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Quality
Education for Black & Brown
Undermined by Class
Oppression & Public Intellectuals
By Rudolph
Lewis For the last 20 years or so, there has been
much complaint about the shortcomings of Brown
v. Board of Education. Henry Louis Gates and Cornell
West engaged clumsily and recently in such a discussion for the NYTimes.
It is such a damnable topic. For what is suggested is that the
1954 Supreme Court decision had the potential in one unfailing
swoop to resolve three hundred so years of racial (and class)
oppression.
Too much idle subsequent weight has thus
been placed on the decision Brown
v. Board of Education and the power of nine white men.
Thus, every demagogue, white and black (paid or unpaid), has had a
field day with this asinine argument about its potential to
resolve America's race problem. The meaningful
assertion of the decision was that racial supremacy is
problematic in a democratic society and it should be gotten rid
of with "all deliberate speed."
That was a sound decision and a very
progressive, if not revolutionary, one for 1954 and should be
applauded as an occasion in which America’s best tried to
correct a downward spiral. With that decision, the democratic
ball began rolling uphill again toward the creation of a more
egalitarian society.
From this judicial effort, we all have
received some benefit, however unequal. Of course, what is
troubling is that the benefits have been indeed unequal.
Demagogic politicians and public intellectuals have done all
they could to undermine the intent of the decision. To have
expected otherwise of a society besotted with the heady drink of
race and class hierarchies was to be naïve or supercilious.
Worse, to blame a less than perfect outcome on nine white
men restrained by their own history and historical times seems
damn right spiteful and absurd.
Such attacks are a distraction and a refusal
to deal with the very real problems of our times and the means
of ridding ourselves of them. At the core of these problems is
our retention of certain mythologies with respect to race and
class.
In matters of race and ethnicity we have
moved scarcely from the perspective of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson
Crusoe and his encounter with the Savage Other. Like our 18th-century
counterpart, too many of us still think we have the right name
(Master), the right color (non-black), the right language
(English), the right religion (Christianity), and the right
technology (shock-and-awe guns). As a matter of course, we
expect sacrifices from the Savage Other that we do not demand of
ourselves.
And we are ever ready to demean or murder the
Savage Other to sustain our privileges, now called blithely, the
American Way of Life.
Recently in Maryland the State Comptroller
Donald Schaefer visited a MacDonald’s and raised a stink
because a Hispanic employee, either had problems understanding
Donald Duck’s English or that Donald had problems
understanding the employee’s English. Later, Maryland’s
Republican governor defended D. Duck on a white radio station by
referring to “multiculturalism” as liberal bunkum and that
America was a “melting pot.”
Like Crusoe, the Savage Other should learn
English but that we, the Masters, should not bother to learn
Spanish. We find no embarrassment in our own personal
limitations or haughtiness.
If the Supreme Court has failed us it has
never spoken to the question of class oppression and the need
for the state and federal governments and corporations to
provide all citizens with a sufficiency so that the “pursuit
of happiness” can indeed be pursued. That revered institution
has not yet liberated us from market forces and chance, and
those who are lackeys of corporate power.
Class oppression has been ignored altogether
especially since the fall of the Soviet Union. Thus we, too many
of us, have made easy alliances with groups and corporations
that are involved in the excessive exploitation of the weak and
defenseless, at home and abroad. For instance, a Black
entertainer like Tavis Smiley has no qualms seeking out a
Wal-Mart to sponsor his PBS talk program, even though Wal-Mart
is rabidly anti-union (read working class) and notorious for
lowering wages wherever it sets up shop. Or, locally, there is
the corporate empire of Johns
Hopkins, with its hospital, which pays its so-called
non-professional employees less than sufficient wages that do
not allow their workers to secure health or welfare for
themselves or their children.
Top money raiser for Harvard University, Skip
Gates, America’s No. 1 Signifying Monkey, feels less
compunction to criticize his sponsor Bill Gates, the billionaire
founder of Microsoft, than he has in his attacks on poor working
class blacks and their children.
Skip’s
theme song, as it is with Tavis Smiley, always involves a morals
attack on the black poor: “We
need a revolution within the African-American community
insisting on a change in attitude, behavior, and morals.
Deferred gratification, staying in school, doing your homework,
reminding people in a programmatic way that the blackest thing
you could be historically was an educated man or an educated
woman within the African-American community.”
But this theme has
been used and overworked for centuries against the oppressed. It
is the “Master’s Apology” for his own corruption. Skip’s
projection is singular only in that it originates from a wealthy
black man who finds himself on the money leash of corporate
power. His attack dog position does not correct societal
inequalities, but rather sustains them and provides a moral
crutch for both racial and class oppression.
Explicably
and simply, quality education and economics are linked like a
child to its mother. Those children whose families have money
and connection go on to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the other
top universities. The rest of us have to struggle mightily, and
many of us succeed, if not at the private schools, at the state
universities and community colleges. But there is still too high
a number of blacks, Hispanics, and even whites who do not get
out of high school or are unable to attend night school. And
this situation has much more to do with available financial
resources than morals.
In
my high school class of 1960, 85 of 200 received their diploma.
I was not more moral than each of the 115 who either dropped out
or failed. I was not even smarter than each of the 115. Though
Mama and Daddy were former sharecroppers, they fortunately were
able to create a stable enough environment and were sufficiently
prosperous that they did not need whatever additional money I
could produce to sustain the family. Those others of that 115
were not so fortunate and not so blessed.
So
it was a matter of grace rather than morality. But the odds can
be cut so that many more can receive the blessings of a high
school education. There are numerous matters related to
achieving a quality education, such as sufficient wages paid,
availability of health and counseling resources, and comparable
resources for urban schools now available in suburban or white
schools. These issues related to quality education require both
government and corporate commitment. In ducking them, both state
politicians and public intellectuals, such as Cornell West,
Henry Louis Gates, and others of that ilk, have failed us.
Fairness
and sufficiency for the poor working classes (especially blacks
and Hispanics) are hidden behind the mantra of low taxes for the
well-off middle classes, the wealthy, and corporations. States
have refused to provide comparable funds for urban schools, that
is, for Black and Brown education.
To
speak derisively of the morals of the poor is sheer hypocrisy
when those in power and with means neglect their own ethical
duties in deriding race and class prejudices and ignore the
basic economic elements of both race and class oppression.
posted May 2004 |
