Political correct policy in America holds that only members of racial and ethnic minorities who have been or feel they have been victimized by bigotry are qualified to staff organizations created to serve disadvantaged minorities. So it was that in the aftermath of the 1960’s civil rights movement, the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, HEW, became an employment windfall for non-white minority folks. Politically incorrect critics in private—for to speak out publicly would have branded them as racists-- derided HEW, as a token or “soft” agency, as distinguished from the “hard” agencies, like the Justice and State Departments, which were staffed mainly by whites. To this day, the majority of employees in the two departments formed in 1979 from the splitting-up of HEW—Education, and Health and Human Resources--are still preponderantly staffed by minorities.
Another institution that subscribes dogmatically to that unwritten policy is the K-12 public education establishment. Visit any public school in America with a sizable population of minority students—in D.C,. The Bronx, Detroit, Los Angeles, Atlanta, to name some--and you will invariably find that most, if not all, teachers, counselors, secretaries, custodians, hall monitors, in-house police officers, administrators, central office personnel and union officials are members of the prevalent local minorities.
But here the question arises: If the rationale behind the practice of employing minority individuals to serve help their own is as self-evident as its adherents claim, why is it that, after holding sway, unchallenged, for fifty years, most K-12 minority students in America rank so far below their white peers in math, science, language arts and every other substantive subject? Most, in fact, come out of high school—half do not even graduate—worse educated than were their grandparents before the advent of the civil rights movement.
The many reasons given boil down to one: an entrenched, lingering bigotry on the part of the white majority: The general lack of parental guidance in poor minority communities, the peer-pressure among their kids to disrupt classes and fail in school, the high rate of teen pregnancy, (many 16-year-olds are already on their third child), the street gang violence—are all somehow the fault of white people.
Now there is no denying that prejudice persists in America, not so much the blatant KKK variety, but, perhaps worse, the sentiment, disguised as benevolence, which, in effect, maintains that minorities, like children, are incapable of coping without the assistance and guidance of white protectors—a “velvet” prejudice, as one perceptive critic called it. Then, too, there are the guilt-ridden white folk who, though they themselves discriminated against no one, nonetheless feel obliged to make amends for past injustices by going out their way to help minority folk, even when their help is not wanted or wanted.
But there is another, darker, side to the picture. Consider the TV clips of the violence wantonly meted out by police and soldiers against poor villagers and slum dwellers in underdeveloped countries. The powers that be in those miserable places—dictators, royalty, feudal lords, or whoever—may be the ones who order the violence, but the thugs who do the dirty work for them invariably come from the same lower classes they victimize, self-loathing wannabes intent on moving up the pecking order by beating up and lording it over their own kind. Nothing so arouses hatred and fear among the wretchedly poor in those places than the strut of uniformed, well-armed thugs who were once their neighbors.
But back to America. The point I’m getting at is that the notion that only members of minorities have the sympathy and understanding to serve minorities is not necessarily true. One reason why minority K-12 kids still lag behind their white peers is that, subconsciously or consciously, not all minority teachers, educrats and officials in public education, want their students to succeed. Pillory me for bringing it up, but after fifty years of letting the problem fester in secret, it’s high time it was brought to light.
Let me hasten to explain that not every minority members the public education establishment public education is like those wannabe thugs in underdeveloped countries who beat up on the poor classes from which they came. Among minority K-12 educators that I have personally met more than a few are first-rate professionals, but, sadly, most do not come close. Some are rank opportunists simply, Some are no better educated than middling junior college graduates. (Try checking up on their credentials and you run into a bureaucratic stonewall.) Others, the ones that concern us here, clearly have personal issues that militate against educating minority students. And I say clearly because, though there are no formal studies proving the point—no researcher I know of would dare to undertake such a study—all you need to do is labor in the trenches of public schools for a while, as I did for five years, to see that what I’m saying is true.
As President Barack Obama well put it, “nations that out-educate us today, will out-compete us tomorrow.” Actually, this is happening already. As we speak, American students, whites included, rank 16th the, Tested alone, our American minority students would rank much lower, and that despite the fact that the money spend on them, dollar cost per student is (xxx) times that of (xxx), the number one nation. Economically and militarily we may still be the world’s premier superpower, but we unless we take drastic measures to upgrade the quality of education of our future generation, we are doomed to end up a has-been, second-rate nation.
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