. ‘There is a raft of evidence that white female teachers find black boys intimidating, difficult to deal with. They have an expectation about their behaviour which tends to dictate the quality of teaching,’ he said.

An Ofsted survey last year found that Afro-Caribbean boys were often the lowest- performing group in GCSE exams. It asked schools urgently to establish ‘what is happening to Afro-Caribbean boys to cause a good start in primary schools to turn into such a marked decline, and take action to reverse it’.

Maxie Hayles, chair of the Birmingham Racial Attacks Monitoring Unit, said in his submission to the UN that black children ‘are often labelled by teachers as disruptive and less intelligent than white pupils’, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

‘It would be daft to think that all social exclusions are based around institutional racism,’ he said.

‘But I would never attack black culture… Black youths need something: they feel debased, they need something to idenitify with.’

Sewell, a lecturer at the University of Leeds who investigated black parents’ allegations of unfair exclusions from Malory comprehensive school in Lewisham, south-east London, said he was telling a truth that liberal white researchers dare not.

He admits he was one of the lucky few blacks to succeed academically: ‘I teach 400 trainee teachers and there is not one black face.’
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #27
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Blacks Battle Achievement Gap
Source: Washington Post Staff , Sunday, December 31, 2000; Page C01

Blacks Battle Achievement Gap

By Jay Mathews

Two years ago, Angela Hansen sat in the office of her son’s elementary school, biting her tongue and fighting back the urge to be rude. The principal had just told her that African American students’ reading scores were low at the Silver Spring school because nationally, “African American children don’t do well on standardized tests.”

Hansen, a lawyer who had always scored well, had a strong reaction: bad answer! She thought, “I’m as black as I want to be, and I test as well as most white folks!” Something was wrong, she decided, and she had to do something about it.

About that time, 20 miles away at South Lakes High School in Fairfax County, Georgetown University economist Richard America and University of Maryland anthropologist Tony Whitehead were chatting with other parents about whether black children were being challenged in the same way as white children. Why not get African American parents together to talk about it?

Like middle-class African Americans all over the country, Hansen, America and Whitehead had become increasingly troubled by the black-white achievement gap. The statistical fact that white students, on average, test better than black students has become, along with high-stakes testing, the most discussed and analyzed issue in American education, experts say.

Many middle-class African American parents around the country, particularly in the Washington area, are no longer just talking about it. They have organized groups of like-minded parents to examine what is going on in their often well-regarded suburban schools and to decide what can be done to make sure minority children are not shortchanged in subtle ways.

At Glenallan Elementary School in Silver Spring, Hansen soon learned that the principal, Ronnie Fields, had not meant to dismiss the need to close the gap. With the school’s strong encouragement, Hansen helped organize Glenallan African American Parents (GAAP). They promoted enrichment activities, briefed parents on test-taking approaches and helped boost the percentage of black third-graders scoring satisfactory on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program test from 13.6 percent in 1996 to 42.9 percent last year, Hansen said.

At South Lakes High, parents organized the African American Student Achievement Committee. It has been meeting regularly for more than a year to find ways to stimulate minority achievement through online communication among families and more school appreciation of the power of high expectations for minority students.

Confronting Biases Whitehead said he wanted to help low-income students learn to succeed at a demanding school such as South Lakes High and to help teachers confront their harmful biases.

“As an educator myself, I had to face the fact that I had certain preferences for certain kinds of students that might have led to differential treatment,” he said.

On a national level, groups such as the Black Alliance for Educational Options have been formed by middle-class parents and educators eager to close the gap for all students. They have encouraged a flood of research efforts, such as a consortium of affluent school districts, including Arlington County, that are studying the gap; the “Closing the Gap” report of the Washington-based Council for Basic Education and the Racine, Wis.-based Johnson Foundation; and the New York-based College Board’s National Task Force on Minority High Achievement.

The idea, particularly among parents, is not to wait for social scientists and policymakers to decide what the problem is but to get inside their schools so that teachers, students and other parents are aware that there is a problem and are more likely to solve it.

This new activity stems from data that have stunned educators and parents. Social scientists have theorized for many decades that minority scores on standardized tests were lower than white scores because minority parents on the average had less money and less education than white parents. Since those parents could not afford private schools or homes in neighborhoods with good public schools, and because they were not equipped to guide and inspire their children as well as college-educated parents, their children were at a disadvantage.

Experts were reassured to see the test-score differences narrowing as each generation of black parents became more affluent and better educated than the last.

But data showed that the children of middle-class black parents still scored below the children of middle-class white parents. The 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress 12th-grade reading score, for instance, showed the black-white gap larger for students with a parent with a college degree than it was for students whose parents had no high school diploma.

When the controversial book “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life” suggested in 1994 that this was partly the result of blacks having less innate intellectual ability than whites, interest in the gap erupted into a series of studies, conferences and books that have raised the discussion to a level never before seen.

Further research has discredited the theory of innate intellectual differences, but social scientists have continued to look for other causes. African American parents and educators also have continued to demand more action to explain and close the gap.

“My judgment is that the issue of equity is the most pressing issue in American education today,” said Roger Wilkins, history professor at George Mason University and a newly appointed member of the D.C. Board of Education who will take office this week. “To the extent that it focuses people’s attention on the need to focus on issues of equity, the emphasis on the gap is important.”

Explanations for the gap are numerous and complex, as attempts to determine cause and effect in the behavior of millions of people always are. The most complete and readable collection of research on the matter, the 1998 Washington-based Brookings Institution report “The Black-White Test Score Gap,” offers an assortment of possible reasons.

Comparing middle-class black and white families just by income levels, for instance, might disguise the fact that the black family, newly arrived in suburbia, might be more burdened with debt and less likely to have affluent and educated family members, such as grandparents, who might influence the children’s academic achievement. One study in the Brookings report said “our results imply that it takes at least two generations for changes in parental socioeconomic status to exert their full effect on parenting practices” that affect school achievement.

Harvard University researcher Ronald F. Ferguson says that black students appear to care more about teachers’ opinions than white students, and teacher expectations for black children are on the average lower than for white students.

Threat Identified Stanford researchers Claude M. Steele and Joshua Aronson describe in the Brookings report their work on “stereotype threat,” a tendency on the part of high-performing black college students to do worse on a test when distracted by worries that the results might be used to draw conclusions about their ethnicity.

“When the stereotype in question demeans something as important to one as intellectual ability is to good students, it can impair performance,” the researchers conclude.

And there is much in the Brookings report about the theory that bright black students reject schoolwork to avoid being chided by friends for “acting white.” A recent book by University of California at Berkeley linguist John H. McWhorter has taken this notion much further, saying that African Americans of all ages are burdened by a widespread anti-intellectualism.

The Brookings report comes to no firm conclusion about what is going on. However, the editors of the report, Christopher Jencks of Harvard University and Meredith Phillips of the University of California at Los Angeles, point to the kind of research they think would be most useful. They said family income and educational background are likely to prove less important than “the way family members and friends interact with one another and with the outside world.”

Differences in resources between predominantly black and predominantly white schools are also likely to be less crucial than “the way black and white children respond to the same classroom experiences, such as having a teacher of a different race or having a teacher with low expectations for students who read below grade level,” they said.

Parents on Alert Those are precisely the issues that many black parents are looking at in their schools. Alma Gill, whose son attends school in Howard County, said she is bothered by teachers who complain that he asks too many questions in class. He is a bright, curious learner, she said, who she thinks would have been designated as gifted and been better nurtured by teachers had he been white.

“But that’s all right,” she said. “We’re doing it at home and encouraging him to always try his best.”

Virginia Walden, a D.C. parent who actively promotes charter schools, said, “My personal feeling is that expectations from society, including our educational community, are not as great for middle-class black kids.”

Denise Nichols, a Maryland resident whose three sons attended the D.C. private school Sidwell Friends, said she has watched carefully to see whether they were treated differently from white students but is convinced that the school has been as welcoming and as challenging for them as for other students.

Other African Americans, she said, have occasionally asked whether she is worried about “how they are going to grow up to be strong black men” if they are educated in a predominantly white, upper-middle class school. She said that’s no problem, because they have a strong role model in their father, Fannie Mae executive Alvin Nichols.

At South Lakes High one recent Monday night, more than 20 parents and faculty members gathered in one of the school’s small, colorfully decorated cafeterias to discuss expectations for their children. Some complimented Principal Realista Rodriquez on her efforts to draw more students into the school’s new International Baccalaureate program. But most of the parents said they had encountered educators who did not realize the power of ill-considered judgments.

Leila Head, for instance, recalled a teacher who told students “it was okay to get C’s” and seemed reluctant to call on black students in class.

America urged members to be “constructive and creative” and pushed for solutions that would exploit the community’s growing use of e-mail and other computer services. The middle-class parents were concerned about students who drop out, particularly those among the school’s 300 African American students who are not doing well.

“I don’t want to sound elitist, but we want to find a respectful way of reaching out to encourage people who don’t seem to be quite navigating the system,” America said later.

At Glenallan Elementary, Hansen and other black parents pushed for several changes and were pleased that the co-presidents of the PTA enthusiastically welcomed them to the executive board. Principal Fields focused on hiring talented faculty, increasing teacher training and raising expectations for all children. Preparation for state tests became more intense. GAAP, the black parents group, met with district testing experts and distributed sample tests and test preparation books to other parents.

The Glenallan Elementary parents also organized some of their own after-school activities, including preparation sessions for the state MSPAP test conducted by two fathers, Hansen said.

The apparent result, the threefold increase in the percentage of black third-graders scoring satisfactory in reading, convinced Hansen and many other parents that their work had paid off.

“The parents had a huge impact,” Fields said.

Said Hansen, “In all but one category, the African Americans in third- and fifth-grades MSPAP scores reflected a narrowing of the gap.”

There were benefits, Hansen said, in just having children know “that we were having meetings and making plans so they would do better in school. . . . We have to be willing to insist that the system that is designed to teach all children does, in fact, teach all children.”

© 2000 The Washington Post Company
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #28
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Blacks Cant Hack College Egalitarians Baffled
Colleges’ Retention of Blacks Dismal

By Janet Vandenabeele, and Jodi Upton | The Detroit News | July 15, 2001

African-American students are dropping out of Michigan universities at rates far greater than whites, adrift at schools that vigorously recruited them.

A Detroit News investigation of seven Michigan universities shows that among black students who were freshmen in 1994, just 40 percent got their diplomas after six years, compared to 61 percent of white students and 74 percent of Asians.

“We’re throwing them out after taking their money and they’re getting nothing out of it,” said Barry Mehler, a history professor at Ferris State University, who helped start a program to keep minority students in college. “We’re mugging (the majority) of them, taking their money, taking their dignity.

“I feel like I am participating in a vast criminal conspiracy.”

The falloff between white and black graduation rates here raises high-impact issues, because Michigan sits in the epicenter of the national debate over affirmative action in college admissions:

The state’s universities have special programs aimed at helping black students meet financial, social and academic challenges, but graduation rates for blacks haven’t improved consistently over the past decade, The News found.
Universities knowingly admit students who have a high chance of failing.
Michigan has presented itself as a test case for affirmative action in higher education, but the state is no national model on how to retain black students.
Experts blame a variety of reasons for high dropout rates among African-American students, from money to inadequate academic preparation to an unfriendly campus climate.

“A lot of students don’t feel like there’s a true effort to make universities diverse,” said Bryan Cook, a doctoral student who advises black fraternities at the University of Michigan. “They think it’s a show commitment and the programs they offer are watered-down.”

Knowing why blacks are dropping out doesn’t mean the universities are on top of the issue.

“It’s the nature of the beast,” said Lester Monts, U-M’s senior vice-provost for academic affairs. “We just don’t have a handle on this. Most universities don’t have a handle on this at all.”

When Mario Harper of Oak Park looks at pictures from his freshman year at Michigan State University, he realizes that a lot of African-American classmates who started with him are no longer around.

“There are so many who’ve just dropped out of sight, nowhere to be found,” said Harper, an MSU senior who graduated from Shrine Catholic High School in Royal Oak. “I make sure I do the best I can. I want to get rid of that stereotype of the lazy black male. But it is a lot of pressure.”

Better than average

U-M, Michigan State and Central Michigan are the only Division I schools in Michigan whose black graduate rates are better than the national average — which, at 39 percent, is nothing to brag about. The reason: They are the more selective, and tend to get better-prepared and better-financed students.

The 10 years’ worth of data analyzed by The News shows that the more selective a university is in choosing its students, the more likely its students are to graduate. That’s clearly illustrated by U-M, whose admission standards are the state’s toughest. Conversely, those that are less choosey about admissions have higher dropout rates.

Of the seven schools studied by The News, the graduation rate for black students is highest at U-M (about 64 percent over the past decade) and lowest at Oakland University (about 22 percent).

That compares to white graduation rates of 86 percent at U-M and 43 percent at Oakland University.

U-M, cheered on by other Michigan universities and blue-chip corporations, currently is defending legal challenges to its admissions policy, which favors black applicants over whites and Asians with stronger academic credentials. The case is likely to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

U-M administrators and supporters say a diverse student body is crucial to the quality of education — and to the total college experience — of all students.

Dropout figures, however, show there’s not much racial diversity left, by the time students are upperclassmen.

Example: When U-M freshmen began in 1993, 67 percent of the class was white and 9 percent black. By graduation, the percentage of African-American students had fallen by a third, to just 6 percent of the class.

Graduation rates among black students are worse at MSU, Central, Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan, Northern Michigan and Oakland universities. The News reviewed 10 years of graduation rates at NCAA Division I schools, because those are the only ones for which national rates are kept. (Wayne State University has not kept dropout records by student race until recently; the first set of six-year figures will be out next year.)

Hispanic and Native American students also leave Michigan colleges at rates higher than whites, and are equally courted by selective schools such as Michigan and Michigan State. But their graduation rates tend to be higher than those of African Americans.

College administrators recognize the moral dilemma of recruiting black students, knowing their high chances of failure.

“We want to make sure we aren’t just pushing people in. That’s unethical from my standpoint,” said Lee June, MSU vice-president for student affairs.

Pay their own bills

While high dropout rates are commonly blamed on poor academic preparation, that’s not the whole story, some educators believe.

Minority students tend to come from less affluent families, so when the financial aid check doesn’t come, or the grant doesn’t cover all the college bills, parents are less able to bail them out.

Black students may have to work longer hours at a job to pay their own bills, or to help out with a family crisis. Study time suffers.

Because fewer family members have even attempted college, black students may find themselves alone when it comes time to make a decision to stay in school, or quit.

Chandra Cross gave Wayne State University a try last year. But her dreams of a degree in computer science collapsed amid the weight of tuition payments.

Hoping to afford tuition working full-time at a Wal-Mart in Taylor, Cross was surprised to learn that students still have to pay for classes they drop. After a few semesters, Cross left. She’s now working at a Burger King in Dearborn Heights.

“The classes were too big and you always had to run around trying to find your professors,” she said.

But not everyone blames the universities. Some minority students fall victim to the same thing white students do: too much freedom.

“I just didn’t go to class,” said Tyra Lumpkin, a Detroit student who attended several semesters at Oakland University in 1999-2000. “I had become real lax and wasn’t concentrating on school.”

A few professors asked about her when she quit attending, but Lumpkin said she was aware of no programs designed to make sure she stayed in school.

“There were no black professors and most of the people in my classes were white, but that wasn’t the problem. It was me.” said Lumpkin, who hopes to attend Alabama State University this fall.

Recent good times may actually have worsened the exodus of minority students, said Rodney Lopez, a counselor in Wayne State University’s Chicano-Boricua Studies program.

“When the economy is doing real well, they find good jobs and they like the money,” he said.

In the long-run, however, the high African-American dropout rate is costly for taxpayers, as well as for the students themselves.

If they graduated at the same rate as their white counterparts, minority students would earn an additional $5.3 billion a year, according to a study done by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

And the state, already tightening its belt as the economy contracts, would be getting an additional $1.9 billion in tax revenues from those college-degreed, higher-paid workers.

Intimidating atmosphere

For some black students who have grown up in neighborhoods and schools with few whites, a predominantly white campus can be intimidating and unwelcoming.

“Sometimes there’s a disconnect between universities and students of color,” said U-M graduate student Bryan Cook. “It’s not that universities don’t have a desire to enhance diversity. But sometimes, those efforts backfire and don’t work to make life for black students easier. That can be alienating.”

Rina Henry of Detroit said she had little trouble adjusting to campus life at Wayne State. The bills were tough, though: She worked two jobs and paid the school $600 every two weeks.

Henry, a computer science major, left Wayne State about six months ago, but plans to return soon.

“I liked it, but if anything, I wish there was more hands-on teaching with the professors,” she said. “You sit down in class, they write on the blackboard and tell you to do this, do that, read this, read that.”

University officials acknowledge they need to make the whole campus atmosphere less threatening for everyone — whites and minorities alike.

“The only way you foster true diversity and plurality is to foster interactions between all the groups,” said Glenn McIntosh, director of Oakland University’s Office of Equity. “(This) will lead to (producing) leaders of the 21st century. They will be more marketable.”

Creating a climate that embraces diversity, at a time when race is a national obsession, is “a continual challenge,” MSU provost Lou Anna Simon said.

“Do students believe there is a climate issue? Of course. … Even when we do something (to encourage tolerance) students live in a larger society. We get 10,000 new students every year, each with their own perceptions,” she said.

Overcoming long-ingrained ideas of social, academic and economic class may prove more challenging than simply throwing money into a new program.

Mehler, who heads the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism at Ferris, which was not among the colleges studied by The News, says don’t underestimate the impact of stereotyping and racism.

“You have many professors who simply are racists. Their racism is based on their intellectual perception of reality,” Mehler said.

Said Bill Bloomfield, a veteran of several national programs for minority high school and college students: “You need (change) sunk into the bedrock of the institution from an administrative, budgetary and cultural perspective.

“The issue isn’t so much that the kids don’t have the oomph to pull it off. It ain’t the kids’ problem.”

Staff writer Joel Kurth contributed to this report. You can reach Janet Vandenabeele at (313) 222-2309 or mailto:[email protected]
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #29
Alex Linder
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Blacks Commit 90 Percent of Interracial Crime
Source: The New Century Foundation, 2717 Clarkes Landing, Oakton, VA 22124
Tel. (703) 716-0900, Fax. (703) 716-0932

News Release, June 2, 1999:

Study: blacks commit 90% of interracial crime

Data suggest ‘racial profiling’ may have scientific basis

1. African-Americans commit 90% of the approximately 1,700,000 interracial crimes of violence that occur in the United States every year, and are more than 50 times more likely to commit violent crime against whites than vice versa.

2. Blacks are so much more likely than Americans of other races to commit crimes that police may be justified in stopping and questioning them more frequently – just as they stop men more often than women and young people more often than old people.

These are some of the controversial findings of a new think tank report based on extensive cross-analysis of government crime statistics. The study finds that Asians consistently commit the smallest number of crimes, followed by whites. Hispanics commit violent crime at approximately three times the white rate, and blacks are five to eight times more violent. In one of its most startling conclusions the report finds that blacks are as much more violent than whites as men are more violent than women. “This is the painful reality that gives rise to ‘racial profiling,’ ” said Jared Taylor, the report’s author. “Police quickly learn who the bad guys are. When there is a murder they don’t look for little old ladies. They look for young men – unfortunately, they are often justified in looking for young black men.”

The study, The Color of Crime, finds there is actually more black-on-white than black-on-black crime. When blacks commit violent crime they target whites slightly more than half the time. When whites commit violence they target blacks two to three percent of the time. The study also notes that despite the common view that hate crimes almost always involve whites brutalizing non-whites, blacks are twice as likely as whites to commit hate crimes.

The author of the study, Jared Taylor, is an internationally-trained economist and crime expert. He has written extensively on race relations and has testified in several court cases as an expert witness on crime rates.

Major Findings

1. Blacks commit violent crimes at four to eight times the white rate. Hispanics commit violent crimes at approximately three times the white rate, and Asians at one half to three quarters the white rate.

2. Blacks are as much more violent than whites (four to eight times) as men are more violent than women. Just as police stop and question men more often than women, they stop blacks more often than whites.

3. Of the approximately 1,700,000 interracial crimes of violence involving blacks and whites, 90 percent are committed by blacks against whites. Blacks are 50 times more likely than whites to commit individual acts of interracial violence. They are up to 250 times more likely than whites to engage in multiple-offender or group interracial violence.

4. There is more black-on-white than black-on-black violent crime. Fifty-six percent of violent crimes committed by blacks have white victims. Only two to three percent of violent crimes committed by whites have black victims.

5. Blacks are twice as likely as whites to commit hate crimes.

6. Hispanics are a hate crime victim category in FBI reports but not a perpetrator category. Hispanic offenders are classified as whites, which inflates the white offense rate and gives the impression that Hispanics commit no hate crimes.

Methodology

The Color of Crime reports the results of extensive, computer-based cross analysis of data taken primarily from the following sources:

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States 1997

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Criminal Victimization 1997

Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1997

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crime Statistics 1997





Click Here to View the Text of The Color of Crime

Click Here to View Jared Taylor’s Report: Race, Crime, and Violence
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #30
Alex Linder
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Blacks Dropping Out Despite Special Treatment
The Graduation Gap: A Detroit News Special Report
Colleges’ retention of blacks dismal
Analysis shows just 40% of blacks graduated compared to 61% of whites in Mich. schools

By Janet Vandenabeele, and Jodi Upton / The Detroit News

African-American students are dropping out of Michigan universities at rates far greater than whites, adrift at schools that vigorously recruited them.
A Detroit News investigation of seven Michigan universities shows that among black students who were freshmen in 1994, just 40 percent got their diplomas after six years, compared to 61 percent of white students and 74 percent of Asians.
“We’re throwing them out after taking their money and they’re getting nothing out of it,” said Barry Mehler, a history professor at Ferris State University, who helped start a program to keep minority students in college. “We’re mugging (the majority) of them, taking their money, taking their dignity.
“I feel like I am participating in a vast criminal conspiracy.”
The falloff between white and black graduation rates here raises high-impact issues, because Michigan sits in the epicenter of the national debate over affirmative action in college admissions:
* The state’s universities have special programs aimed at helping black students meet financial, social and academic challenges, but graduation rates for blacks haven’t improved consistently over the past decade, The News found.
* Universities knowingly admit students who have a high chance of failing.
* Michigan has presented itself as a test case for affirmative action in higher education, but the state is no national model on how to retain black students.
Experts blame a variety of reasons for high dropout rates among African-American students, from money to inadequate academic preparation to an unfriendly campus climate.
“A lot of students don’t feel like there’s a true effort to make universities diverse,” said Bryan Cook, a doctoral student who advises black fraternities at the University of Michigan. “They think it’s a show commitment and the programs they offer are watered-down.”
Knowing why blacks are dropping out doesn’t mean the universities are on top of the issue.
“It’s the nature of the beast,” said Lester Monts, U-M’s senior vice-provost for academic affairs. “We just don’t have a handle on this. Most universities don’t have a handle on this at all.”
When Mario Harper of Oak Park looks at pictures from his freshman year at Michigan State University, he realizes that a lot of African-American classmates who started with him are no longer around.
“There are so many who’ve just dropped out of sight, nowhere to be found,” said Harper, an MSU senior who graduated from Shrine Catholic High School in Royal Oak. “I make sure I do the best I can. I want to get rid of that stereotype of the lazy black male. But it is a lot of pressure.”

Better than average
U-M, Michigan State and Central Michigan are the only Division I schools in Michigan whose black graduate rates are better than the national average — which, at 39 percent, is nothing to brag about. The reason: They are the more selective, and tend to get better-prepared and better-financed students.
The 10 years’ worth of data analyzed by The News shows that the more selective a university is in choosing its students, the more likely its students are to graduate. That’s clearly illustrated by U-M, whose admission standards are the state’s toughest. Conversely, those that are less choosey about admissions have higher dropout rates.
Of the seven schools studied by The News, the graduation rate for black students is highest at U-M (about 64 percent over the past decade) and lowest at Oakland University (about 22 percent).
That compares to white graduation rates of 86 percent at U-M and 43 percent at Oakland University.
U-M, cheered on by other Michigan universities and blue-chip corporations, currently is defending legal challenges to its admissions policy, which favors black applicants over whites and Asians with stronger academic credentials. The case is likely to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
U-M administrators and supporters say a diverse student body is crucial to the quality of education — and to the total college experience — of all students.
Dropout figures, however, show there’s not much racial diversity left, by the time students are upperclassmen.
Example: When U-M freshmen began in 1993, 67 percent of the class was white and 9 percent black. By graduation, the percentage of African-American students had fallen by a third, to just 6 percent of the class.
Graduation rates among black students are worse at MSU, Central, Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan, Northern Michigan and Oakland universities. The News reviewed 10 years of graduation rates at NCAA Division I schools, because those are the only ones for which national rates are kept. (Wayne State University has not kept dropout records by student race until recently; the first set of six-year figures will be out next year.)
Hispanic and Native American students also leave Michigan colleges at rates higher than whites, and are equally courted by selective schools such as Michigan and Michigan State. But their graduation rates tend to be higher than those of African Americans.
College administrators recognize the moral dilemma of recruiting black students, knowing their high chances of failure.
“We want to make sure we aren’t just pushing people in. That’s unethical from my standpoint,” said Lee June, MSU vice-president for student affairs.

Pay their own bills
While high dropout rates are commonly blamed on poor academic preparation, that’s not the whole story, some educators believe.
Minority students tend to come from less affluent families, so when the financial aid check doesn’t come, or the grant doesn’t cover all the college bills, parents are less able to bail them out.
Black students may have to work longer hours at a job to pay their own bills, or to help out with a family crisis. Study time suffers.
Because fewer family members have even attempted college, black students may find themselves alone when it comes time to make a decision to stay in school, or quit.
Chandra Cross gave Wayne State University a try last year. But her dreams of a degree in computer science collapsed amid the weight of tuition payments.
Hoping to afford tuition working full-time at a Wal-Mart in Taylor, Cross was surprised to learn that students still have to pay for classes they drop. After a few semesters, Cross left. She’s now working at a Burger King in Dearborn Heights.
“The classes were too big and you always had to run around trying to find your professors,” she said.
But not everyone blames the universities. Some minority students fall victim to the same thing white students do: too much freedom.
“I just didn’t go to class,” said Tyra Lumpkin, a Detroit student who attended several semesters at Oakland University in 1999-2000. “I had become real lax and wasn’t concentrating on school.”
A few professors asked about her when she quit attending, but Lumpkin said she was aware of no programs designed to make sure she stayed in school.
“There were no black professors and most of the people in my classes were white, but that wasn’t the problem. It was me.” said Lumpkin, who hopes to attend Alabama State University this fall.
Recent good times may actually have worsened the exodus of minority students, said Rodney Lopez, a counselor in Wayne State University’s Chicano-Boricua Studies program.
“When the economy is doing real well, they find good jobs and they like the money,” he said.
In the long-run, however, the high African-American dropout rate is costly for taxpayers, as well as for the students themselves.
If they graduated at the same rate as their white counterparts, minority students would earn an additional $5.3 billion a year, according to a study done by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
And the state, already tightening its belt as the economy contracts, would be getting an additional $1.9 billion in tax revenues from those college-degreed, higher-paid workers.

Intimidating atmosphere
For some black students who have grown up in neighborhoods and schools with few whites, a predominantly white campus can be intimidating and unwelcoming.
“Sometimes there’s a disconnect between universities and students of color,” said U-M graduate student Bryan Cook. “It’s not that universities don’t have a desire to enhance diversity. But sometimes, those efforts backfire and don’t work to make life for black students easier. That can be alienating.”
Rina Henry of Detroit said she had little trouble adjusting to campus life at Wayne State. The bills were tough, though: She worked two jobs and paid the school $600 every two weeks.
Henry, a computer science major, left Wayne State about six months ago, but plans to return soon.
“I liked it, but if anything, I wish there was more hands-on teaching with the professors,” she said. “You sit down in class, they write on the blackboard and tell you to do this, do that, read this, read that.”
University officials acknowledge they need to make the whole campus atmosphere less threatening for everyone — whites and minorities alike.
“The only way you foster true diversity and plurality is to foster interactions between all the groups,” said Glenn McIntosh, director of Oakland University’s Office of Equity. “(This) will lead to (producing) leaders of the 21st century. They will be more marketable.”
Creating a climate that embraces diversity, at a time when race is a national obsession, is “a continual challenge,” MSU provost Lou Anna Simon said.
“Do students believe there is a climate issue? Of course. … Even when we do something (to encourage tolerance) students live in a larger society. We get 10,000 new students every year, each with their own perceptions,” she said.
Overcoming long-ingrained ideas of social, academic and economic class may prove more challenging than simply throwing money into a new program.
Mehler, who heads the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism at Ferris, which was not among the colleges studied by The News, says don’t underestimate the impact of stereotyping and racism.
“You have many professors who simply are racists. Their racism is based on their intellectual perception of reality,” Mehler said.
Said Bill Bloomfield, a veteran of several national programs for minority high school and college students: “You need (change) sunk into the bedrock of the institution from an administrative, budgetary and cultural perspective.
“The issue isn’t so much that the kids don’t have the oomph to pull it off. It ain’t the kids’ problem.”
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #31
Alex Linder
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Blacks Won't Go Far in Parallel Universe
Source: The Toledo Blade | May 27, 2001

Blacks Won’t Go Far in Parallel Universe

Jack Kelly

The good news in a recent report by the National Center for Health Statistics is that the proportion of illegitimate births among black women declined slightly in 1999 from the year before. The bad news is that 69.1 percent of black babies born that year were born out of wedlock.

Fatherlessness is by far the most accurate predictor of whether a child will end up in poverty or in prison. In 1998, the median income for two-parent families was $52,553. For a mother who never married, it was $12,064.

The phenomenal rate of illegitimate births by black women is the principal reason why a third of blacks live in poverty, and why half the prison population is black. Some 70 percent of long-term inmates, and about 70 percent of juveniles in reform schools were raised in homes without their father.

Education has been the path from poverty to prosperity. The National Assessment of Education Progress reported that last year nearly two-thirds of black fourth-graders couldn’t read. This is a looming catastrophe. But most of the few black “leaders” to notice it did so only to advocate lowering standards, or to blame it on whites.

Jesse Lee Peterson is a black pastor in Los Angeles. He recalls counseling a boy named Jimmy:

“Though bright and talented, Jimmy was filled with rage. His father had abandoned his mom and two brothers when he was a baby. He resented both his parents and expressed this rage toward whites, whom his black peers had taught him were to blame for his troubles. … I asked him if he knew any white people personally, to which he said no.

“Black Americans are more racist today than whites are,” Mr. Peterson asserts. “Whites have nothing to do with their [blacks] present handicap.”

Mr. Peterson is politically conservative. But University of California-Berkeley professor John McWhorter, who is not, has a similar view. In his book Losing the Race, he says blacks are sabotaging themselves through a cult of victimization, a cult of separatism, and a cult of anti-intellectualism. Blacks are unlikely to take advantage of the opportunities available to them, he says, if they blame their problems on others, and if they condemn working or studying hard as “acting white.”

“We are underestimating black people,” he said. “Frankly, it insults me. Jews can survive centuries of persecution … and have their children be expected to reach for any bar; Chinese . . . can be tortured on the streets and barred from employment anywhere but in laundries, sweatshops, and restaurants and have their children be expected to reach for any bar. But pull a well-fed suburban black kid over for a drug check one afternoon and subject him to a couple of teachers who don’t call on him as often as other students and he’s forever subject to lower expectations.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., strove to bring us together. But many blacks are choosing to live in a parallel universe where O.J. is innocent, the AIDS virus was concocted by the CIA to exterminate blacks, and underneath anything a white person says to a black person is a hidden racial slur. People who choose to live in this parallel universe are unlikely to go far in the one that actually exists.

Jack Kelly is a member of The Blade?s national bureau. E-mail him at [email protected].
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #32
Alex Linder
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Bringing Democracy to Haiti
Source: National Vanguard Magazine — Number 114 (November-December 1994)

Bringing Democracy to Haiti

When Christopher Columbus touched shore, on December 6, 1492, on the West Indies island which he named La Isla Española (Hispaniola) and claimed for the Spanish crown, it was inhabited by Arawak Indians, whose own name for their island was Haiti.

The Spanish failed to develop their hold on the island in a systematic way, focusing their efforts primarily on the mining of precious metals in its eastern end and leaving the west unsettled, after annihilating most of the Arawaks there. During the 17th century French and English adventurers established their own presence on Hispaniola, especially in the western end of the island. By the latter part of the 17th century the French had de facto control of much of the west, and in 1697 this control was given de jure status by a formal agreement between the French and Spanish governments. The French renamed their western third of the island Saint-Domingue, while the Spanish called their colony on the eastern part Santo Domingo. The mountains and jungle of the interior provided a natural border between the French and Spanish parts of Hispaniola.

Unlike the Spanish, the French developed their new colony efficiently, establishing plantations and importing Black slaves from Africa as laborers. By 1750 sugar, coffee, cocoa, indigo, and cotton were being produced in such quantity that 700 ships were kept busy carrying these goods back to France. During the 18th century Saint- Domingue was the most prosperous of all the European colonies in the New World. Its fertile northern plain was dotted with the white manors of the French landowners, each surrounded by green fields and the dwellings of slaves; and its bustling cities, most notably Le Cap Français on the northern coast, were filled with fine, stone buildings.

In 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution, the population of Saint-Domingue was about 35,000 Whites and nearly 500,000 Black slaves. In addition there were approximately 25,000 free non-Whites, most of them mulatto offspring of the earliest White male colonists and Black female slaves. By the latter part of the century, however, enough women had arrived from France to balance the French population sexually, a color line was firmly established, and intimate relations across this line were taboo.

Saint-Domingue, alas, was not spared the intrigues and agitation which, in Europe, led to the disaster of the French Revolution. The Republicans and the Royalists both had their partisans among the colonists. In addition there were crazed zealots who deliberately sowed the seeds of rebellion among the Black slaves and the mulattoes. Some of these zealots were unhinged by the same egalitarian madness which led to the Reign of Terror in France; others, including a number of priests, seem to have been under the influence of radical Christian notions: together they were loosely organized in a semi-secret society known as Friends of the Blacks (Amis des Noirs).

The Whites could have saved themselves and the colony if they had united on the basis of race and hunted down and exterminated the Amis des Noirs. Unfortunately, class hatreds divided the Whites more strongly than their common racial interests united them. The middle-class Whites envied the wealthy landowners and the aristocrats, and the White rabble which had accumulated in the port cities envied all their betters.

The mulattoes and the Blacks also hated each other. The former were more intelligent and industrious than the latter, and many had taken advantage of their freedom to better themselves; more than anything else they dreaded being reduced to the status of the Blacks. The Blacks realized this and hated the mulattoes for it. This division between the mulattoes and the Blacks complicated the situation, but in the end it did not really matter. What mattered was that the Whites were outnumbered 15 to one; they refused to put their political and class differences aside until it was too late; and France, first torn by a self-destructive revolution and then preoccupied by a series of European wars, was unable to provide assistance when it was needed.

The first Black insurrection in Saint-Domingue occured in August 1791. Inspired by the Amis des Noirs and by their own Voodoo leaders, the latter of whom persuaded them that they were immune to the Whites’ weapons, the slaves in the northern part of the colony began attacking their masters as they slept on the night of August 22. White men were hacked to death immediately, if they were fortunate; otherwise, they were butchered by the Voodoo-inflamed Blacks in ways too horrible to describe here. The fate of the White women was even worse. The Blacks who marched on Le Cap Français carried as their standard a White baby impaled on a spear.

The Whites–or at least most of them–rallied to their own defense, and Le Cap Français was made into an armed stronghold, while similar measures were taken in other parts of the colony. Nevertheless, more than 2,000 Whites were murdered during the first two months of the 1791 insurrection.

The following 13 years were chaotic. The race war between the Whites and the Blacks was intermittent. The mulattoes sometimes took the side of the Whites and sometimes the side of the Blacks. The White rabble, often swayed by Republican propaganda and by their own greed and envy, were nearly as undependable as the mulattoes. A substantial portion of the colony’s upper-class Whites, despairing of any possibility for the restoration of order and sanity, left for France or America.

The French government vacillated, sometimes aiding the colonists against the rebellious slaves and sometimes attempting to make Saint-Domingue conform to crackpot Republican theories of universal égalité et fraternité by appointing mulattoes and even Blacks to positions of authority in the colony. Where the latter held sway, they ruled like African potentates, using a combination of capricious terror and the dispensing of government largess to their favorites to maintain their positions. The two most prominent of these Black Republicans were Pierre Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines, both monsters of iniquity.

In 1794 the French government, still in the thrall of Republican madness, proclaimed the emancipation of Saint-Domingue’s Blacks. Toussaint L’Ouverture, despite his bloodthirsty cruelty and extraordinary bent for deceit and treachery, proved himself the ablest leader of the Blacks. After a successful incursion into the Spanish end of the island in 1801, he became the Black warlord of Hispaniola, with the blessing of the Republicans.

Although he was happy to parrot back to the various Commissioners sent over by France the Politically Correct slogans about “equality” and “liberty” which they wanted to hear, Toussaint L’Ouverture understood that in order to retain the favor of the French government he had to restore the colony to production, and the only way to do that was to force his fellow Blacks, who had been happily idle since 1794, to begin working again. Without calling it slavery, he used an iron hand to bend them to his will. His Black generals, most notably Dessalines, knew how to deal with their own kind. They toured the plantations trailed by retinues of executioners. Idlers and shirkers were seized and buried alive or tied to boards and sawed in half. These demonstrations were remarkably effective in inspiring the other Blacks to work harder than they ever had under their White masters.

More than brutality was required to repair the damage which Republican folly and Black rebellion had done to Saint-Domingue, however. Toussaint L’Ouverture could compel his Blacks to work, but he could not replace the genius for organization and administration with which the Whites had built a stable, peaceful, and productive colony. Disorder, punctuated by atrocities and massacres, continued to make the island a hellish proof of the incorrectness of the egalitarian theories which had brought on the disaster in the first place.

Back in France, the star of Napoleon Bonaparte was rising. By 1801 Napoleon had become virtual dictator and was well on the way to winding up, at least temporarily, the various wars in which post-revolutionary France had been involved, so that he was free to concern himself with the affairs of Saint-Domingue and France’s other colonial possessions. And Napoleon, unlike his Republican predecessors, was blessed with a clear head, untroubled by fantasies of “equality.<” In January 1802 he sent an army to Saint-Domingue under the command of his brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc, who quickly routed Toussaint L’Ouverture’s Black army and took the Black leader himself prisoner.

The Blacks, despite their overwhelming numbers, could not stand against a disciplined White force. The Whites, however, could not stand against the natural defenses which the tropical climate threw up against them: in particular, Yellow Fever. General Leclerc himself succumbed to the disease in November 1802, along with more than half of his army. The remaining French troops, raddled with sickness, unable to continue their work of restoration, and losing ground to renewed Black and mulatto insurgencies, withdrew at the end of 1803. Dessalines shortly thereafter declared the colony independent, restored the Arawak name Haiti, and in October 1804 assumed the title “Emperor Jacques I,” mimicking Napoleon’s recent action in France.

Concerned at first that Napoleon might send another army to the island or that rival Black chiefs might combine against him, Dessalines took a conciliatory stance. He invited the French settlers who had left after 1791 to return, promising them their safety and the return of their property. Many foolish Whites, perhaps befuddled by Republican doctrines of interracial brotherhood and equality, accepted his offer.

When, a few months later, Dessalines had cowed his rivals and it became apparent that Napoleon was again too preoccupied by conflict in Europe to concern himself with matters in the faraway Caribbean, he decided that conciliation no longer was necessary. His promise of security and property rights for the Whites was forgotten. Ordinary Blacks soon realized that they would not be punished for transgressions against Whites. If they saw a White woman they wanted, they seized her. If they saw a White man with a piece of property they wanted, they took it. White resistance to these depredations infuriated the Blacks. By the first days of 1805 Black gangs were murdering Whites on the streets of Port-au-Prince, and the practice quickly spread to other cities.

Unlike 1791, in 1805 there was no real urgency about the slaughter. The Whites were completely at the mercy of the Blacks. There were no military considerations. Killing Whites was simply a sport. A mob could entertain itself for hours putting a White man to death in the most horrible ways savage minds could invent. White women could provide amusement for days before they perished. In April Dessalines gave official sanction to the butchery. By the beginning of May every White man, woman, and child in the former colony of Saint-Domingue had been murdered.

With the Whites gone, the Blacks and the mulattoes were able to give full rein to their hatred of one another. Dessalines was killed in a mulatto uprising in October 1806. One of his generals, Henri Christophe, took his place as leader of the Blacks in the north, while the south was held by the mulatto Alexandre Sabès Pétion in Port-au-Prince.

Like Toussaint L’Ouverture and Dessalines, Christophe forced the Blacks under his rule into virtual slavery. He declared himself “Emperor Henri I” before losing his life in an uprising in 1820. A mulatto, Jean-Pierre Boyer, took his place as maximum leader. Intermittent civil war between Blacks and mulattoes has been a condition of life on Haiti ever since.

One may with good logic view the Black rulers Dessalines and Christophe as predecessors of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, just as the mulattoes Pétion and Boyer were predecessors of Raoul Cédras. The mulattoes have been in the saddle more often than not: their inferior numbers have been compensated for by superior intelligence and by the fact that many Blacks have preferred mulatto rule to the generally more brutal and arbitrary reign of their own kind.

Left to its own devices Haiti sank into a squalor unparalleled outside of Africa. The Haitians gradually destroyed what remained of the agricultural potential of their land by stripping it of trees and letting erosion take its course. Poverty, disease, superstition, and political instability, with a revolution or a coup every three or four years, have been constants.

The Monroe Doctrine, which declared Latin America and the Caribbean, excepting those few enclaves where other European powers already were established, an exclusively American sphere of interest, discouraged foreign intervention in Haiti. American businessmen were not reluctant to make investments in Haiti, however, despite its history. When those investments were imperiled by internal disorder in 1915, U.S. Marines were sent in to manage Haitian affairs.

The immediate problem was that a mulatto-led conspiracy in Port-au-Prince had culminated in an armed assault on the palace of Black President Vilbrun Sam during the early morning hours of July 26. This was the seventh revolution in as many years, and Sam knew what to do: he ordered the immediate massacre of all mulatto political prisoners being held in Port-au-Prince’s jails. Sam himself was caught by a mob and hacked to pieces the same day. The Marines landed to restore order and safeguard American investments.

The Marines, who stayed from 1915 until 1934, were given the mission by President Woodrow Wilson of “bringing democracy to Haiti.” What the Marines actually did was engineer the replacement of the Black government by a somewhat more reliable mulatto government. They also forced the Haitians to accept a new constitution, giving American businessmen the right to own land in Haiti.

Many Haitians were glad to see the Marines. In the 72 years preceding the arrival of the latter there had been 102 civil wars, insurrections, revolts, and coups. Of 22 presidents during that period, just one had served a complete term, and only four had died of natural causes. Even the Haitians were getting a little tired of the disorder. It was utterly false of Wilson to claim that what the Haitians needed was democracy, however. Clearly, they already had it, albeit with a peculiarly African flavor.

Wilson aside, most Americans were genuinely naive about all things Haitian. When briefed on the Haitian situation, Wilson’s secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, marveled: “Dear me! Think of it. Niggers speaking French.” Actually, few Haitians outside the mulatto elite speak French. The language of most Haitians is Creole, a bastardization of French with a number of African dialects and intelligible only to the Haitians themselves.

The Marines were horrified by the conditions they encountered. The filth and stench in the streets were almost unbearable to Whites. Ordinary sanitary measures were unknown to the Blacks. There were no working telephones or telegraphs in the country. The roads built more than a century earlier by the French had fallen into such disrepair that vehicular travel outside the cities was hardly possible.

The Marines distributed food to the Haitians, set up medical treatment facilities for them, and then began rebuilding the entire physical infrastructure of the country. They did not find the Blacks willing to assist in this work, so they rounded them up into labor gangs and made them work on the roads at gunpoint. This rough treatment, plus the Blacks’ perception that the Marines favored the mulattoes, led to Black uprisings and guerrilla assaults on the Marines.

The U.S. Marines were unhampered by the sort of “rules of engagement” which tied their hands later in Vietnam, and they made short work of the Black guerrillas. One of the guerrilla leaders shot by the Marines in 1919 was Charlemagne Peralte. His corpse was tied to a board and propped up as a warning to other Blacks. Peralte quickly became a martyred hero to the Black masses.

By the time the Marines pulled out in 1934, they had become thoroughly unpopular with everyone except the mulatto elite, even though they had practically rebuilt Haiti. They had built 1,000 miles of new roads and 210 bridges. They had gotten the 200-year-old French irrigation system going again and installed a reliable telephone network. Dozens of hospitals and clinics had been built, and Haitian doctors had been trained to staff them. (One of these new Black physicians was François Duvalier, later known by his nickname “Papa Doc.”) A Black police force had been trained, and the currency had been stabilized. The Haitians had had 19 years of enforced “democracy.”

As soon as the Marines left, however, the Haitians returned to their customary way of doing things. No effort was made to maintain the new infrastructure built by the Marines. Sanitation facilities were abandoned. The grossest corruption and brutality again characterized the government. Coups and rebellions followed one another with monotonous regularity. “Papa Doc” Duvalier was elected president in September 1957, after a succession of six governments during the preceding 10 months.

Duvalier understood his countrymen and how to govern them better than most of his predecessors. He organized the Tonton Macoutes (a Creole term meaning “bogeymen”), whose job it was to hunt down and murder his political opponents. Duvalier also was a devotee of Vodun (Voodoo), and he used his knowledge of the national religion to play on Haitians’ superstitions. These tactics enabled him to remain in power longer than any previous Haitian leader and to pass the presidency on to his son Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”) upon his death in 1971.

When the United States sent a military mission to Haiti in 1958 in order to help “Papa Doc” reorganize his army, the U.S. personnel who arrived were as appalled by the conditions they found as the Marines had been 43 years earlier. Historian Robert Heinl, who was a Marine colonel with the U.S. mission in 1958, found the “telephones gone . . . roads approaching non-existence . . . ports obstructed by silt . . . docks crumbling . . . sanitation and electrification in precarious decline.”

This was a time when millions of dollars in U.S. aid was available to any Third World country which would promise not to provide a haven for Communism. “Papa Doc” professed anti-Communism, and the U.S. dollars came flowing in, but the sewage continued to run in the streets of Port-au-Prince, and the Tonton Macoutes continued to make their nightly rounds.

“Baby Doc” lacked his father’s toughness and political skills, but with the aid of the Tonton Macoutes he nevertheless had a remarkably long and peaceful tenure in office. He was ousted by a military coup in 1986, and Haitian politics soon reverted to the disorder and violence which were the norm.

The current U.S. candidate for “bringing democracy to Haiti” is Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Elected in December 1990 and deposed in a coup in September 1991, Aristide is a Marxist priest of the Roman Catholic persuasion instead of a rightist priest of the Voodoo persuasion like “Papa Doc,” but he agrees with the latter that the proper way to control one’s political opponents is to terrorize and murder them.

More specifically, Aristide’s way is the way of the “necklace.” Instead of employing a corps of professional thugs to kill dissidents, during his brief period in office Aristide incited his ragtag mob of Black supporters to burn to death anyone who displeased him. In a 1991 address to a mass rally in Port-au-Prince he told his partisans that if they see “a faker who pretends to be one of our supporters . . . just grab him. Make sure he gets what he deserves . . . with the tool you have now in your hands, the `necklace.’ . . . You have the right tool in your hands . . . the right instrument. . . . What a beautiful tool we have! What a nice instrument! It is nice, it is chic, it is classy, elegant, and snappy. It smells good, and wherever you go you want to smell it.” Dozens of Haitians were burned to death with “necklaces” by Aristide’s supporters, before General Cédras stepped in.

Cédras’ own method for maintaining order was the use of “attachés”: gunmen in civilian dress carrying submachine guns in attaché cases and acting somewhat in the manner of the Tonton Macoutes, but without the Voodoo trappings associated with the latter.

It is easy to understand why the Clintonistas prefer Aristide and his “necklaces” to Cédras and his “attachés.” In the first place, the Clintonistas have an instinctive hatred for anyone in uniform. In the second place, Aristide is a Negro, and Cédras is a light-skinned mulatto. In Haiti social ranking is determined to a large degree by skin color, the rule being “lighter is better.” Mulattoes are overwhelmingly predominant in Haiti’s wealthy elite. The Clintonistas, on the other hand, have a distinct affinity for the dregs of society, whether in the United States or Haiti. “Necklacing” by a howling mob of Blacks is a more “democratic” method of governing than machine-gunning by a professional assassin. Last but not least, General Cédras is a proud man, and he was less amenable to taking orders from the New World Order planners than Aristide is.

With reasonable luck–and the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Haiti–the Clintonistas will be able to persuade most Americans that they have improved the Haitian situation by replacing Cédras with Aristide. For one thing, they can point to the substantially reduced flow of Haitian “boat people” trying to reach the United States. The real cause of that reduction, of course, is the ending of the United Nations embargo against Haiti, not Aristide’s popularity, but most Americans won’t figure that out if they’re not told. With sufficient money U.S. troops can do again what they did during the previous occupation of Haiti: they can rebuild the country’s infrastructure, and they can shoot Haitians who get out of line. They can keep Aristide in office as long as they want, and then they can go through the motions of another election and keep his successor in office the same way.

What they cannot do, however, is change the basic nature of the Haitian people. When the U.S. troops leave, Haitians will go back to being Haitians again–which is the way it should be.
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #33
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Failure Rate On Math Test Up 50 Percent in County
Source: The Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com, August 19, 2000

Failure Rate on Math Test Up 50 Percent in County

Almost one-fourth of black students who had the credits to graduate are stopped by an exam.

By Lisa Kim Bach

Review-Journal

Nearly 9 percent of Clark County high school seniors who completed their coursework failed the math portion of this year’s state graduation exam, including almost one in four black students.

In a report released Friday, the Clark County School District said 730 credit-sufficient seniors in the Class of 2000 failed to earn the minimum score of 64 on the test, a 50 percent increase over the 484 seniors who didn’t earn math proficiency in 1998-99, when the passing score was set at 61.

Passing the three-part Nevada High School Proficiency Exam — which also covers reading and writing — is a requirement for earning a high school diploma in Nevada.

Black students are having the most difficult time. The failure rate for black students is the highest among ethnic groups, at 22.8 percent. That’s nearly five times greater than the percentage of white students who failed the math test and four times the percentage of Asian students who flunked. Hispanic students also have difficulty with the math test — 15.4 percent of those tested were unable to show mastery.

“This tells me that, one, we need to get kids started in math earlier,” Superintendent Carlos Garcia said. “And two, we need to start delivering it in a way that kids understand.”

The racial divide in achievement concerns Garcia, who has asked for an analysis of courses taken by students who failed the math section. He wants to offer challenging math earlier, in the middle grades, to better prepare students for high school.
“Less than 10 percent of the kids in this district are taking algebra in eighth grade,” Garcia said. “We need to mandate that coursework in the seventh and eighth grades.”

The report released Friday is a summary of the final results of proficiency testing given in 1999-2000. Overall, 8,317 seniors who earned the credits needed for graduation took the proficiency test in Clark County last year. In reading, 97.4 percent were able to pass, earning at or above the new passing score of 71. That’s a slight increase from 1999, when 96.7 percent of seniors scored at or above the required passing score of 70.

Nearly all seniors — 98.5 percent — were proficient on the writing test. That’s also an increase over 1999, when 98 percent of credit-sufficient seniors passed the test. The writing test is graded on a scale of 1 to 6, with a 3.5 needed to pass.
Statewide averages are not yet available from the Nevada Department of Education.

Patricia Cunningham, who leads the Alliance for Social Justice, is a longtime critic of Nevada’s high school testing system and is disturbed by this year’s results. The gap in ethnic achievement needs to be closed, she said. Cunningham said the district needs to make sure that all students have equal access to high-level classes that teach the skills measured by the math proficiency. She does not believe that is always the case now.

“I think there is a direct correlation between the failure rates and the way students are referred to coursework,” said Cunningham, who has been outspoken on the new proficiency test since 1998, when the test content was revised and the passing standard was raised for students.

Cunningham said state politicians rushed into the implementation of the new proficiency test. She called current student failure rates predictable.

“You don’t let the children fail and then go back and figure out why,” Cunningham said.

The district plans to approach the Legislature with proposals for additional tutorial programs. District Test Director Judy Costa said that more effort also will be placed on having students take part in existing remediation programs. Attendance at those sessions was lower this year than in 1999.

“I do believe that the children who went to the remediation sessions did pass at a higher rate than those who didn’t,” Costa said.
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #34
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Half of Prisoners Are Black
Half of Prisoners are Black

Outside, African-Americans form 11.5% of population

Saturday, June 30, 2001
By Barbara De Lollis
Philadelphia Enquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON – New census figures show what critics of the criminal justice system have long maintained: Ohio’s jails and prisons have a disproportionate number of black inmates compared with the state’s population.

About 11.5 percent of Ohio’s population is black, according to 2000 Census figures. But more than half of Ohio’s prisoners, 50.1 percent, are black.

Black people are similarly represented on the state’s death row at Mansfield Correctional Institution. Of 199 death row inmates, 50.2 percent are black and 46.2 percent white.

Some conservatives question whether this shows the criminal justice system is discriminatory, saying those who break the law should be punished. Others say minorities are targeted for arrest.

“Unfortunately, Ohio mirrors national trends,” said Marc Mauer, assistant director of the criminal justice policy group Sentencing Project and author of Race to Incarcerate.

Actually, Ohio fares only slightly worse than national figures, he said.

Black people make up about 13 percent of the nation’s overall population and 46 percent of the prison population, Mr. Mauer said.

“All through the criminal justice system, every step of the way, you find the disproportion growing,” said Jana Schroeder, director of the Ohio Criminal Justice Program of the American Friends Service Committee. The committee is an advocacy group for prisoners and their families.

In Cincinnati, a disparity in races emerges early in the court process. Figures from the city’s Department of Pre-trial Services show that of the nearly 40,000 people arrested and set to stand trial last year, almost 64 percent were black.

Census 2000 figures show the city with a population that’s 42.9 percent black, 53 percent white.

“I don’t have an explanation for it,” said Mike Allen, Hamilton County’s prosecutor. “The one thing I do know, contrary to what some would say, African-Americans, Hispanics and minorities are not targeted by law enforcement for prosecution. We just take our defendants as they come. Prosecutors generally don’t engage in social-work activities.”

Census 2000 counted 68,873 inmates in Ohio in federal prisons and detention centers, halfway houses, local jails and police lockups, and military and other facilities.

Mr. Mauer attributed the racial disparity to a combination of crime rates and criminal justice policies.

Black people are disproportionately arrested for violent offenses, which are more likely to lead to prison terms, he said.

The national push to target drug offenses also puts more minorities in jail, he said. Four of every five people in jail for drug offenses are black or Hispanic, he said.

“All the best research we have right now is that while drug use and abuse cuts across class and race lines, drug enforcement is disproportionately focused in urban areas and inner cities.”

Nationally, one of every eight black men ages 20 to 34 is in jail or prison, he said.

“Even if you believe they all belong in prison, what does it do to family formation, people in prison, the next generation of children growing up?” Mr. Mauer asked.

But Todd Gaziano, director of Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, said comparing the racial and ethnic backgrounds of inmates to those of the overall population proves nothing.

Who’s to say how many of a certain group should be in prison, he asked.

“They ought to be ashamed of drawing those kinds of race-baiting comparisons,” Mr. Gaziano said. “Why don’t they care more about the law-abiding citizens who are ravaged by crime?”
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #35
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Lemmings Refuse to Accept Facts of Racial Differences In Intelligence
Federal Way Targets Racial Gap in Schools

by Linda Woo | Journal Reporter | July 7, 2001 (image added)

A Jewess from the Federal Way system tries
to teach a mulatto.

FEDERAL WAY - A 20-member task force will begin its work to narrow the racial gap in academics and discipline in the Federal Way School District.

The group was formed after a recent district study found that African-American students in the district are worse off than students of other races in several key areas.

“We know this is not just a school issue, but rather a community issue,” Federal Way Schools Superintendent Tom Murphy said.

On average, African-American students have lower graduation rates and academic performance; they are far more likely to be suspended or expelled; and they are over-represented in special education programs and underrepresented in advanced classes.

A gap also exists for Hispanic and American Indian students, although not as severely as for black students.

The 20-member Equity & Achievement Task Force is composed of business and civic leaders, educators, students and parents of different ethnic backgrounds.

They’ll meet over the summer and into early fall to explore four factors typically cited for students’ poor school performance: poverty, mobility, cultural barriers and parent access and involvement [Low I.Q. cannot be considered -- Jeff]. They’ll also look at cultural issues and how well teachers and students communicate.

When their work is done, the group will have developed plans to boost academic levels of students of color. The task force will present its recommendations to the School Board in October.

The issue is not limited to Federal Way. Similar racial disparities have been reported in urban school districts across the country for decades.

“These are very complex issues and represent societal problems and a system that has been in place for many, many years — a system that may not have changed with our times,” Murphy said. “What’s important to do now is close the gap and create an environment where all students have the access and equity needed to succeed.”

Alma Dansby, who was the principal at Lake Dolloff Elementary School and was appointed to head a new Office of Equity and Achievement, will lead the task force. Dansby’s experience includes working as a cultural enrichment specialist and developing multicultural curricula for elementary school students.

In addition to hearing from experts, the task force will hold “listening forums” to hear from parents, students and teachers; review other groups’ initiatives to identify best practices; and conduct outreach to ethnic communities.

The task force will meet at the Educational Services Center, 31405 18th Ave. S. Meetings are scheduled for:

Tomorrow, 5:30-8:30 p.m.
Aug. 8, 4:30-7:30 p.m.
Aug. 28, 4-7 p.m.
Oct. 9, 4-7 p.m.
The sessions are open to the public, but are working meetings for the task force. Additional sessions and listening forums will be scheduled in September. Community members can send comments to the task force at the district’s Web site at http://www.fwsd.wednet.edu. Meeting notes will be posted on the Web site within one week of each meeting.
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #36
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Minorities Lag Despite FCAT Gains
Source: The St.Petersburg Times, http://www.sptimes.com, October 27th 2000

In Pinellas, Minorities Lag Despite FCAT Gains

By Kelly Ryan

LARGO — As they sought an end to court-ordered busing for desegregation, Pinellas school leaders made a bold pledge in June 1998: Struggling students would improve, and the achievement gap between black and white students would narrow.

Statistics released Thursday indicate that Pinellas has a lot of work to do.

African-American students did post some significant gains, but as a group still lag alarmingly behind their white peers, at all grade levels tested and in all subject areas. The scores released Thursday were from February’s Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in reading, writing and math.

For example, 20 percent of black fifth-graders met the state standard that is considered passing on the math portion, up from 13.7 percent in 1999. But 60 percent of white fifth-graders did that, up from 49.7 percent in 1999. Nearly 34 percent of black fourth-graders met state reading standards; 73 percent of white students did.

The same trend — despite gains, African-American students still trail their white peers — is evident at the state level. Pinellas’ African-American students topped African-American students statewide in nine of 18 categories.

The persistent achievement gap won’t go away overnight, Pinellas school Superintendent Howard Hinesley said. But he said the district is committed to having the highest standards for all students and is continuously trying to improve teaching methods.

“You have to have the highest expectations for every student,” Hinesley said. “There are variables that impact one’s learning, but they should not be used as excuses.”

Pinellas did not release its report until late Thursday, and the district’s top administrators had not had much time to study it.

But it is sure to inspire discussion.

The School Board and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund late last year negotiated a settlement to the 1964 desegregation case that accused the district of operating inferior schools for black children. The lawsuit led to a court order that has required cross-county busing for integration and race ratios in schools.

That settlement, approved in August by a federal judge, outlines an end to traditional neighborhood zoning and a move to letting parents choose their children’s schools. That is the part of the settlement that has generated the most debate so far.

The Legal Defense Fund, superintendent and School Board members agree it is not the most important part.

The settlement also outlines the district’s pledge to narrow the achievement gap — a gap that plagues schools all over the nation and, until recently, has not been openly discussed.

The settlement requires the district to follow a plan adopted in June 18, 1998, that makes clear that the district has the same high student achievement goals for each student. Under this plan, schools are required to develop and monitor improvement goals for every student.

Every year, area superintendents review performance in every school, in every classroom. They look for teachers who seem consistently to have more success with struggling students. They offer help to teachers who don’t.

The district also is experimenting with a variety of programs to help students falling behind grade level. Read 180, which combines computer and small group instruction, aims to help struggling readers turn around 180 degrees. Math camp is offered for incoming freshmen who might not be able to keep up in high school algebra.

Only 19 percent of Pinellas’ black eighth-graders met state reading standards, down from 26 percent in 1999. White students also fell some, but from 64 percent to 56 percent. In math, 27 percent of black students met state standards; about 67 percent of white students did.

“There are no quick fixes in this,” Hinesley said. “The emphasis is going to be there, the expectation is going to be there. Our strategy is to do everything we can.”

A community group created by the settlement, the District Monitoring and Advisory Committee, will monitor the district’s success boosting achievement for black children. It also will analyze whether African-Americans have enough access to challenging courses and are not inappropriately placed in special education classes.

Members of the monitoring committee will receive a full FCAT achievement report next month. The committee will study the data and make recommendations to the School Board.

That constant attention gives Enrique Escarraz hope that the district’s commitment to black student achievement won’t fade.

“The first fear is that actually working on trying to improve black students’ education is something that can become just a fad for this day and is forgotten,” said Escarraz, lead local attorney for the Legal Defense Fund. “A network is set up so it’s not just a fad. It will always be something they have to deal with.”
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #37
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Minority Test Score Gap
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune | Saturday, May 19, 2001

Minority Test-Score Gap

White students in Utah place up to twice as high on standardized exams

BY HEATHER MAY
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Utah students post high marks on the national Stanford Achievement Test, providing bragging rights for politicians and educators alike.

But closer scrutiny of the results reveals an alarming achievement gap between white and minority students. According to numbers provided by the state Office of Education this week, minority students’ scores are half those of white students and are far below satisfactory.

Only Asian-American students get marks on par with their white classmates, scoring just a couple of points below them in most categories of the SAT (see graphic). Asian-Americans do better than their peers on math tests.

But Latino, Pacific Islander, American Indian and African-American students’ results are dismal, though not surprising to educators and minority leaders.

Antonio Gonzalez says the results are simply more proof of Utah’s struggle to meet the needs of minority students, which is also reflected in other measures of academic success. Such measures include test scores, dropout rates, students taking college-level classes and students entering college, which may suggest white students are getting a better education than minorities.

Gonzalez, a former educator in the Granite School District and a current member of the League of United Latin American Citizens and Coalition La Raza, blames educators, in part, for having low expectations for minority students. But he also says students’ parents are coming up short.

“They are assuming the schools are going to do something,” he said. “They are taking a big, big chance turning their kids over to the schools, whistling ‘Dixie,’ hoping for the best.

“We are in effect contributing to the problem because we don’t go over there and raise Cain with the principals,” he said.

The state Office of Education completed the report on ethnic groups’ SAT scores this week. Students in third, fifth, eighth and 11th grades took the SAT in the fall and their overall results were released this past winter.

The SAT assesses students’ reading, math, language, science, social science and thinking skills. Scores range from 1 to 99 and are reported in national percentile ranks, so a score of 59 means Utah students scored better than 59 percent of the nation. A score of 60 is excellent; 40 and below signifies a serious problem.

Scores of Latino students, Utah’s largest minority group, were half those of white students on every measure in nearly every grade, and far below the 40th percentile. For example, third-graders ranked in the 34th percentile on reading; white students ranked 63rd.

Only in 11th grade do Latino students come close to their classmates on one test — math — scoring in the 50th percentile, to white students’ 68th percentile.

Many educators, such as Jennifer Johnston, don’t place much stock in the SAT. Johnston, a third-grade teacher at Copperview Elementary School in Midvale, where one-third of the students are Latino, says it isn’t fair to expect a child who just moved to the United States and knows little English to do work on a third-grade level in a foreign language.

She says tests created by the state or her school are a better gauge of what students have learned. Still, she acknowledges that even those tests reveal an achievement gap between white and minority students and between students of different family backgrounds.

“My Caucasian kids in a stable family are going to read better than my kids who are growing up in a single-parent family, have abusive parents at home, or are bilingual or monolingual. Of course they’re going to do better,” she said.

“Some of the students just need time to catch up. It takes a few years to become completely fluent in a language, and once they do, then start looking at their test scores,” Johnston suggested.

There are some Utah schools that are successfully bridging the achievement gap by spending lots of money on teacher training and taking time to give students individual attention.

For instance, the children at Washington Elementary School in Salt Lake City score higher on the SAT and state end-of-level tests than their demographics would suggest.

The school is 60 percent minority and 63 percent low income, but the students are doing better in some cases than students from mostly white, middle- to upper-income schools in the city. Washington first-graders, for example, had the third-highest score in the district on language arts tests, behind the district’s two gifted and talented elementary programs.

Principal Nancy McCormick said the trick has been adopting a schoolwide literacy program, called California Early Learning Literacy.

The school spent $100,000 to train teachers in the program, which integrates reading and writing in all classes.

“Every child is taught on their own instructional level each day,” McCormick said. Conversely, “If instruction is classwide, the bottom kids don’t pick it up.”

Washington second-grade teacher Thomas Brown said he doesn’t look at his students and their test scores by race. But he does see that 14 of his 18 students scored in the top “mastery” level on a state reading test this week.
“I read with every student every day or every other day,” Brown said. “I continually assess their strengths and weaknesses.”

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Old August 24th, 2014 #38
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Proof of Negro Inferiority
Proof Of Negro Inferiority

By: Alexander Winchell, L. L. D.

THE theory of the Hamitic origin of Negroes, Hottentots, Australians and Papuans implies that four races out of seven have experienced a degeneracy. This sweeping backward movement of the work of an all-wise and all-beneficent Creator is appalling to contemplate; and it is not surprising that theorists have existed who could deny the inferiority of these races with the same naivete as any other indisputable fact of observation. Judging from intercourse with friends of the Negro, of the noisy and denunciatory stamp, I should think a large body of “philanthropists ” must exist who maintain that it is mere lack of opportunity which causes the Negro to seem inferior to the white man. “Consider how, for two hundred years, he has dwelt in bondage; see him worked, late and early, in all weathers; sheltered, like stock, in inclosures too open for comfort or health, and subsisted on ‘sides’ and potatoes from January to December. The laws have even made it a crime to teach him to read a newspaper, or the Holy Bible. Think of the hardships which he has endured, and judge whether they are not sufficient to have crushed all intelligence and moral principle and manly spirit cut of a human being.”

But, my good friend, I was not proposing to discourse of the Negroes of the ‘United States. I am thinking of Africa, the continental home of the Negro. Yet, since the American Negro is suggested, allow me ‘to inquire how far the Negro has descended below his native condition by being brought into contact with American civilization? Has he been sheltered in a more storm-riddled hut, or clothed in scantier attire, or subsisted on a leaner diet? Or has he associated with more degraded savages, or learned to practice a more superstitious worship, or been deprived of a more cultivated society?

The Negro, perhaps, is not, in America, what he would have been if left to his own mastery in the midst of civilized society. The condition of the northern Negro will settle this question. But has he not made more progress than his countrymen who were left behind? Can we appeal to the oppression of the American Negro as an apology for the condition of the Negro on the banks of the Senegal and the Congo?

The Israelites were in “the house of bondage” two hundred and sixteen years; and it is not supposable that bondage in the rude infancy of the world, and in heathen Egypt, was less depressing than bondage during the last two centuries in a Christian country. But were the Israelites ever reduced to the mental and moral condition of the Negro? The literature, laws and religion of the Mosaic period will supply the answer.

That the Negro race is an inferior race I shall show by an appeal to anatomical, physiological, psychical and historical facts. I have already pointed out the salient characteristics of the Negro race. Let me advert to those which establish his inferiority. Capacity of cranium is universally recognized as a criterion of psychic power.* No fact is better established than the…

“The inferior races hare a less capacity than the superior. The cranial capacity seems to vary according to intellectual endowment.” (Topinard, ANTHROPOLOGY, p. 229. general relation of intellect to weight of brain. Welker has shown that the brains of twenty-six men of high intellectual rank surpassed the average weight by fourteen per cent. Of course quality of brain is an equally important factor; and hence not a few men with brains even below the average have distinguished themselves for scholarship or executive ability. The Noachites at large possess a mean capacity of 1500 cubic centimeters. The capacity among the Mongoloids is 1450+ cubic centimeters; among the Negroes, 1360 cubic centimeters, and among the Australians 1276 cubic centimeters. The Noachites surpass the Negro 126 cubic centimeters, or 16 & one-half per cent. Assuming 100 as the average capacity of the Australian skull, that of the Negro is 111.6, and that of the Teuton 124.3″

In respect to the cephalic index, or form of the skull in a horizontal projection, we find that all the lower races are dolichocephalic, and all the higher races are mesocephalic or brachycephalic. The index, for instance, among the Noachites, ranges +from 75 to 83; among the Mongoloids, from 71 to 90; among the Negroes, from 69 to 76; and among the Australians, from 71 to 71.5. The broadest Negro skull does not reach the average of the Germans; nor does the best Australian skull reach the average of the Negro. Mean relative breadth of skull is found to be associated with executive ability.

Among Whites, the relative abundance of “crossheads” having permanently unclosed the longitudinal and transverse sutures on the top of the head is one in seven; among Mongolians, it is one in thirteen; among Negroes, it is one in fifty-two. This peculiarity is supposed by some to favor the prolonged development of the brain. In any event, it is most frequent in the highest races. This completer development of the osseous tissues in the Negro cranium is probably related to that density and thickness of ossification which enables the Negro, both male and female, to fight by means of butting; and to support hard objects and great weights on the top of the head.

The amount of prognathism is another marked criterion of organic rank. One method of expressing this is by means of auricular radii, or distances from the opening of the ear to the roots of the upper teeth1 and to other parts of the head. Among Europeans, the distance to the base of the upper incisors is 99, but among Negroes, it averages 114. On the contrary, the average distance to the top of the head is, among Europeans, 112; but among Negroes, 110. The distance to the upper edge of the occipital bone is, among Europeans, 104; among Negroes, 104. These measurements prove that the Negro possesses more face and particularly of jaws, and less brain above. Other measurements furnish a similar result; and show, also, that the development of the posterior brain, in relation to the anterior, is greater in the Negro. Prognathism is otherwise expressed by means of the “facial angle,11 or general slope the face from the forehead to the jaws, when compared with a horizontal plane. Among the Noachites, the facial line is nearest perpendicular, giving an angle of 770 to 810. Among the Negroes, it averages only 670; among the Hottentots and Bushmen, 600, and among the Australians, 680.

Among Negroes the forearm is longer, in proportion to the arm, than is the case with Whites. The same is true of anthropoid apes. The Negro’s arm, when suspended by the side, reaches the knee-pan within a distance which is only four and three-eighths per cent of the whole length of the body. The white man’s arm reaches the knee-pan within a distance which is seven and one-half per cent of the whole length of the body. This length of arm is again a quadrumanous characteristic. The Negro pelvis averages but 26 and one-half inches in circumference; that of the White race is 33 inches. In the Negro it is more inclined, which is another quadrumanous character. It is also more narrow and elongated; and this, as Vrolik and Weber have suggested, corresponds to the dolichocephalous head.

I present here views of the skeletons of an Adamite and of a Chimpanzee. Their contrasts are apparent at a glance. In every particular in which the skeleton of the Negro departs from that of the Adamite, it is INTERMEDIATE between that and the skeleton of the Chimpanzee.

illustration: two skeletons I

The average weight of the European brain, ‘males and females, is 1340 grammes; that of the Negro is 1173; of the Hottentot. 974, and of the Australian, 907. The significance of these comparisons appears when we learn that Broca, the most eminent of French anthropologists, states that when the

European brain falls below 978 grammes (mean of males and females), the result is idiocy. In this opinion Thurman coincides. The color of the Negro brain is darker than that of the White, and its density and texture are inferior. The convolutions are fewer and more simple, and, as Agassiz and others long ago pointed out, approximate those of the Quadrumana.

According to H. de Serres, the brain of the Caucasian, during embryonic development, presents in Succession the conformations seen in the Negro, the Malay, the American and the Caucasian. This statement rests on excellent authority, but I am not aware that it has been confirmed. Its significance is apparent, in view of the established principle in physiology, that the embryonic characters in any vertebrate resemble the adult characters of other vertebrates lower in rank. Again, the retreating contour of the chin, as compared with the European, approximates the Negro to the prehistoric jaw of La Naulette, and to the Chimpanzee and lower mammals. Finally, the slenderness of the Negro arms and legs is also quadrumanous. This character is still more striking in the structure of the Australians.

In activity and capacity for prolonged and intense effort, the Negro is notably inferior. This point, however, has been sufficiently presented.

Psychically, I have spoken of the Negro to considerable extent. In brief, he possesses a strong curiosity to gaze upon new sights, or even familiar ones; but it is the curiosity of the child; he has a feeble power of combining his perceptions and drawing conclusions. In abstract conceptions he is still more helpless; no American Negro has ever produced any original work in mathematics or philosophy; the imaginative and aesthetic powers are similarly dormant; poetry, sculpture, painting, owe almost nothing to Negro genius. “Never yet,” says President Jefferson, “could I find that a black has uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw an elementary trait of painting or sculpture.”*

* Jefferson, NOTES ON VIRGINIA.

In reference to this, Mr. James Parton says: “We cannot fairly deny that facts give support to the opinion of an inherent mental inferiority. It is ninety years since Jefferson published his ‘Notes,’ and we cannot yet name one Negro of pure blood who has taken the first, the second, the third or the tenth rank, in business, politics, art, literature, scholarship, science or philosophy. To the present hour, the Negro has contributed nothing to the intellectual resources of man. If he turns ‘Negro minstrel,’ he still imitates the white creators of that black art; and he has not composed one of the airs that have had popular success as Negro melodies.

These statements require slight qualification Phillis Wheatley is said to have been a Negro poetess a hundred years ago, but her poetry, Parton says, was very inferior. She is not mentioned in Tyler’s History of American Literature, which, however, ends for the present with 1765. I am not informed respecting the purity of her racial character. Miss Edmondia Lewis is a sculptress of considerable merit, but I am informed that she has the benefit of about fifty per cent of Caucasian blood. It is also true that some of the more gifted Negroes possess a wonderful power of emotional eloquence, but I suspect that in all these cases some infusion of Caucasian blood exists, as in the case of the highly respected marshal of the District of Columbia, and one or two colored members of congress, and also a few colored pulpit orators. Nevertheless such qualifications do not invalidate the statement that “pure African blood, even under the influence of Caucasian civilization, has never achieved any valuable results in the realm of art.” These statements have been made in reference to the American-born Negro. It is more appropriate to turn our attention to the Negro in his native haunts.

The physical aspect of many native Africans gives them, beyond question, a decidedly beastly look.

This has been remarked again and again. Professor Wyman says: “It cannot be denied, however wide the separation, that the Negro and Orang do afford the points where man and the brute, when the totality of their Organization is considered, most nearly approach each other.” Here is Savage and Wyman, “Troglodytes Corilla,” BOSTON JOURNAL OF NATURAL HISTORY, 1847, p. 27.

“Cuvier’s description of the Bojesman woman, known as the “Hottentot Venus” who died in Paris on the 29th of December, 1815, and whose life-size figure I have examined in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes: “She had a way of pouting her lips,” he says, “exactly like that we have observed in the Orang-Outang. Her movements had something abrupt and fantastical about them, reminding one of those of the ape. Her lips were monstrously large; her ear was like that of many apes, being small, the tragus weak, and the external border almost obliterated behind. These,” he says, after having described the bones of the skeleton, “are animal characters.” Again, “I have never seen a human head more like an ape than that of this woman.” In reference to the fatty protuberances of the haunches, he says: “They offer a striking resemblance to those which exist in the females of the mandrill, the papions, etc., and which assume, at certain epochs of their life, an enlargement truly monstrous.” And yet Cuvier was the champion of the opposers of Lamarck, who thought he saw a genetic, as well as a physiognomic and osteologic relation between this woman and the Quadrumana. Here, again, is Topinard’s description of the Hottentot physiognomy: “The nose is frightfully broad and flat, the nostrils are thick, very divergent and exposed. Their prognathism is generally enormous, though it varies. The mouth is large, with thick, projecting and turned up lips.”

The following is Lichtenstein’s description of a Bojesman (Bushman) : “One of our present guests who appeared about fifty years of age, who had gray hair and a bristly beard, whose forehead, nose, cheeks and chin were all smeared with black grease, having only a white circle round the eye, washed clean with the tears occasioned by smoking – this man had the true physiognomy of the small blue ape of Caffraria. What gave the more verity to such a comparison, was the vivacity of his eyes and the flexibility of his eyebrows, which he worked up and down with every change of countenance. Even his nostrils, and the corners of his mouth, nay, his very ears, moved involuntarily, expressing his hasty transitions from eager desire to watchful distrust. There was not, on the contrary a single feature in his countenance that evinced a consciousness of mental powers, or anything that denoted emotions of the mind of a milder species than what belong to man in his mere animal nature. When a piece of meat was given him, and, half rising, he stretched out a distrustful arm to take it, he snatched it hastily, and stuck it immediately into the tire, peering around with his little keen eyes, as if fearing lest some one should take it away again. All this was done with such looks and gestures that any one must have been ready to swear he had taken the example of them entirely from the ape. He soon took the meat from the embers, wiped it hastily with his right hand upon his left arm, and tore out large half-raw bits with his teeth, which I could see going entire down his meager throat.

The comparisons made between Africans and Quadrumana must not be understood as intended to imply human descent from Quadrumana. Entirely apart from questions of blood relationship, the morphological and physiognomical resemblances exist; and they are cited for the purpose of showing that, just as far as the African diverges from the style of a white man, he approximates the lower animals.

* Lichtenstein. TRAVELS IN SOUTH AFRJCA, Vol. II, p. 224.

I have thus far confined myself chiefly to points of inferiority inherent in Negro and Hottentot personality. Let us turn to history, and consider the nature of the results which have proceeded from four thousand years of Negro existence and activity. We are apprised, from the Egyptian monuments, that the Negro was In existence at least as early as the Sixth Dynasty; which, according to Lepsius, was 2967 B.C., and according to Strong 2080 B.C. At that date his race was numerous enough to be the object of hostile expeditions from Egypt; and powerful enough to confer honor upon conquest over him. The Negro race has consequently had national existence in Africa from 4000 to 5000 years. What has it accomplished? It has never yet invented an alphabet (1) by which the fugitive vocalizations of its lips could be fixed in a permanent record. It has not preserved one sentence of the history of four thousand years. It has written neither science, philosophy nor poetry. It has created neither. It has left us none of the productions of fine art. (2) It has developed only some of the simplest of the useful arts. (3) it has built no cities; erected no durable monuments; excavated no canals; transformed no topography, nor removed any natural obstacles to…

1 Unless the Veys, closely related to the Mandingoes, can be regarded as full-blooded.

2 The Bushmen are said to have painted the cliffs, from the Cape of Good Hope to beyond the Orange river, with figures of men and animals, in red, bronze, white and black colors; or etched them in light tints on a dark ground. These are said to have been done with great firmness of hand; and copies of them show a fidelity to nature equal to some of the Egyptian delineations.

3 The Fantis on the Gold Coast, under European tuition, have made considerable progress in manufactures, and in learning to read and write (English). One or two of the Congo tribes is said to have acquired the art of ship building.

…the efficient cultivation of the soil. It has organized only the rudest civil societies; and has often marked the administration of authority by oppression, cruelty and bloodshed. It has sold its own blood and flesh into slavery, and made a commerce of human merchandise. (1) it has organized no religious associations, nor risen, generally, in the practice of religious worship, above the grade of dancing, divination, idolatry and fetichism. It has founded no benevolent asylums, nor formed any charitable associations. Its life has been a continuous scene of personal self-seeking and public administration of the rule of brute force. It has been a struggle – to judge of the past from the present – whose constant aim was material comfort and bodily gratification. There have been organized communities and seats of justice and judgment: but these, in every instance, are the fruits of Caucasian blood. There have been maternal devotion and filial love; but these, however beautiful and admirable, are only nature’s indispensable provisions for the material well-being of the race. (2)

1 “Dahomey may perhaps claim the evil fame of being the most savage and cruel organized government on the face of the earth.” Brace, RACES OF THE OLD WORLD, p. 272.

2 Of the Mandingoes, however, it is stated by Brace (RACE, OF THE OLD WORLD, p. 267): “They possess well-ordered governments and public schools; their leading men can all read and write (the Arabic); agriculture has been carefully pursued by them; and in manufactures, they are very skillful in weaving and dyeing cloth, and tanning leather, and working up iron into various instruments. Their merchants are very enterprising and industrious, and exercise great influence through northern Africa. In religion, the Mandingoes are zealous Mohammedans, though a few hold to the old pagan belief.” They are described as having “a deep black color, woolly hair, thick lips, broad, flat nose and tall powerful frame, and a similar force of temperament and character.” It is not impossible that exception should be made of this great nation. But their religion and language imply close connection with Semites. They have, themselves, a tradition that they were derived from Egypt, and M. D’Eichthal has presented many analogies between their language and the Coptic. All the west coast tribes, it may be added, have been long under the influence of intercourse with Europeans. Such are the Mandingoes, Fantis and Ashantis, as well as the Kaffirs and Bechuanas of the south. The interior tribes, remaining in a state of isolation from foreign aid, have failed totally to attain even the lowest grade of civilization. The remarkable King Mtesa, of the Uganda, having his capital near the northern shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza, is highly eulogized by Stanley, and deservedly so – (THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT, Vol. I, chapters ix and xi); but he and his subjects are of a dark red-brown complexion, and are described in terms which do not apply to Negroes. They seem closely related to the Fulah and Nuba, and are undoubtedly a hybrid stock.

It cannot be said that this almost universal backwardness in all individual and social advances based on Intelligence, is attributable to unfavorable circumstances. The conditions of civilization have been favorable. I doubt if it can be shown that any other continental area has been blessed with climate soil, topography, and other adjuvants, equally favorable for human progress. The climate ranges from the warm temperate of the north to the warm temperate of the south: It has an equal distribution of the sun’s annual heat over the parts lying north and south of the central line. No portion of the continent is given over to eternal frosts nor insufferable seasons. The genial sky spares its forethought, labor and time of provision against severe and protracted winters. Over most of the continent, rains are adequate in supply and in distribution through the year. The vast interior, including nearly all south of the Sahara, is an undulating plateau, averaging 4,000 to 5,000 feet above the sea level, with numerous mountain ranges attaining 10,000 to 16,000 feet. The tropical climate is, therefore, fairly attempered to human endurance certainly to Negro endurance. Only the Sahara and Nubian portions suffer from intense heat. The climates are also salubrious, save portions of the low borders, especially on the west coast. Salt is plentifully distributed, with local exceptions. Copper exists in large quantities in the center of South Africa, and iron is more widely known. Diamonds are abundant in the district of the Vaal and Orange rivers, north of Cape Colony. Abundance of forest growths cover much of the interior; and farther from the equatorial line fine parks and pasture lands invite the presence of agriculture and herding. Great rivers drain the continent, which, after the passage of the falls, which occur on the borders of the great plateau, furnish navigable channels of communication between all parts of the productive interior. The navigable river and lake system is unsurpassed in extent by that of any country in the world. The mixed races have utilized these advantages to considerable extent. The delta of the Niger is much more extensive than that of the Nile. The Congo – the Mississippi of Africa – is from one to three miles in diameter, and discharges 2,000,000 cubic feet of water per second. The great lakes Victoria and Albert cover each about 30,000 square miles. Many other lakes of fresh water exist, which add to the resources of the interior, in the same manner as the great lakes of North America. The considerable elevation of these lakes, and the discharge of vast volume of water, must supply to the regions between them and the sea level a surprising amount of water-power.

The native productions of Africa, suited to the wants of man, are quite numerous. The date palm thrives throughout all the desert regions, wherever a moderate supply of water can be had. It furnishes the bread of the desert, and supports not only man, but camel and horse. Wine is produced from the sap. South of the Soudan, the Eaobab or monkey-breakfast takes the place of the date. Here abounds, also, the oil palm. Other vegetable resources of the continent are the doom-palm and the butter-tree. There are two native cereals, Negro millet and Kaffir-corn, which supply farinaceous food. There are also the edible bread-roots and earth-nuts, which are adequate to supply the daily food of whole villages. Moreover, for thousands of years the way has been open as wide as the continent, for the introduction of the cereals of Asia. These, indeed, are not entirely unknown to the natives; and maize, the manioc root and sugar cane, have been introduced from America by Europeans, and have begun to spread toward the interior.

The domesticable and useful animals of Africa are not inconsiderable in number. Perhaps the ninety-four species of Quadrumana peculiar to Africa are more noisy and curious than useful. The continent is well stocked with fur-bearing animals, whose skins, If not needed by the natives, would be valuable for export. The quagga and the mountain zebra represent the horse family in the southern parts; while Burchell’s zebra is widely scattered over the plains as far as Abyssinia and the west coast; and the aboriginal wild ass is indigenous to northeastern Africa. The domestic horse has not been introduced into inter-tropical Africa. The single-humped camel, or dromedary, is employed over all north Africa; and the Indian buffalo has also been introduced in the north. Other native bovine and ovine species are extensively distributed, while Africa is the peculiar country of the antelope and the giraffe. Lastly, the African elephant ranges abundantly from Cape Colony throughout central Africa; but, strange to say, it has never been, like the Indian elephant, domesticated. The only gallinaceous bird is the guinea-fowl, but this exists in great abundance; and partridges and quails are distributed over most parts of the continent. *

It is pertinent to inquire if such a continent, so outfitted with resources for food, clothing, transportation, intercommunication and commerce, is a situation suited to cramp the manhood of an indigenous race. Are these the conditions under which the grade of humanity would sink from the level of Adam and Noah to that of a naked black-skin, driveling in filth and wretchedness on the banks of the Congo or the Zambesi; while under the climatic vicissitudes of western Asia and Europe, the same type has risen perpetually through all grades of advancing civilization? The indigenous African has nowhere taken more than the first steps toward civilization. Some…

* Mr. Henry M. Stanley has given a catalogue of articles observed by himself in one of the common markets of southern central Africa. It was at Nyangwe on the upper Lualaba. The following is the list: “Sweet potatoes, yams, maize, sesamum, millet, beans, cucumbers, melons, cassava, ground-nuts, bananas, sugar-cane, pepper (in berries), vegetables for broths, wild fruit, palm butter, oil palm nuts, pine-apples, honey, eggs, fowls, black pigs, goats, sheep, parrots, palm-wine, pombe (beer), mussels and oysters from the river fresh fish, dried fish, white bait, snails (dried), salt, white ants, grasshoppers, tobacco (dried leaf), pipes, fishing nets, basket work, cassava-bread, cassava-flour, copper bracelets, iron wire, iron knobs, hoes, spears, bows and arrows, hatchets, rattan cane staves, stools, crockery, powdered camwood grass cloths, grass mats, fuel, ivory, slaves.~ Here is a list which might satisfy the wants even of the luxurious. It is true that many of these articles have originated in the superior knowledge of the Arabs, who hold intercourse with the lake region; but all the vegetable and animal productions are reared in the country, and nearly all are indigenous (Stanley, THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT, Vol. II, chap. iv.

…of the tribes have, indeed, learned the art of producing iron; but it is the greater wonder that they have not discovered in it the resources of civilization. It has been said the African elephant is incapable of domestication; but its close affinity with the Asiatic species renders the statement incredible. Indeed the conviction already exists in south Africa that it is “equally well adapted for labor and there can be no doubt, would be as easily tamed as his Indian congener. That this is the case, is amply proved by the docile and submissive state into which both male and female elephants have been brought in zoblogical gardens and menageries.* Nor have any of the equine species been domesticated. Some domesticated animals introduced from Asia are known to the most advanced Africans, but no native species has ever been domesticated.

In America, under conditions certainly no more favorable, a semi-civilization had grown up indigenously. The only cereal native to America is maize, and until the occupation by Europeans no Asiatic cereal was accessible. The principal edible roots of America are the mandioca and the potato, while the feeble llama, and vicuna are the only native animals capable of domestication as beasts of burden. These have been utilized from time immemorial. In contrast with Africa, the civilization of the Nahuati nations of Mexico, the Quiches of central America, the Mayas of Yucatan, and the Quichuas of Peru, had become, both in respect to intellectual and industrial advances, and judicial, moral and religious conceptions, almost a stage of true enlightenment.

Our wonder at the stationary savagism of virgin…

* NATURE, No. 478, Nov. 21, 1878, p. 54, referring to The Colonies and India, of Nov. 2.

Africa is greatly enhanced when we reflect on the relations of civilized peoples to that continent. Ever since the dawn of Accadian civilization in western Asia an open highway of communication has existed between the continents – not to speak of actual communications across the strait of Babel-Mandeb. More than this, Asiatic civilization entered Africa, and spread itself over the valley of the Nile and the Mediterranean border, at a period so remote as to be obscured by the twilight of human history. It brought with it the cereals and finally the domesticated animals of Asia. It introduced the arts of industry and the rudiments of the sciences. It established a religious cult which was monotheistic, and remarkably pure and elevated. It opened commercial intercourse, not only with Arabia, Palestine and Babylonia, but with the tribes of the upper Nile and the Libyan region. It engaged in extensive mining operations, not only in the Sinaic peninsula, but in the far southern countries of the Nahsi (Negroes). It worked quarries of limestone and granite on an enormous scale. It tilled the soil in the presence of the most forbidding obstacles to be found in habitable Africa It sent warlike expeditions not only into Asia Minor and Assyro-Babylonia, but into Nubian Ethiopia; and even the armies of a civilized people inevitably sow the germs of civilization among barbarians. The Negroes have been in contact with these people for 4000 years, and save through infusion of blood they have not yet learned the first lesson in civilization.

Are these the people whom adverse circumstances have crushed from the grade of Adamic civilizability, and forbidden to rise, even while the hands of Egypt and Libya, and Assyria and Arabia were outstretched to lift them up? The thought is inadmissible.

Constitutional, aboriginal, deep-seated incapacity is the only explanation of these amazing phenomena.

We may further contrast the immobility of the Negroes in conflict with civilization, with the facile and eager improvement of the once savage and anthropophagous Maories of New Zealand. The Maories belong to a type sometimes distinguished as Polynesian, It is perhaps a hybrid of Malay and Papuan; they reached their islands about 1400 A.D., and the English took possession in 1769. In 1853 they had made such advancement that Governor Sir George Grey reported that ’1both races already form one harmonious community, connected by commercial and agricultural pursuits, possessing the same faith, resorting to the same courts of justice, joining in the same public sports, standing mutually and indifferently to each other in the relation of landlord and tenant, and thus, insensibly, forming one people.” Mr. Edwin Norris says: “They now (1855) vie with Englishmen in many of their pursuits; they are expert riders, and breeders of horses; they understand perfectly how to make a bargain; they erect buildings, cultivate land, and form good roads far beyond the limits of the English settlements. The more opulent among them become ship-owners, landlords and millers, the latter being especially a favorite occupation; the poorer people make roads, till the ground, tend cattle, build houses and ships, fish for whales, and navigate ships generally. According to good authority, the most regular, clean and orderly of all the coasting vessels plying between Auckland and the Bay of Islands, is owned and manned wholly by natives, and is preferred by the public, as a conveyance for passengers, before all others. They resort readily to the English law courts, becoming even annoyingly litigious, and their favorite conversation is said to be ‘religious and political discussion, and the general news of the day.’” * Yet even the Maories are described as quite inferior, intellectually, to Englishmen.

I need only refer to the familiar history of the Sandwich Islands to further enforce the significance of the comparison. In fact, all Polynesia is fairly represented by these examples.

It would be proper to raise the question whether the Negro is capable of appreciating, desiring and conserving the benefits of civilization. The inertia of the Negro in a state of servitude; his scarcely improved condition, and certain diminution in numbers, since enfranchisement in the United States; his political and social career in Hayti 2; his massacre of the agents, and destruction of the agencies of civilization in St Thomas; his helplessly subordinate station in the northern states of our Union and in Canada; his indifference to the benefits of civilization in Liberia 3; the persistent vitality of Voudouism among American Negroes, in the close environment of a high civilization, and the Negro’s facile relapses, as in the Congo nation,

* Edwin Norris, in Prichard’s NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN, II, p. 453-4! 4th ed. See also Sir George Grey, POEMS, TRADITIONS AND CHANTS OF THE MAORIES, Wellington, 1853; Arthur S. Thomson, THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND, 2 vols., London, 1859.

2 “The stagnant condition of the West Indian colonies since the emancipation of the Negro, and the commercial descent of Hayti since it became an independent Negro state, evidence the tendency of that race not merely to suspend progress, but also to relapse into their barbarous habits of apathy and indolence.” (McCausland, ADAM AND THE ADAMITE, pp. 73-74.)

3 “The history of that colony [Liberia] does not justify bright expectations of its future.” (Dr. 0. P: Fitzgerald, in NASHVILLE CHRISTIAN ADVOCATE, Jan. 18, 1879, p. 8).

into a state of abject barbarism, as soon as the props of foreign aid are removed, constitute a set of facts for grave reflection. If the Negro is constitutionally incapable of availing himself of Caucasian civilization, how many lives shall we sacrifice, and how marry millions shall we lavish, in attempts to foist it upon him?

I hope I shall not be set down as unfriendly to the Negro. Should any person deem me so, I extend to him all the pity deserved by ignorance and error. I shall not feel hurt. I have no special occasion for unfriendliness toward the Negro. The world would be better if he were an efficient factor in enlightened humanity. The country would be better if he were an elevating and progressive influence instead of a depressing and barbarizing one. I should like to see him capable of coping with his white rival, or at least of profiting by his example and aid. I will do all possible to make him so; but the work must be prosecuted with a clear view of the facts; we defeat the end by proceeding blindfolded. I am not responsible for the inferiority which I discover existing; I am only contemplating a range of facts which seems to prove such inferiority. I am responsible if I ignore the facts and their teaching, and act toward the Negro as if he were capable of all the responsibilities of the White race. I am responsible, if I grant him privileges which he can only pervert to his detriment and mine; or impose upon him duties which he is incompetent to perform, or even to understand.

The similar inferiority of other Black races it would not be difficult to prove. The measurements already given show the Australian to possess an organism quite inferior to that of the Negro. In intelligence he is said to be so low as to be unable to count over four or five.

Of the Aetas of the Philippines De la Geronniere says that they gave him the impression of being a great family of monkeys; their voices recalled the short cry of these animals, and their movements strengthened the analogy. Buchner says that the toes of these savages, who live partly in grottoes, partly on trees, are ” very mobile, and more separated than ours, especially the great toe. They use them in maintaining themselves on branches and cords, as with fingers.9! According to Buchner, the language of the savages of Borneo is rather a kind of warbling or croaking than a truly human mode of expression.’1 The Veddahs of Ceylon, says Sir Emerson Tennant, communicate among themselves almost entirely by means of signs, grimaces, guttural sounds, resembling very little true words or true language.” “The Dokos of Abyssinia,” according to Krapf, “are human pygmies; they are not more than four feet high; their skin is of an olive brown. Wanderers in the woods, they live like animals, without habitations, without sacred trees, etc. They go naked, nourishing themselves by roots, fruit, mice, serpents, ants, honey; they climb trees like monkeys. Without chief, without law, without arms, without marriage, they have no family, and mate by chance, like animals; they also multiply rapidly. The mother, after a very short lactation, abandons her child to itself. They neither hunt nor cultivate, nor sow, and they never have known the use of fire.* They have thick lips, a flattened nose, little eyes, long hair, hands and feet with great nails, with which they dig the soil.”

* Other authorities declare that no tribe of men is ignorant of the use of fire.

Some of the American tribes remain at the lowest point of degradation. This is the case with the Fuegians; and the Botecudos of Brazil have been often cited. Of the latter, Lallemand says, “I am sadly convinced that they are monkeys with two hands.”

In the presence of a body of facts like those cited in the present chapter, it seems impossible to doubt that Nature has established a wide range of gradations among races, which cannot be obliterated by any influences having less than secular duration. It seems, beyond all rational question, that the aborigines of Africa are vastly inferior to the Mediterranean race; and that, consequently, if they and the other Black races are the posterity of the Biblical Adam, the world has witnessed a general scene of degradation and retrogression which almost reflects on infinite wisdom and beneficence.
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #39
Alex Linder
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Racial Gap In Schools Splits a Town Proud of Diversity
Source: The New York Times, August 4, 2000

Racial Gap in Schools Splits a Town Proud
of Diversity

By Kate Zernike

YACK, N.Y. — Set above the leafy banks of the Hudson River, this cluster of villages north of New York City has long cultivated a reputation as an idyll of diversity and tolerance. Blacks and whites mingle easily in the shops lining the quaint main street. Interracial families seek out the town as a place where they can live without incident.

The charge, then, hit right at the heart. Armed with previously unreleased statistics broken down by race, a group of parents, black and white, accused the school district of systemic segregation: steering blacks away from honors classes and into special education, disciplining blacks at disproportionate rates, allowing test scores of blacks to lag far behind those of whites for a decade.

The release of the numbers divided the community in a way most people here thought nothing ever could. White parents defended the schools, pointing the finger at what they called deviancy and neglect in black families.

While some black parents said the statistics confirmed the discrimination they suspected, others denounced the group’s report as perpetuating painful stereotypes. In the tension, car windows were smashed and sidewalk confrontations erupted.

The conflict here offers a cautionary tale. Closing the gap between black and white achievement has become the nation’s thorniest education challenge. Impressed by success in Texas, many states hope to do what the parents here did: release scores by race. California began doing so this year; New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Florida all recently announced plans to do so.

This places a new onus on diverse and well-off suburban communities like this, which have long been able to disregard poor performance by blacks in averages lifted by higher scores of whites. The idea, state officials say, is that exposing the disparity forces school districts to seek to eliminate it. But Nyack’s experience suggests that the path from releasing numbers to improving schools can be exceptionally rough terrain, that merely acknowledging the existence of a gap, even in well-meaning communities, is a process filled with pain and controversy.

“This has polarized our community like no other issue,” said Kim Raso Stewart, a white parent of two children. “It’s like us against them.”

Nyack would seem to have exactly the kind of schools parents expect to find in the suburbs. With about 3,000 students, the district spends about $13,000 per student — some $4,000 more than the state average. Of the class that graduated in June, 92 percent passed the English Regents exam, and 85 percent passed the Math Regents, both scores well above the state average.

But the report released by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a group called Nyack Partners in Education in February 1999 exposed a troubling pattern.

pages of findings and statistics were these: Honors classes had nine times as many whites as blacks, even though the district over all had about twice as many whites as blacks. Black students were about two and a half times as likely to be suspended and almost three times as likely to be in special education. While 63 percent of whites passed the Math I Regents in 1997-98, only 31 percent of blacks did.

The gap mirrors one in national statistics. While low achievement among blacks was once written off as the consequence of poverty and disadvantage, statistics show it exists across class; children of the most well-off, well-educated blacks perform only about as well as the children of the poorest whites.

In Nyack, some of the gap could be explained by differences in income. Blacks earn on average about half what whites do. But much as there are pockets of white poverty, there is a significant black middle class in Valley Cottage, the largest of the school district’s five villages.

The parents’ group had received the statistics every year for a decade, but put them out only after growing frustrated that the school district was doing nothing to solve the problems. Only public shame, it decided, would prompt action.

“This has a reputation as an artsy, enlightened community,” said Daniel Wolff, a white parent who led the effort. “The truth is, there are these really visible lines between groups of people. The only place the groups are together is in the public schools, where they have to be, only they’ve set up this system where they don’t have to be, because black kids are on different tracks.”

The school district objected to the implication that anyone discriminated intentionally. Honors classes, for example, were based on merit, officials said.

Other parents rushed to join the defense, insisting that teachers do not treat children differently because of skin color.

“I believe we’re very forward thinking,” said Meg Ferrazano, a white parent. “We have multicultural events, we have kids who are friends with each other. I see the kids all get along.”

The superintendent, Roberta P. Zampolin, said the problems lay in the home, not the schools, and others picked up that theme.

“The Nyack schools and its professionals are not responsible for the failures of the home, the conduct of absent child-bearers or irresponsible, immoral and criminal parents,” Mrs. Raso Stewart and her husband, James T. Stewart, wrote.

“We got a lot of support for saying that,” she said in an interview. “The numbers don’t lie, but is there an attempt to keep black children back? There’s so much more. What are the homes like, what are the parents like? Do the kids get a hot meal at the end of the day?”

Many black parents, especially among the more affluent in Valley Cottage, lashed out at the parents’ group for releasing the numbers, ridiculing them as liberal do-gooders trying to co-opt blacks in their crusade.

Pierre Davis, a school board member who is black, said that when his daughter heard about the report, she said it meant she was “stupid.”

“I’ve spent all this time talking to my kids about ‘you can be anything you want to be,’ ” he said. “For some folks, this is just going to prove the point: ‘Hey, I told you those folks weren’t too bright.’ ”

The school district, too, resisted talking about a gap. Officials commissioned their own study of the issue. But the consultant who produced it, David Tulin, said that when he showed his report to school officials, the superintendent asked him to remove his conclusions describing the schools as “functionally segregated” and threatened to withhold his fee if he did not.

Brian Burrell, the school board chairman, said officials were only trying to limit Mr. Tulin to their original request: recommendations, not conclusions.

Mr. Tulin wrote the incident off as defensiveness. “They felt they were good-hearted people, they’re helping to change the world,” he said. “And when there’s a challenge to what they’ve accomplished, it’s a slap in the face.”

In 150 interviews, the consultant said, almost everyone recognized racial disparity. The problem was talking about it publicly.

“It made the district look bad,” Mrs. Ferrazano said. “Anybody who read the paper would say, ‘Oh my God, I won’t send my child to that school; look at all the problems they have.’ That’s not good for our school, our town, our property values or anything else.”

But to James McBride, a Nyack parent and the author of “The Color of Water,” a memoir of growing up as the son of a Jewish mother and black father, the comments only emphasized how whites saw blacks as “them.”

“There’s an assumption that if you’re a black, you’re a drag on the town,” he said. “The mentality was, ‘We’re doing you a favor, how dare you complain?’ ”

The disputes exploded during school board elections this spring. In past years, Mary Wallace, a white parent, and Mr. Davis, who is black, had run as a team. This year, they ran separately; Ms. Wallace stressed the need to address the black-white gap, but Mr. Davis said talking about it was tearing the district apart.

With an unusually high turnout, Ms. Wallace lost, winning half the votes she had received in previous elections; Claudette Clarke, a black parent, won that seat.

“The problem in Nyack is that everybody believes they have moved to this wonderful and diverse integrated community,” Ms. Wallace said. “And to be told there’s trouble here in paradise, they don’t want to hear it.”

Voters did approve a new budget that pays for all-day kindergarten, which the parents’ group that released the statistics had called for. Like some other black parents, Mr. Davis says he thinks this will ultimately lift achievement. But he argues that the group did not have to talk about race to get it.

But more and more states are beginning to bet that talking about race can help erase stubborn disparities. Starting in 1991, Texas graded its schools in part on how much scores improved for different racial groups. Next year, New York plans to grade schools as meeting or falling below standards based on data broken out by race. Even traditionally good schools could earn a subpar grade if the black population, no matter how small, does not score well.

“The issue for suburban districts is, once you go past the aggregate scores, being able to see that there are pockets of kids who have never done well,” said Frederick J. Frelow, a black Nyack parent and an official on the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future at Teachers College at Columbia University.

“It’s no longer O.K. to put these kids in the nonacademic track, and it’s going to be very disturbing to a lot of communities.”

Advocates of separating out data argue that it does not have to be controversial. The danger, they say, is in releasing only numbers about outcomes. Without some sense of why the problem exists, it is too easy for people to reduce the problem simply to blacks’ not being as smart.

“Since the data have been so often reported in that context, when black folks hear it, their almost knee-jerk reaction is defensive,” said Edmund W.

Gordon, professor emeritus of psychology at Yale University, who led a College Board task force on the achievement gap. “I think that Nyack school people probably thought they were doing as well as any other school district, but they didn’t know what to do about it, so why open up this can of worms?”

He and others say the key is to hold up models of schools that are defying the national statistics.

Michael Osnato, superintendent of schools in Montclair, N.J., agreed. In Montclair, one of 14 racially integrated communities that set up a network to compare strategies on closing the gap, the discussions were difficult at first, he said. With more talk, more solutions — creating intensive study groups for black students, and demanding that they take tougher courses — begin to emerge, and the easier it becomes to talk about a gap.

But there was also a key difference in those communities: the school administration, not renegade parents or state officials, pushed to talk about the gap.

“It is painful,” Dr. Frelow said, “which is why it’s all the more important that the leadership say, ‘We know it’s hard, we don’t feel good about it, but moving in this direction is important for our future.’ This is a
small community; folks just didn’t step up to do that.”
 
Old August 24th, 2014 #40
Alex Linder
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Racial Gap Remains Wide on MCAS Scores
Source: The Boston Globe, November 14, 2000

Racial Gap Remains Wide on MCAS Scores

By Sandy Coleman and Anand Vaishnav

For the third year in a row, minority students failed the MCAS exam at higher rates than their white counterparts, fueling fears that thousands of Massachusetts minorities will not graduate from high school.

Even among fourth-graders – whom state education officials tout as examples of students who have been immersed in education reform longer – the achievement gap between minorites (SIC) and whites remained wide.

”There is no confidence to suggest that come 2003, the majority of Latino students” would pass, said Samuel Rodriguez, executive director of the Latino Parents Association. ”We will face a crisis.”

The class of 2003 is the first group of students who must pass the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam in order to graduate.

There were glimmers of hope among the scores released yesterday: Minority students at every grade level except Native American eighth-graders gained ground in math. The most significant was among Native American fourth-graders, whose failure rate dropped from 46 percent in 1998 to 34 percent in 2000.

With 10 tests given across grades 4, 8, and 10, minority students , in general, boosted their scores in seven or eight of the testing categories.

But the achievement differences between whites and Asian students and black and Latino students remain so wide that single-digit improvements do little to bridge the gap.

”There have been more years already invested in MCAS, and the improvement is not that great,” said Boston activist and parent Jeanette Merren.

”The state should stop this measurement and start finding a better way of assessing kids.”

According to the 2000 MCAS results, 60 percent of African-American 10th-graders failed the English portion of the exam, along with 66 percent of Hispanics, and 65 percent of Native Americans – compared with 27 percent of white students and 34 percent of Asian-Pacific Islanders.

State officials, however, say the dismal scores may reflect the fact that the test was not a prerequisite for graduation for the 10th-graders when they took it last year and some students may have not given it their best.

Still, the scores for the eighth grade show that the gap is even wider in math for some minority groups: 72 percent of African-Americans, 78 percent of Hispanics, and 70 percent of Native Americans failed the English portion – compared with 31 percent of white students and 32 percent of Asian-Pacific Islanders.

The gulf persists in Grade 4, although the failure rates were smaller in all subjects.

In math, 43 percent of African-Americans, 47 percent of Hispanics, and 34 percent of Native Americans failed.

That’s compared with 15 percent of Asian-Pacific Islanders and 11 percent of whites.

The racial breakdown of MCAS scores released yesterday tells more about the state’s education system than about the students, community leaders said.

”It’s an indictment on our school system across the Commonwealth that is not effectively educating our children,” said the Rev. Gregory G. Groover, head of the Black Ministerial Alliance’s education committee.

”We can’t talk about reform without dealing with equity issues,” he said. ”Clearly one of the reasons there is such a wide gap of performance between white students and students of color is because of the inequity of resources, quality of instruction, and learning infrastructures.”

Added Groover, ”We were promised since 1997 that the state would move towards getting the school districts ready, and the state has not been able to deliver.”

Community activists say they are growing increasingly concerned as the 2003 graduation requirement looms.

Merren, who will receive MCAS scores for two of her three children, said responsibility for closing the achievement gap falls on families as well as educators.

”A lot of parents still are not taking MCAS seriously,” said Merren, who is African-American. ”How are we going to let them know?”

The best chance to help students now, said Rodriguez, is for his group and other minority organizations to join forces and figure out how to close the gap and make sure minority students aren’t denied opportunities beyond high school because of MCAS.

He has been working with the Black Ministerial Alliance, as well as with People Organized and Working for Equitable Education Reform, or POWER, which was cofounded by Groover.

”It’s important that every time we get a new statistic or test results we don’t jump with a knee-jerk reaction,” notes Rodriguez. ”We should be able to come together and have a constructive dialogue.”

This story ran on page B4 of the Boston Globe on 11/14/2000.
© 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.

Source: The Boston Herald, http://bostonherald.mlnwap.com.nyud.net/, 11-14-2000
Racial Gap Haunts MCAS

by Ed Hayward

Black and Hispanic students failed the 2000 MCAS exams in math and English at two to three times the rate of their white counterparts, according to results released by the Department of Education yesterday.

The results showed that despite spending $7 billion on education reform since 1993, the attempt to bridge the “achievement gap” between minority and white students has yet to show significant gains.

The gap, a national issue magnified most notably in the results of standardized assessment exams, could prove the most vulnerable point of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System to court challenge.

Attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union and other watchdog groups have been discussing the exam and potential legal challenges, said John Roberts, executive director of the Massachusetts ACLU.

“Any time you have a system of measurement that flunks kids of color at those kinds of rates, there’s something wrong that needs to be addressed,” said Roberts. “You just can’t blame it on the kids.”

In the 10th grade, blacks failed English and math at rates of 60 and 77 percent, respectively. Hispanic sophomores failed the English and math exams at rates of 66 and 79 percent. White 10th graders posted failure rates in English and math of 27 and 38 percent, respectively.

Few of the black and Hispanic students interviewed yesterday liked taking the MCAS exam, but had mixed opinions on whether or not MCAS is racially biased.

“I think it depends on the individual,” said Dana Ruff, 15, a freshman at the Media and Technology Charter High School in Brookline. “It doesn’t really matter what race you are. It matters more about the individual and their background.”

Benison Pena, a student at Boston’s John D. O’Bryant High School, said results are based on how well the schools teach their students.

“I don’t think it’s fair because different schools have different curriculum,” said Pena, 18, a senior at the exam school. “Some of the test is not being taught in schools. They (the schools) have to work this out.”

Felix Arroyo, a former member of the Boston School Committee, said the students in these groups are failing because they are underserved by the schools they sit in each day.

“This should tell us very clearly the systems are failing certain types of students and not others,” said Arroyo, deputy director of the non-profit Hispanic Office of Planning and Evaluation. “There are correlations between less resources and the academic performance of children.”

He said if a large number of the state’s white students failed MCAS, the exam would be abolished.

“If 70 percent of the white students were failing, people would feel we were putting their children in jeopardy,” he added.

State Rep. Gloria Fox (D-Boston) said the state should continue funding inner city schools at levels mandated by the state Supreme Judicial Court to correct years of inadequate funding. “Because of race and the areas we live in those students have been left behind historically,” said Fox. “Those schools have been disenfranchised historically. It takes a long time for any of our students to catch up.”
 
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