I appreciate your points, and I am essentially in agreement with you.

It is good to hear your point of view, given that you are an educator.

As far as the 'Caribbean education' thread goes, as I said earlier, it was just an idea. I wasn't offering it as some kind of cure-all panacea for our problems in the U.S. Bascially, it just seems to me that it would be an idea that might interest some sociologist somewhere to the point that they would seek funding in order to do a study on the differences in the groups' respective approaches to the US educational system.

If this kind of research was done, the results might provide some interesting insights that could be applied more broady. That is really all I was saying--it's not a major part of my thinking on this issue. It just strikes me as an interesting phenomenon, and I would like more details on how it works than just saying "Well, they succeed because their culture is different--they're not Americans."

As far as the discussion of the whole oppositional/defiant issue amongst our people, I can definitely acknowledge the validity of your point of view, given that you are down in the trenches on this. I have personally seen (and to some extent have dealt with) a goodly amount of behavior that I can only describe as disrespectful to the point where it becomes almost absurd. The same goes for the weird, ambivalent attitudes towards education and learning. If you say that this is not a major issue in your judgement, I'm glad to hear it.

However, I continue to think that these issues have cultural/historical roots that are specific to us, above and beyond any general American trends--I've just seen way too much of it, from too many different types of black folks, to believe otherwise.

As to the question of structural/systemic issues in the area of education, I definitely do not take the position that this is an insignificant part of the problem (especially since I have experienced some of the negative effects of this in my own educational experience).

What I will say, however, is that I think that there definitely is a problem in terms of black people prioritizing educational issues as one of the top two or three issues that we need to deal with in the *political* arena. While there are certainly black people who are fighting this battle in most of our major cities, I don't think that it comes close to being a top-priority political issue for us as a group.

Here's where things get sticky. You have made the point that we don't have the kind of leadership necessary to address many of the complexities of our current situation. This is true. However, the *reasons* for this are complex, as I have alluded to in my post #139. The black 'leadership' in this country, is, to a large degree, 'owned' and controlled by white elites, be they liberal or conservative. I don't believe that we will see any of these 'black leaders' mounting a truly agressive campaign to advocate for more funding for the schools, for example, because their white sponsors don't really want them to do this.


All that these sponsors really want these 'leaders' to do is come out of the woodwork during an election year and rouse up the Negroes to vote for the Democrats--you know, get up and deliver a speech that gets the crowd all hot and bothered at the Democratic National Convention, participate in the 'hip-hop' political convention, etc.. All of this stuff is just designed to get black people to think that their concerns are really going to be addressed. However, this is just a ruse--they just want your vote in the election year, and they will go right back to ignoring you as soon as it is over.

It is important to realize that a militant political campaign to critique the school system in this country specifically as it relates to blacks is going to run into problems immediately, because you are going to have to get into a criticism of the *systemic* problems in education--and that means that your argument is going to be perceived as coming from a 'blame whitey' position. It will be seen that way even if it is not explicitly stated as such.

It has been said that the 'blame whitey' trip is not really that prevalent amongst blacks, but people need to understand that when we start talking about the systemic/structural component as being *the* key to understanding these issues, we are seen as implicitly blaming our problems on 'the white man'--because ultimately that is who controls and maintains the system. The problem with this is that most white people in 2004 are not really trying to hear that--many of them believe that we are our *own* worst enemy, and that 'the system' is ultimately not to blame for our condition.

The reason why this is important is that talking about any kind of broad systemic change in education (or any other area where discrimination is taking place) is going to necessarily involve political advocacy aimed at convincing a large number of whites of the validity of this position, given that they are the majority in this country.

People forget that the Civil Rights Movement was successful to the extent that the leaders of the movement portrayed the struggle of blacks as a *moral* issue. Blacks were clearly the victims in that dynamic, and the leaders of the movement exploited this to place the segregationists in a bad light politically, as well as in the court of public opinion.

Black people are not seen as victims in this country in the same way that they were forty or fifty years ago--and this presents a huge problem for anybody who tries to put the blame on 'the system'. White people aren't really having that anymore--and our portrayal in the media nowadays is a *big* reason why (as you have pointed out in your post above).

In the course of this discussion there have been many people who have taken issue with Cosby's denunciation of the portrayal of blacks in the media. Many people today seem to see the extraordinarily negative images of blacks that are so prevalent in the media today as being 'just entertainment', trivial, and not something that should be criticized.

I understand that many people, particularly if they are younger than about 25 or 30, are not personally familiar with anything other than the current media image of blacks that exists today. It is understandable that such people would tend to identify with much of the current entertainment fare, and view it as innoccuous. It is also easy to see why they would take great exception to Cosby's comments--they view it as a personal attack on their culture. However, people who take this position are making a big mistake, in my opinion, because this image of black people as thugs, criminals, ignorant people, etc. has been *used* politically in a way that goes far beyond the world of entertainment. I think that many people fail to understand the way that this 'ignorant' type of entertainment has been used against us.

Let me state the issue bluntly: there is no way in *hell* that most white Americans in 2004 are going to entertain the idea that modern-day blacks are victims, given the popular media image of black people as happy-go-lucky, ignorant, criminally inclined, violent individuals. In this case, when I say 'media', I mean entertainment *and* news media. This is significant, because any kind of militant attack on systematic/institutionalized racism in this country today is going to be dismissed as being an example of 'blame whitey'-ism, given the dominant public image of blacks today.

Once an issue gets put into this category, most whites are simply going to tune it out--most of them really don't want to hear this kind of stuff anymore. If the majority of the country is unsympathetic to our situation, this means that broad systemic change is all but impossible--because systemic change by definition involves politics.


Why do you think that there are 1 Million black men in prison in this country--and that this is not considered an urgent or pressing issue by most white Americans? Or that there is 50% black male unemployment in New York City--and that this is not considered a pressing issue by most white New Yorkers? Our public image has taken such a beating (thanks largely to the media) that these horrendous statistics do not do anything to create concern or alarm amongst most whites (other than concern and alarm for their own personal safety from us).


Many people miss the fact that our portrayal in the media is a *key* factor in this shift in the way that we are perceived by whites, and that this dynamic has crippled us in terms of any kind of *moral* argument aimed at reforming systemic/structural racism. It is important to remember that, for many whites, their primary image of us is through the media--not through direct personal relationships with actual black people.

I think that this is one reason why Cosby has had such an angry tone in his statements. He is from the Civil Rights generation, and he understands that the *moral* aspect was the key to the success of that movement. He can also see that in 2004, black people have clearly lost the moral high ground on these issues, largely due to ability of the media to portray and spin information about us in a specific way. He also sees that many of our people have actually *embraced* this distorted portrayal of who we are--and this is where his rage comes from (at least in part), in my opinion. I am sure he feels that we have shot ourselves in the foot by celebrating these sorts of portrayals--and I'm not sure that he is wrong about this.

I think that this is why his most recent comments have been directed at the music industry. It is going to get real funky if and when prominent blacks start to make this connection, and begin to strongly criticize and target the individuals and corporations within the entertainment industry who have reaped massive profits as the result of the defamation of blacks that passes for entertainment nowadays.

People who don't understand why I identify this 'black entertainment' as defamatory need to realize that if black people were using the entertaiment industry to portray any other ethnic group in this country in the way that we are currently being portrayed, they would literally declare open war on us--no questions asked.

We are one of the only groups of people in this country who do not understand that you cannot allow your public image to be dragged through the mud in the media, if you have any hopes of realizing your long-term social and political goals.

The fact that there are black people *inside* the entertainment industry who profit from this defamation (on an individual level) makes the situation even more complex. Many of these people will fight any attempt to examine these issues tooth and nail, because the dynamic that serves to defame us (and hamstring us politically in the society at large) is the selfsame one that puts food on their table. Kinda similar to the position and role of the 'black leaders' in the political arena, isn't it?

There is a lot more I could say about this, but this is enough for now. Suffice it to say that there are a lot more fingers that are going to have to be pointed, and many more individuals who will have to be called out, before we will be able to address many of the cultural and systemic problems we face. It's not going to be pretty.