<p>I know it’s not cool to infringe on anybody’s right for self-expression, but is it outlandish to say that this problem won’t get any better as long as prominent role models for young black males (such as rappers and athletes) continue to make it look like the most important things in life are guns, jewelry, and drugs?</p>
<p>But whites in single parent families do better than blacks in single parent families. And black girls do better than black boys in the same families. So race and gender are playing a big role here – this isn’t “more” about a disparity in family structure.</p>
<p>When a particular group of males grows up without fathers in the home, they have no role models. The result is they are the losers. It won’t change any time soon. </p>
<p>I don’t think the issue is complicated at all.</p>
<p>But whites in single parent families do better than blacks in single parent families</p>
<p>Hanna, I think it would be interesting to look at the REASONS behind the single-parent household situation. For example, is it due to divorce, death, adoption, abandonment, artificial insemination, incarceration, etc. If it is divorce, do more non-black fathers stay in touch with their children more regularly? (since the vast majority of single-parent households are run by moms) If more blacks are incarcerated than whites, does this affect the racial outcomes? Do more blacks abandon their families, compared to non-blacks and would this cause the academic gap? I am inclined to think it is a lot less about the music culture and more about the reasons I just described.</p>
<p>I will go even farther into non-pc territory and say that racism- in administration & in teaching doesn’t help.
I have seen teachers lower the bar for their AA students resulting in students ( who are not unintelligent), doing only the bare minimum, because they can get away with it. These same students also lose respect for their teachers as well as themselves because they start to doubt their own ability, since the adults in their lives seem to think that academics needs to be " easier" for them.</p>
<p>Most of the “racism” is internal to the black male community where the more academically accomplished black males are singled out by other blacks and called out and worse for “acting white”.</p>
<p>It’s not hard to understand that the failure of African American males is a result of a fairly comprehensive breakdown of the African American community and its leadership and its traditional institutions (family, churches, etc.). What is more complex is trying to understand what has led to the breakdown of that community and leadership.</p>
<p>Many conservatives believe that the politics of racial victimization, i.e. the false premise that African Americans cannot succeed without “help”, has contributed to the breakdown in the community and its leadership.</p>
<p>Whatever the cause, I believe that the answers (if any) must come from within the African American community and its leaders.</p>
<p>I think that you are all making good points. Additionally, I agree with Ron Ferguson, who said in the NYT article that we MUST have some difficult conversations about parenting in early childhood. But he said that “early childhood” means 2, 3, and 4 year olds, and I say that we have to look at the disparity from birth.
This is very non-PC, I know! But I work in disadvantaged communities, and I see firsthand how some, but not all, infants and toddlers are handled. I can predict who will succeed in school based on how and how much the parents are speaking to the children, how the children are disciplined, what kind of tone of voice the parents are using, whether the parents are stimulating the children to think, and HOW MUCH TV THE KIDS ARE WATCHING. (And, I have followed some of these families for 10 years, so I see that I am right. Anecdotal, but I think this is real.) Geoffrey Canada is onto something big with his “baby college”. I know that people do not want to hear that their parenting is contributing to low achievement, but the critical years of birth to five are setting the stage for school achievement in a huge way.
People parent the way they were parented and it goes back for generations. But, in some cases, people are still parenting the way that their ancestors were treated in slavery - punitively. This is only normal - we learn by imitation and repeat patterns - but it is time to get past this! Some families have gotten past this, some parents make a deliberate effort to do things differently, and their kids achieve at a higher level.
I would reckon to guess that black families without the historical context of slavery parent differently, and have different educational outcomes. This would be a good study.</p>
<p>But whites in single parent families do better than blacks in single parent families</p>
<p>There can be many reasons for this. Sometimes a white son in a single parent home has other educated and successful males as role models (uncles, grandpas, etc). And, many white males still have contact with their bio dads during their childhoods.</p>
<p>Sometimes a black male in a single parent homes doesn’t have any successful males as role models in his extended family/social circle. </p>
<p>I remember a successful white male who grew up with a single mom who said that while his father had abandoned the family, he grew up with many other successful adult males in his life. Those other males were his role models. It showed him how men are supposed to be. However, if a young man lives in a neighborhood where successful men are rare, who are going to be his role models? And, if the young man only knows one or two successful males, won’t he think of them as being the exceptions and not the rule?</p>
<p>Also, black males are sometimes bullied and criticized for doing well in school. (this is very sad ) </p>
<p>The black families in my neighborhood try to avoid that situation by putting their sons into largely white private schools. (My neighborhood is about 25% black.).</p>
<p>72.3% for black mothers
52.5% for hispanic mothers
28.6% for white mothers</p>
<p>This is clearly an issue that the African American community and its leadership needs to consider and address as it is almost certainly a contributing factor to the lack of role models and underachievement of African American males.</p>
<p>In many schools, an African American boy who does well academically is likely to get beaten up – or at least ostracized – by other boys of the same background.</p>
<p>I know of African American parents who felt the need to put their sons in private schools to avoid the anti-academic African American culture in the public schools.</p>
<p>I suspect that we may be approaching the time when African Americans who “leave the community” become more and more successful, while the “African American community” they leave continues to disintegrate. The government and social policy towards “helping” the African American community has been an unmitigated disaster, but at this point it is such a trainwreck in terms of social policy that the only solution must come from African American leadership saying “enough is enough”. I don’t think that leadership is gong to come from pastors preaching the messages favored by Jeremiah Wright.</p>
<p>I agree with the idea that pressure NOT to “succeed” in the traditional sense of the word is an issue. In my own community, which is mostly white but very socio-economically mixed, boys begin to lag behind girls in middle school. From my personal observation, it seems that there is peer pressure to do less than the best, and too many adults seem to accept this as the way things are. I put my son in a parochial prep school in middle school where the boys competed with each other to do well … it was a wonderful investment in the fine young man he has become. I would say that we are fortunate that we could pay for the alternative, but I have friends who could have done the same, yet they felt that their boys were just fine sliding by & doing less than they could have or should have.</p>
<p>I think there are many reasons for the achievement gap, but one big reason is a lack of expectation. That is far too simple an answer, of course, but communities need to somehow establish a culture of expectation and achievement.</p>
<p>Robert Bobb, the superintendent of Detroit schools, is struggling to put such a culture in place. He is finding it difficult to do, but he & others are trying hard to implement the culture of achievement that begins in the home and extends throughout the community.</p>
<p>It’s nice to see the gap among whites, latinos, and blacks at UCRiverside is quite the contrary to the norm. In fact, blacks are graduating at an even higher rate than whites. This might be attributed to higher acheiving whites not choosing UCR over one of the other UC campuses, but it is still a nice situation. See the link below:</p>
<p>That is really good news. Studying programs that work is a good step toward understanding what can be done to make things better. There was a good article in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently that focused on college programs that work to lessen the achievement gap. Unfortunately, the ones that worked best were really expensive, as they required a lot of remediation and one-on-one work to help students.</p>
<p>When my brother taught at UC Riverside, he made the mistake of failing an African American student. He was called in and told, in no uncertain terms, that giving a failing grade was unacceptable.</p>
<p>IMO, this is the kind of misguided “social policy” that is doing no favors to the African American community.</p>
) </p>