As a fifty-three-year-old, white, public school teacher, I was tasked to look into the achievement gap many years ago. After listening to students of color talk passionately about institutional racism and meaningless curriculum and then looking into some history, I think the problem is rooted in exploitative capitalism and a white supremacist orientation that is at the core of this countrys foundation. What, ultimately is the purpose of public education? When I was a child, it was used as a sorting tool: some students were marked for college, some for blue collar jobs. Growing up in the sixties, I witnessed lots of upheaval and too many assassinations. One of those defining moments for people of my age was the murder of Dr. King. Exactly a year before he was assassinated, he delivered a speech that some of my friends believe marked him for death: A Time to Break the Silence. In that speech he identifies the United States as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, and calls out the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism. Read his speech and see how it still rings frighteningly true nearly fifty years after it was delivered. As a result of the speech, King was demonized by the government and the press; what happened to Jeremiah Wright when then-candidate Obama distanced himself from his pastor had nothing on what our country did to Dr. King. And the good doctor was planning a real march on Washington with the orientation Malcolm (who also called out capitalism before he was murdered) said he should have had back in 1963. If we want to give our students some interesting and important reads, why not have them check out William F. Peppers An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King? Another murder that caught my attention was the death of Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton in 1969. Because we shared the same first name, I followed the coverage in the papers. Growing up in an all-white suburb, I was taught that Panthers were evil and dangerous. As the case unfolded, it became apparent that Hampton was assassinated by the power structure. And as I looked into the Panthers 10 Point Program, it became clear why. Another interesting and engaging read for students might be Jeffrey Haass The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther. When Marlon Brando refused his Oscar in the spring of 1973 because of what was happening at Wounded Knee, I bought and read Dee Browns Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, which might also be an inspiring historical read for students. And when Native Turtle Islanders fought for the U.S. government to honor treaties, what this countrys constitution calls the supreme law of the land, members of A.I.M. were persecuted and one, Leonard Peltier, is still being held as a political prisoner; students might enjoy Peter Matthiessens In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. By the time I did my student teaching, NWAs Straight Outta Compton was on the charts and causing an uproar, along with albums from the likes of Public Enemy and others, that had white capitalists scrambling to gain control of the rap industry, so they could control and reshape the genre as a modern day minstrel show. And in my early years of teaching, Tupac Shakur, someone who actively fought against that control, was murdered as he was planning to politicize and radicalize street gangs and youth through his music and celebrity. Michael Eric Dysons Holler If You Hear Me and John Potashs The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders might be interesting and provocative additions to the curriculum. Listening, really listening, to my students over a decade ago, and following the research their insight inspired, I wonder what repeated assassinations and incarcerations of innovative leaders do to a people. One of the more recent books I studied, Kevin Rashid Johnsons Defying the Tomb, also has me wondering about a government that begins COINTELPRO and writes NSC 46 in 1978, the stated objectives of which were to prevent domestic Blacks awareness of and organizing against US economic, diplomatic, and military ties to the openly racist apartheid regime of South Afrika; to prevent Black Afrikan governments from coordinated protests of this US/South Afrikan relationship at the UN; to prevent discussions on the US racial issue at the UN; to reduce and contain activities in the Black movement that were once nationally coordinated to merely local levels; to destroy all organizational unity in the movement; to create sharp social stratification of the Black population and lack of policy options which could reunite them; to prevent the development of a national leader of standing comparable to Martin Luther King. I wonder a lot of things, but the root of the achievement gap is not one of them: it seems clear that an orchestrated achievement gap and the destruction of an educated populace organized against exploitative capitalism and driven by love of the People are in the interests of the few at the expense of the many. Dare to struggle; dare to win. All power to the People. I wish you all peace and Panther love.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 00:27:15 +0000
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