On Condescension, Prognostication & The Educational Gap

via Forbes.com:

He’s right. The spread between rich and poor has gotten wider over the decades. And the opportunities for the 99% have become harder to realize.

The President’s speech got me thinking. My kids are no smarter than similar kids their age from the inner city. My kids have it much easier than their counterparts from West Philadelphia. The world is not fair to those kids mainly because they had the misfortune of being born two miles away into a more difficult part of the world and with a skin color that makes realizing the opportunities that the President spoke about that much harder. This is a fact. In 2011.

I am not a poor black kid. I am a middle aged white guy who comes from a middle class white background. So life was easier for me. But that doesn’t mean that the prospects are impossible for those kids from the inner city. It doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities for them. Or that the 1% control the world and the rest of us have to fight over the scraps left behind. I don’t believe that. I believe that everyone in this country has a chance to succeed. Still. In 2011. Even a poor black kid in West Philadelphia.

*gets in time machine and goes back to 2008*

Oh, snap!!! Obama's the President of the United States!! You know what that means! We live in a post-racial society! Race doesn't exist anymore. A charismatic, smart, half-Kenyan man from Hawaii can ascend to the top of the political world, so that means that every minority should be able to do comparably!

*gets back in time machine and goes to present-day*

Oh, wait... Educational gaps are still tremendous. Poverty is still rampant. Employment is sparse. But Obama's President, so none of that matters.

Such is the society we live in today... A society where the haves continually look down on the have-nots... A society where even in the face of mounting evidence that the system is no more fairly skewed that the lottery, people continue to cry 'self-determination'... A society where a man with admittedly no knowledge of growing up poor feels compelled to cast judgment on the poor. While I am no urban sociologist, I've seen enough of the ills of urban sprawl to know that the odds do not favor children in the inner city. From dilapidated and underfunded schools, to a lack of a successful network supporting them, is it really that hard to see why poor black children gravitate towards endeavors far-removed from academia?

The author, a 'mediocre accountant' and owner of a 10-person accounting firm, is engaging in what I like to call condescendent prognostication - the use of one's lofty ideals to scrutinize the actions of and portend the paths of those in a more precarious situation than he. He claims to be a supporter of Obama and the 99%, but is essentially echoing the unfounded sentiments of the 1%, namely:
- If you're poor, underprivileged, or the like, it's your fault
- The government and related entities have no responsibility to help those who can't help themselves
- There are more than enough resources to help the underprivileged

The author gets even more haughty in his rhetoric:

President Obama was right in his speech last week. The division between rich and poor is a national problem. But the biggest challenge we face isn’t inequality. It’s ignorance. So many kids from West Philadelphia don’t even know these opportunities exist for them. Many come from single-parent families whose mom or dad (or in many cases their grand mom) is working two jobs to survive and are just (understandably) too plain tired to do anything else in the few short hours they’re home. Many have teachers who are overburdened and too stressed to find the time to help every kid that needs it. Many of these kids don’t have the brains to figure this out themselves – like my kids. Except that my kids are just lucky enough to have parents and a well-funded school system around to push them in the right direction.

Technology can help these kids. But only if the kids want to be helped. Yes, there is much inequality. But the opportunity is still there in this country for those that are smart enough to go for it.

This type of grandstanding is only upended by the fact that the author says himself that his children have the resources (parents and good schools) to properly advance. When did complete hypocrisy and sociological blinders replace the social contract of Roosevelt's New Deal? When did the American tenet of every citizen's unalienable rights to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' fall victim to 'you're on your own social policy'? The problem here isn't the author's proclamation that the will to succeed doesn't go unnoticed. It's that he fails to fully acknowledge the crumbling systems around the same 'poor black kids'. Rather than addressing the systematic failures, he asserts that these children should aspire to be the best of the worst. How is that remotely inspiring? Even if an poor black kid in West Philadelphia does gain straight A's in a terrible school, chances are he will still be drastically behind his affluent counterparts across town.

The educational gap in this country is beyond detestable, not because kids don't want to learn, but because most people removed from the worst education systems in our country have little stake in it. They can point the finger and be condescending because they admittedly have never lived in conditions anywhere close to the ones they criticize. It's like a king pointing down at peasants, scoffing at the squalor they live in: easy. I beg the question to Mr. Marks and any other critic of 'poor black kids', what would you do to improve these schools, aside from claim that the kids need to try harder? What solution do you have for the dwindling quality of teachers, curricula, infrastructure and resources? What answer do you have for the student who have no clue what Google Scholar, SparkNotes, Evernote or the CIA World Factbook are? My guess is none.

That is the plight of the condescending prognosticator. They scream that if you're not winning the race, then you should run harder instead of blaming the busted soles on your sneakers. Maybe I'm rambling. Maybe undue outrage is coming towards the author for his clearly misinformed stance. The one thing I'm certain of is that there are many more Gene Marks' out there. They live anywhere from quiet, isolated suburban neighborhoods to high rise penthouses believe that self-determination is all one needs to be successful. For the amount of technological resources they espouse can help 'poor black kids', it would behoove them to use these same tools to see that the world isn't as cut and dry as they think.

Dear Shellshocked Black College Students

I'm black. If all it takes are some morose drunk white kids to knock my pride, then it's a sad day...

via The Daily Pennsylvanian:

Racism at Penn is usually subtle. It is a way of life, something that minorities come to accept. In class, it's usually sly comments about us. In the dining halls, it’s people talking really loud, complaining about us to their friends. I overhear it.

But this was the first time it was so blatant.

I don't know which experience was worse that night. Being called a “nigger” or being questioned about belonging here.

In retrospect, being called a “nigger” was the short-term sting. It made me more self-conscious about what white people think of me here — just some black guy who got here because of some affirmative action.

The idea of "belonging here" is the long-term wound. Ever since I came here, I have been self-conscious. You have to understand that Penn is extremely different from most schools, in that the vast majority comes from a much wealthier background. I grew up in the projects, surrounded by crime and drugs. I came from there to here without much help, and in May I will graduate cum laude.

Maybe I'm too much a cynic. Maybe I've seen so many instances like this, that it almost humors me at this point. Maybe because I went to a primarily white high school, I've been completely desensitized to such nonsense. Whatever the case, overt racism, like that alluded to in the above editorial really doesn't bother me anymore. There will always be instances where black people just get the short end of the stick in terms of what we would call 'racial sympathy'.

Whether it be uncouth and uninformed remarks during class, students deeming anything remotely related to blackness 'ghetto', or the commodification of 'blackness', black people have always been the butt of some joke at the hands of non-blacks. That such an incident was the impetus for the above editorial isn't the point of this post. No, no, no... I wouldn't dare open that can of worms and allow the masses to paint this blog as a 'hater' or as unsympathetic to the plight of my college-educated black brethren.

What I will touch upon, however, is why situations like this needn't be aggrandized in such a fashion. Black people in college, how many of you come from communities, municipalities or simply situations where being in college is NOT the norm? My guess is a good portion of you reading this raised your hands. That said, shouldn't being in college be a triumph in and of itself? As a young black male, the propensity for me to be in less-than-stellar arrangements is that much higher. Jail... Fatherhood... You name it, and there is a black guy my age, probably just as intelligent as I, who got caught up in it at the expense of gaining higher education.

So to you, shellshocked black college students, I say: be proud! You could be elsewhere. Rather than let the idiotic ramblings of some drunk white kids affect you, why not just keep it moving? Why let their clearly misinformed 'ghetto' jargon cause you to lose sleep at night? Clearly the last time they've been in intimate contact with a black person was when they flipped on 'Basketball Wives', so why validate their ignorance by acknowledging it?

Newsflash, Black college students: THIS WORLD ISN'T MADE FOR US! It never has been, and we (we, as in our generation) may not live to see the day when it is. Flip back to 2009, when Chanequa Campbell was kicked out of Harvard in connection to a murder she was in no way involved in. Flip back another 50 years to when blacks had to be escorted to school by the national guard. Flip back another 70 years to when we had to create our own schools because whites didn't believe free blacks had the propensity to read, much less learn. Come on, son... Our presence brings about adversity whether subtle like sly comments in class and bigotry in the workplace, or blatant like the situation above. You're going to be scrutinized more heavily than your non-Black peers every single day, whether you like it or not.

Sure there are folk out there that could give two craps about your skin color, and God bless their colorblindness. Yet even in 2011, racism is nowhere near dead, and that's a reality that we have to come to grips with. If you think Martin Luther King and Malcolm X would rise from the dead today and start toe-wopping because of some semblance of 'making it', you're wrong. They'd be happy to see us in a more advanced position, but still would loathe the position we as a people are in. They would laud those of us who have managed to pull ourselves up, but would see our progress for what is is: a drop in the bucket. No, I'm not saying to walk around on eggshells as if you have nothing to be proud of. Just be cognizant that this world still isn't nice. Don't be shellshocked when some idiot calls you out of your name. Just make sure you flash that diploma/alumni ring/other demarcation of your success in college, and laugh, because they will have given you all the motivation you need...