Part Three: Summer, 2013
Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers’ sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.
** Ella Baker
A dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, Black and white. “Across the US,” the National Governor’s Association declared in 2005, “a gap in academic achievement persists between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts.” This is the commonly referenced and popularly understood “racial achievement gap,” and it drives education policy at every level. Once again, whether heart-felt or self-satisfied, the narrative never mentions the monster in the room: white supremacy.
It’s true, of course, that standardized test scores reveal a difference between Black and white test-takers: 26 points in one area of comparison—fourth-grade reading—20 points in another, 23 in a third.
But the significance of those differences is wildly disputed. Some argue—as Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein did in their popular and incendiary book The Bell Curve—that genetic differences account for the gap, and there’s little that can be done to lift up the poor
** Ella Baker
A dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, Black and white. “Across the US,” the National Governor’s Association declared in 2005, “a gap in academic achievement persists between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts.” This is the commonly referenced and popularly understood “racial achievement gap,” and it drives education policy at every level. Once again, whether heart-felt or self-satisfied, the narrative never mentions the monster in the room: white supremacy.
It’s true, of course, that standardized test scores reveal a difference between Black and white test-takers: 26 points in one area of comparison—fourth-grade reading—20 points in another, 23 in a third.
But the significance of those differences is wildly disputed. Some argue—as Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein did in their popular and incendiary book The Bell Curve—that genetic differences account for the gap, and there’s little that can be done to lift up the poor