Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (49945)	6/11/2004 3:52:41 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 793955

The "deep racism in the country" quote you pull out, Bill, has a qualifier on it which needs to be included. The full meaningful quote is "the historical legacy of deep racism in the country." I used that phrase to cover slavery, Jim Crow, the equivalents in the north, etc. On the latter point, the north, I forget whether it was James Baldwin or someone else who wrote that he preferred the American south, this was in in the 60s, because the racism was open. You at least understood where you were with folk. Now to your question. If the problem is that we keep blacks from learning with our school system, how do you account for the success of immigrant blacks who go to K-12 here in the this country? That's not my argument. There are clearly achievement differences among blacks that are not simply accounted for on the basis of individual attributes. Living in some suburban areas makes a large difference; in fact, social class plays a big role here in which the children of privileged blacks do much better than others. Moreover, as we all know, some immigrant blacks do well in US school systems, as you note. I don't think we live in an apartheid society in which all blacks are kept from achievement, and only a heroic few managed to crawl over the barriers. That would be a silly notion. But I do believe that we have forgotten the poor in urban ghettos, which is largely a black and hispanic population; that we all suffer from that forgetfulness; and that the most obvious lever to address that is public school education. In fact, on that latter point, the leverage in public schools, I would not be surprised if the notion of the public schools as an opportunity leverage were not built into Horace Mann's vision for the public schools. Don't know. It is certainly built into the notion of the public library. Since I'm getting active in my local library, am on the board now, I've begun to read about its historical mission. It contains more than a little of that notion.

To: LindyBill who wrote (49945)	6/11/2004 10:06:36 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793955

<<< If the problem is that we keep blacks from learning with our school system, how do you account for the success of immigrant blacks who go to K-12 here in the this country?>>> You are absolutely correct. There are blacks in this country that succeed academically and there are blacks (with the same genetic makeup -whatever that means)who do not. Ergo, there is a problem that has a solution. But like all complex problems, there are many proposed solutions. However, some proposals are going to be misguided and some others are not going to be practical. Added to all this, there will be also be some proposals that are clearly aimed not to be helpful. However, for most of us, we can at least begin to agree that this is a serious problem for our nation and that it needs to be addressed on a national level. For Conservatives and Liberals alike, we could look at remediation as an investment and look for a return on our investment.