BLACK FOLKS, STOP CHASING WHITE INTEGRATION. IT’S NOT THE SUREST PATH TO BLACK STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT
We, as a nation, are chasing the wrong things. From Boston to Birmingham, we have seen the ferocious and virulent reaction of white people to the thought of integration. From throwing bricks at school buses full of black kids being bused into lily-white schools to entire school districts either being shut down or wholly seceding to maintain the racial imbalance, we have seen how integration is met.
Let’s stop playing the game. All black schools aren’t damaging to kids; it’s anti-blackness that is proven to be perniciously harmful to kids. As Malcolm X said, “You can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.”
Let’s stop ignoring the fact that all-white schools have far more resources than all-black schools, which leads to a deficit in resources for millions of black children. Integration won’t fix a mindset that says it is better for the public dollars to be skewed toward white children at the expense of black children.
AS KWAME TURE REMARKED, “WE WERE NEVER FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT TO INTEGRATE, WE WERE FIGHTING AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY.”
Let’s recognize that the false cry that integration is the only way for black kids to achieve is belied by the fact that the perspectives of white parents in the North or the South are often not all that different. Even today in 2019, many white parents’ views closely mirror those of President Dwight D. Eisenhower when he said racist white folks “…are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big black bucks.” He made the remark to Chief Justice Earl Warren in February 1954, not long after Warren had presided over that CONTINUE READING: Black Folks, Stop Chasing White Integration. It’s Not the Surest Path to Black Student Achievement - Philly's 7th Ward