Black and brown boys don’t need to learn “grit,” they need schools to stop being racist
Students attend a summer session at Lyon Elementary School near the city of Clarksdale in the Mississippi Delta.
The National Interest: Once a month, this column is tackling broader questions about what the country should do about gaps in achievement and opportunity, especially for boys of color, in a partnership with The Root.
Everyone seems to think that a lack of “soft skills” is the reason why students of color aren’t ready for college and careers. More schools and after-school programs are teaching students how to have “grit,” compassion and a “growth mindset.” Under the new federal education law, states are encouraged to use “nonacademic” factors to hold schools accountable.
Rubbish! Soft skill training is disguised bootstrapping, which insidiously blames youth for failing in racist systems designed to block their success, and it abdicates the middle class from any responsibility to uproot inequality. It’s racism that really keeps students out of college and careers, not kids’ lack of resilience. Students are ready for college and jobs. Postsecondary institutions and employers are not ready for black and brown youth.
No amount of mentoring can repair the damage done to black youth in Flint, Michigan who’ve been drinking lead-poisoned water because of malign government neglect. But when it comes to black men and boys, we invest millions to develop their “soft skills” as if teaching proper eye contact solves health disparities, police violence and the unemployment crisis in inner cities. For the sake of getting students college and career ready, youth-serving programs and schools are essentially training students to adapt to broken systems.
I attended the Ready by 21 National Meeting, which brought forth strategies to improve the quality of service providers and reach youth who aren’t employed or in school.
It mostly lived up to its billing. However, one session, titled Early Work Readiness Skill Development, typifies a bugaboo with the readiness movement. That session diagnosed that “youth in America suffer from soft skill deficiencies due to a lack of focus on these skills Black and brown boys don’t need to learn “grit,” they need schools to stop being racist - The Hechinger Report: