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Herbert
Rogers Responds
to
Black IT Uses & Cyberspace
Rudy,
I am glad Luis Rivera likes your piece. I still have some
problems with your essay. Again, what would be your
models of excellence for black boys? Surely, there
must be some model out there which our black boys can emulate?
The problems you describe in your piece, I agree, are systemic
in the Baltimore City Public Schools, with some notable
exceptions. This certainly is not the case at Poly,
where science and engineering are the focus. It also would not
be the case at the Baltimore School for the Arts.
We also know that the problems you address in this essay are
even worse in our comprehensive high schools here in Baltimore.
The fact that Baltimore City College was once an all male
school, and today its 70 percent female speaks volumes of what
is happening in our school system. How
are we addressing the lack of black males at Baltimore City
College? Or is this a real issue? Some of the
problems you personally faced at City was due to the
lack of administrative leadership. One principal was totally
incompetent, and the second one had never been the principal of
a high school or even knew anything about a high school
curriculum.
Again, how do we prepare black boys for the rigors of a good
college preparatory program in a good high school? I think IT at
City was not really a part of the Science Department at City, it
was in name only.
You seem to fall into the trap that to wear uniforms or to have
a preppy look, would merely turn black boys into white boys. In
other words, to come to school with pants hanging off their
derrieres would be an acceptable form of behavior in preparation
for
college and the world of work. What are your acceptable models
of behavior for black boys? Who are the heroes of black boys?Would
someone like Ben Carson be an acceptable hero for a black boy?
City as an all male school in the 1960s and part of the 1970s
was an all college prep school, all of its students were
expected to go to college or to seek some form of post-secondary
education. I am almost certain that between 90 and 95 percent of
the students in my class went on to college.
I am glad that the Board of Director of Poly did a real national
search, and chose someone outside of the Baltimore City School
system and outside of secondary
education to lead the school. Poly has had the bold vision
to clearly define its mission as an educational institution that
prepares their students for higher education.
In spite of all of the gloom, I remain a prisoner of hope.
As ever, Herbert
Herbert, peace and blessings,
* * *
* *
Rudy Responds
I think black boys don't
need for us to choose and restrict who they view as a model
or a hero. There's too much of this top down imposition. What we
need to do is teach them how to evaluate character and actions,
needed for black liberation. And those models that they choose
should be given an objective critical review, like any other
model. If some choose Carson, fine. If some choose Bill Cosby,
that's fine. And if they choose Tupac, that's fine too. And if
they choose, Kalamu, or Baraka, or Marvin X, that's all right
to.
I think we make too much
about hip hop style and clothes, like we make too much about
black boys' speech. And as Marvin X says, Asians and
Mexicans come here speaking no English, except "dollar,
dollar," and they're sending money back to Mexico and
China.
My position remains the
same: black boys are being blamed for their poverty and their
exploitation and that instead of the state expending the
necessary and required funds and resources to deal with
educational problems in Baltimore we throw up further barriers
and repressive measures with respect to our children. They don't
need to be strapped in blue jackets and lynching ties and white
shirts to be made civil and respectable. And, as far as clothes
style, if one is going to impose one on black children, why not
impose African garb--dashikis and wraps.
What we need is a full
commitment to the education and welfare of blacks boys and that
doesn't exist in Baltimore and that there are those among
the black middle-class education experts who participate
wholeheartedly in this farce about excellence in black
education.
And as long as the present
racial politics are played by petty black politicians, the
jockeying for position and power, when they have no program for
the enhancement of black education and black boys, Baltimore
will suffer, and Black Baltimore even more.
I am willing to bet you
that there are a good percentage of those who work at North
Avenue Central of the Baltimore system who send their children
to private school. And who would blame them, they knowing what
they know about their employer.
* *
* * *
Herbert Responds
My brother, my brother,
Your response begs the
question. I am aware that many of the administrators of
the BCPS send their children to private schools. One must
also be mindful that the crisis in the BCP schools just didn't
get this way overnight. What has occurred in the BCPS in the
last 25 years has occurred under the watch of Black leadership,
a black mayor, and a black majority city council.
Do you have any suggestions
and/or ideas of programs you would like to see in place to help
black boys succeed in high school? I think this is the
real question that we should be tackling, in spite of all of the
odds which young black boys face. How do we save young black
boys from an almost predetermined fate?
The only thing you have
offered thus far is simply a capitalist response, throw more
money into a decadent and dying system. I might be idealistic,
but I believe we must work to radically restructure our
educational institutions, and we must especially address the
educational needs of young black boys.
I do not share your gloom
and doom, because I continue to believe there is hope in the
unseen.
As ever, Herbert
* *
* * *
Response
I admit I suffer from a
paucity of solutions to the educational problems of Black
Baltimore. I do not have a comic book doctorate. If you are
however suggesting that criticism is not warranted because I
don't have the solution to massive problems you admit have
continued for decades, that won't hold water. I'm not all gloom
and doom as you suggest. I know there are exceptions, and that
those exceptions will work wonders. But to hide behind the glow
and suggest that we do not have a crisis in black education in
Baltimore is to ignore the numbers, put on a smiling front, and
pray mindlessly for the best. What you should do is show me
how I should have greater hope, or how and what poor, regular black
parents, and children have to look forward to. -- Rudy * * *
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posted 11 July 2005 / posted 27 June 2008 |
