A PC Critique of “Back to Basics: Returning to the Matter of Black Inferiority and White Supremacy in the Post-Brown Era”
By Regina Austin
Journal of Appellate Practice and Process, Vol. 6 (1), 2006
Available at: https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/appellatepracticeprocess/vol6/iss1/7
[[As always, the PC critique is in double bracketed italics.]]
P79.
Except among recent law students, Brown v. Board of Education is better remembered for what it did (namely reject Plessy v. Ferguson's2 doctrine of "separate but equal") than the grounds on which it did it. The Court in Brown considered whether racial segregation deprived minority children of "equal educational opportunities3 even if it were assumed that school facilities and "other tangible factors" were substantially the same for blacks and whites.4 The Court concluded that there were "intangible considerations" that made "separate but equal" inherently invidious. Said the Court, "To separate [black children in grade and high schools] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that mays affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to be undone. The Court went on to quote with approval a finding of the district court in Brown which had ruled against the plaintiffs: [[Tangible separation is the physical Vectors related to education. The inputs in the “intangible” Vectors have the GOPs and MOPs of those concerned about “race” to produce Red FARTs. To separate any group means to separate their Matrices. The separation results in different Vectors and a different ME Vector. CC has set the agenda to have all intellectuals’ GOP and MOP produce Red FARTs for all inputs related to notions of inferiority and superiority of the children’s Matrices. The inferior Matrix, therefore effects their status in the community (i.e., their outputs become inputs that will produce Red FARTs by the “community”.]]
has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system.6
[[Detrimental effect means the effectiveness and accuracy of the mental model of the child’s Matrix is harmed. The ME Vector contains a lot of Red FARTs for the child’s outputs. Being segregated deprives their Matrix of the Vectors that would increase their changes of living a full CC life.]]
"Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson (regarding whether segregation invariably stamped blacks with 'a badge of inferiority')," the Court in Brown reasoned that there was ample "modem [social science] authority," which it cited in footnote 11 of the opinion, to support its conclusion that segregation imposed grave social psychological harm on black children.7
Commentators at the time did not completely accept the Court's reasoning that school segregation was unconstitutional because it caused black children to suffer the pangs of inferiority. General social psychological studies such as that of Kenneth Clark involving the reactions of black children to white dolls were slender reeds on which to justify the dismantling of dual school systems. 8 Moreover, the invocation of social science research suggested that the decision might be vulnerable to reversal because it rested on facts that might later be revised. 9 Instead, it was argued that the ruling was based on common knowledge that segregation had an adverse emotional and material impact on the well-being of black children. 10 Black inferiority and its complementary ideology, white supremacy, were very much at the heart of the matter of black political, social, and economic inequality as it existed in 1954. They supported not only segregated public schools, but also the entire system of Jim Crow laws which stigmatized and subordinated the entire black population. If black children did not feel branded and insulted because the law said that they could not go to school with white children, they were certainly supposed to. If black children did not feel branded and insulted by segregation, it was either because they stubbornly resisted internalizing the message white supremacy intended them to get (for which they should not be penalized) or they had so thoroughly absorbed its portent that they were incapable of recognizing the affront. [[Does the Matrix of a child suffer and in what way? The FARTs of the debaters of the day were for the inputs of the psychology of the day (i.e., if black children did not feel branded and insulted by segregation it was because they were so traumatized that they didn’t know it.]]
Given the reasoning of the Brown decision, the anniversary of the case should be the occasion for an examination into whether notions of black inferiority and white supremacy continue to be embodied in the structures and practices of the contemporary public educational system in ways that have an adverse impact on the psychological and material well-being of black children today. Furthermore, the anniversary of Brown should be commemorated by a consideration of the extent to which the federal courts have been vigilant in protecting black children from the adverse consequences of the ideologies of black inferiority and white supremacy. [[The notions of lack inferiority exists as of 2022. Assumed is a genetic support, which means the Matrix has bump-on-the-head problems in learning and producing appropriate results, or CC’s racist symptoms has the power to disrupt GOP and MOP to the point of inaccurate assessments of inputs and production of FARTs.]]
Despite Brown, there is much evidence that public schools continue to fail black youngsters by leaving them ill-equipped to overcome disparities in social status, economic welfare, and political power and influence. That is the bottom line. Segregation and discrimination are simply causes of those inequalities, while integration and the pursuit of diversity are merely means to the opposite end. At the root of it all lies the pervasive ideological insistence on the inevitability of black inferiority and white supremacy and the naturalness of the unequal distribution of resources and opportunities that they justify. As long as black inferiority and white supremacy leave their mark on educational practices and policies, the promise of Brown remains unfulfilled. [[It’s 2022 and the position statements are the same. Are our Children’s Matrices are ill-equipped (bad Vectors) or is the Matrix incapable of functioning cognitively with the white Matrix?]]
When Brown was decided, it was a core belief of American society that blacks were by nature intellectually, morally, and culturally inferior to whites. There were a host of assumptions or bromides pertaining to blacks that were widely accepted as innocuous: Blacks are lazy and not smart. Blacks are prone to lawbreaking and violence. Blacks are rebellious, emotional, and disrespectful of authority. Blacks are loud and rude. Blacks in general and black women in particular are not morally respectable, which is to say they are prone to sexual deviance. Blacks are irresponsible in their treatment of their children and incapable of forming and maintaining wholesome family relations. Finally, the inferiority of blacks as individuals and as a group earmarks their institutions. Such core beliefs die hard. 11 [[Intellectual, moral, and cultural inferiority is a question of Vectors, inputs in Vectors and GOP and MOP’s ability to use the mental model effectively to be smart, law abiding, respectful, emotionally intelligent, mannerable, sexual appropriateness, and capable parents. Note how the above CC language prevents a critical look at the “bromides”.]]
In the fifty years since Brown was decided, blacks have devoted substantial energy and resources in the attempt to establish their worth or merit by proving that these assumptions are wrong. Indeed, since Brown, black litigants have gone to federal court to dismantle elements of the educational apparatus that seemingly reflect the impact of notions of black inferiority and white supremacy. In addition to fighting both for the achievement of unitary school systems as well as for equality in school funding (i.e., the ultimate realization of "separate but equal"), blacks have attacked, with mixed results, a panoply of practices that stifle the academic attainment of black students in integrated settings and thereby seemingly confirm the notion that black students are intellectually and culturally inferior. For example ability grouping or tracking,12 high-stakes standardized testing, 1 3 the disproportionate placement of blacks in special education or remedial classes, 14 and the exclusion of blacks from honors programs and courses for the gifted, all of which tend to either reflect or substantiate beliefs regarding the lower intelligence of black children, have been the subject of civil rights lawsuits. Racial disparities in rates and the severity of suspensions and discipline have also been challenged as evidence of the continued stereotyping of young blacks as rebellious and disorderly.' 5 In response to the claimed inferiority of black culture, blacks have sued to require that the black experience be included in public school curricula' 6 or that it be taken into account in dealing with black children's special educational needs.' 7 Finally, blacks have defended black institutions of higher education against intimations that preservation of their racial identities is contestable. 18 [[We’ve always had to prove that our Matrix was just as good. We’ve attacked the outputs of the educational systems that are used to prove that we have inferior Matrices. Examples the their arguments for our inferiority are
Ability grouping or tracking
High-stakes standardized testing
Placement of blacks in special education or remedial classes
Exclusion from honors programs and courses for the gifted
Rates and the severity of suspensions and discipline
Rebellious and disorderly
All of these examples are from studying the outputs of black children’s GOP and MOP and not the Matrices of the institutions. The answer is to have the black experience (racial identities) be included in public school curricula' or that it be taken into account in dealing with black children's special educational needs. This is an argument for including the black child’s Matrix into the classroom.]]
The legal analysis employed in these cases allows for little consideration of the role that black inferiority and white supremacy may play in the conduct of school authorities. Consider two cases challenging as asserted racial discrimination the expulsion of black children from high school. In Parker,19 two sisters challenged their expulsions from a Catholic high school. The students claimed that the discipline they received for fighting was motivated by the "stereotype of black students as more dangerous than white students." 20 The school retorted that the harshness of the penalty was predicated on the fact that teachers were injured in attempting to break up the fight, which the sisters resumed after the teachers intervened.2 ' The court concluded that, though the discipline departed from school guidelines, the school was entitled to avoid the problems incurred by "most public schools of violence and threatened safety from students, undaunted by teachers' authority." 22 [[What’s the role of school authorities’ outputs in the black child’s outputs?]]
Much the same reasoning was employed in Fuller,23 a case that attracted the attention of the national media. Though expulsions of blacks by the school district exceeded their representation in the student body by thirty-six percent,24 there was an absence of evidence that race motivated the discipline of the particular plaintiffs, who were involved in a fight in the stands during a football game. Several spectators were hurt during the melee, which was partially captured on video. 25 The court likened the case to one involving selective prosecution for drug trafficking. Mere proof of statistical disparities was accordingly not sufficient to make out an equal 'protection violation.2 Plaintiffs' claim of racially biased discipline failed because they did not establish that similarly situated whites were treated less harshly. [[Again, a study of the outputs and not the mental models for each child or the Matrices of the institutions.]]
The mode of analysis used in these cases is problematic because it fails to acknowledge that stereotypes are self-fulfilling prophecies. 27 Behavior that is in accord with stereotypes can be encouraged by the way in which teachers and administrators treat students. Moreover, the harder the adults look for the expected behavior among a stigmatized group of students, the more likely they are to find it. Black/white comparisons become difficult to draw given the focus on policing or scrutinizing the behavior of the blacks. [[One input into many Vectors (especially teachers and administrators) of the child’s Matrix is stereotypes. These Vectors are utilized by GOP and MOP to produce education. And since many of these inputs are assessed by the child’s GOP and MOP as threats to survival, there are a lot of Red FARTs in the child’s Matrix. White children don’t have these same stereotype inputs in their Vectors.]]
Race remains an issue in public education because school authorities and the courts lack a real understanding of, or appreciation for, the power of the ideologies of black inferiority and white supremacy, the unequal distribution of capital they justify, and the cultural responses blacks have adopted in response thereto. For example, education researchers considering the disproportionate placement of black students in special education have argued that labeling black students, particularly black males, retarded or emotionally disturbed is highly subjective and may be based on white female teachers' misinterpretation of or lack of tolerance for the students' verbal, behavioral, or cognitive styles.28 Black boys have a propensity to engage in high levels of physical movement and are verbally aggressive and competitive. These traits put them at risk of being disciplined and negatively evaluated in the school environment where it is the teacher's job to maintain order and decorum. Indeed, it appears that the black students who achieve the best in integrated school settings have "the ability to be reserved, to subordinate emotions and affections to reason, to constrain physical activity, and to present a disciplined exterior."29 [[They don’t understand the Matrix of the child and even their own Matrices (including the Matrices of the institutions). More importantly, they don’t understand how the child’s (especially black males) mental model works to produce their verbal, behavioral, or cognitive styles. Black students who attend white schools have learned (though Vectors) how to be constrained and disciplined.]]
P85.
If the logic of Brown is followed, there are three propositions that ought to govern the analysis of practices and procedures that interfere with the educational advancement of minority children.
1) It ought to be accepted as a matter of common knowledge that notions of black inferiority and white supremacy still taint educational policies and practices in this country. Similarly, it ought to be taken as a given that policies and practices that disproportionately and negatively impact black and brown students may not be justified by reference either to characteristics or modes of behavior that are natural, inherent, or innate to minority children or to the rational or unbiased discretionary judgment of school officials. [[These outputs of the system and inputs of the child are still active in 2022. The outputs of the system cannot be said to have the inputs of black characteristics or modes of behavior natural to black children or the unbiased judgment of school officials. Their Matrix is just as messed up anyone else’s.]]
2) Educators, courts, commentators, parents, and concerned citizens should therefore investigate in depth the specifics of the contexts in which the disputed practices and procedures are formulated or implemented to determine whether the ideologies of black inferiority and white supremacy are working to reduce the educational opportunities, academic achievement, and ultimately the life chances of minority children today. [[Everyone must understand the Matrix of the child (specifically the mental model). The Matrix contains the context. Plus, teachers must understand their own mental model.]]
3) Dejure segregated schools are not the only mechanisms by which white supremacy restrains the educational accomplishments of black school children. The dominance or hegemony of the notion of white supremacy is often achieved by mechanisms that produce a semblance of consent from nonwhites. Subtle practices will produce essentially the same mastery as overt malevolence and direct exertions of control when submission is the product of the cultural modes and mores of the oppressed who rationalize their behavior as a form of resistance to the very ideologies that belittle them. 30 Consent arises in a context. When black youngsters engage in conduct that ultimately seems to be working to their disadvantage, the impact of notions of black inferiority and white supremacy likely share part of the blame. [[Subtle practices are inputs in the Vectors of all parties in hegemony and supremacy. When youngsters produce outputs (often from Red FARTs), look to the inputs in their Vectors (especially, the subtle inputs of race).]]
Let us apply these principles to a subject that is receiving a great deal of attention in the wake of the fiftieth anniversary of Brown: so-called "high-stakes testing" and "the achievement gap." Testing is "high-stakes" when a child's ability to advance a grade or receive a high school diploma depends on her or his performance on a standardized test. "The achievement gap" refers to disparities in the grades and test scores of black and white students. Educators and legislators would have us believe that high-stakes testing is a painful but necessary response to historic assumptions of black intellectual inferiority that may have produced disparities in teaching and learning in the past. In GI Forum, for example, the court concluded that the Texas program which required passage of an examination as a prerequisite for graduation from high school was not designed to, nor did it impermissibly, disadvantage minority students. 31 Rather, one of its goals was "to identify and eradicate educational disparities. The receipt of an education that does not meet some minimal standards is an adverse impact just as surely as failure to receive a diploma." 32 The goal of the test was "to hold schools, students, and teachers accountable for education and to ensure that all Texas students receive the same, adequate learning opportunities. " 33 Making the test a prerequisite to receipt of a high school diploma guaranteed that the students would be motivated to learn.34 The court acknowledged that educational inequality might affect the ability of minority students to pass the test; indeed, a host of factors might have an impact on their performance, including "[s]ocio-economics, family support, unequal funding, quality of teaching and educational materials, individual effort, and the residual effects of prior discriminatory practices." 35 The court nonetheless concluded that minority students had a fair opportunity to learn the material on which they would be tested. That and the chance to receive remedial assistance upon failing the test made up for the impact of any inequalities produced by the educational system. [[High stakes testing and achievement gap have the same inputs and desired outputs. Eradicating disparities requires a full understanding of the child’s Matrix and how it processes information to be spit back on exams. The test won’t tell you this; only the absence of Vectors and/or inputs. The Matrix will point up the host of factors. The Matrix can’t be repaired by way of assistance in weak subject matter Vectors.]]
It is hard to believe such assertions coming as they do from two institutions (the public schools and the courts) that have no history of devotion to the mission of affirming the intellectual, moral, or cultural equality of black children. High-stakes testing assumes that a standardized test is a valid measure of academic learning, a proposition that is questioned in many quarters. Black inferiority and white supremacy have not yet been relegated to the dustbin of history. Thus, the argument that such tests are a device for improving the educational achievement of minority children must compete with the widespread assumption that minority children will never perform as well on such tests as white children. (Of course, if the proposition were proven true, that would tend to confirm the existence of black inferiority and white supremacy.) Although the court gave lip service to the fact that blacks' disparate performance on standardized tests is attributable to a wide range of failures by numerous actors and institutions, if the children fail to reach the tests' targeted goals and are retained in grade or denied a diploma, it is they who will bear the greatest stigma and suffer the most immediate consequences. Responsibility for increasing what black children get out of their educations appears to fall squarely on them and their families. However, the key to "denaturaliz[ing] racial achievement patterns," i.e., to overcoming the black inferiority/white supremacy juggernaut, is to "claim them as [phenomena] that we, together, have both produced- and allowed.... [I]n failing to frame achievement patterns as communal productions, we fail to understand the dismantling of such patterns as a mutual responsibility. ' " 36 [[The system does not want to deal with the child’s Matrix. The standardized test test the white child’s Matrix that is without the many Vectors related to inferiority. Failure on test simply add inputs to these Vectors and Red FARTs in the ME Vector. This directs attention to the child’s family Vectors and the ME Vector. Again, the key is to detail a child’s Matrix in conjunction with the Matrices of the institutions related to the child.]]
The recent emphasis on higher educational standards for black children has been accompanied by much effort to ferret out the sources of the gap that exists between the GPAs and standardized test scores of black and white children. The children and their families have been subjected to a great deal of scrutiny by critical commentators. Black students do not work hard enough. They are disengaged from school. They spend too much time watching television and are much too absorbed with their peer groups and popular culture. Their parents have also been blamed. Their parents are said to be uninterested in their children's school performance; rather they believe that it is the teachers' responsibility to assure that their children are properly educated. The parents do not demand that their children perform in school. They allow them to watch too much television and get away with doing no homework. They do not provide their children with the benefits of fixed mealtimes, nor do they take their children on educational outings. 37 [[The ever present critique of black education:
· They spend too much time watching television
· Are much too absorbed with their peer groups and popular culture
· Their parents are said to be uninterested in their children's school performance; rather they believe that it is the teachers' responsibility to assure that their children are properly educated.
· The parents do not demand that their children perform in school.
· They allow them to watch too much television and get away with doing no homework.
· They do not provide their children with the benefits of fixed mealtimes, nor do they take their children on educational outings.
Note the multiple Vectors in each of the above items. Note the Matrices for parents, peers, popular culture, and the media. Note the operation of the mental models and the resulting of Red (Blue) FARTs relative to all of the inputs implicit in each item. Therein lies the analysis, not just the recognition of the inputs.]]
The amount of television viewing black youngsters do is the subject of a particularly pointed attack by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, authors of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning.38 Television viewing, which has been referred to as black students' "social homework," is "a crucial unifying element in the culture of African-American students, a key source of group cohesion., 39 White students, by comparison, watch less television and are not struggling as much as black students to understand their schoolwork. The Thernstroms conclude that "[t]he special role of television in the life of black teen culture and the low expectations of their parents may also explain why they [the teens] are willing to settle for low grades."4 ' Thus, group cohesion and peer pressure are said to stand in the way of individual black academic achievement. [[Ditto, the Thernstroms’ work simply looks at the inputs of peer pressure and TV and not the production chains and the mental models associated with these inputs. KEY: the researchers may have an awareness of the entire environment BUT it’s the child and the parents that need to have this awareness by way of PC.]]
There are any number of responses that blacks might offer to such criticisms. Black parents are more likely than whites to work long hours and to have several jobs-the working-class ones to keep their heads above water, the middle-class ones to hold on to their middle-class status. As a result, black parents will have less time to interact with their children than white parents. Furthermore, black parents who did not themselves flourish in school may have doubts about either their ability to specify the measures that will enhance their children's academic achievement or their power to influence what occurs in the schools.42 Historically, teachers, as members of the black community's elite, have taken on the responsibility of overseeing the education of the children of parents who have little familiarity with the workings of the schools. Educational outings for black children are impacted by the discrimination blacks generally experience in leisure venues.43 For example, even middle-class blacks find museums inhospitable leisure venues because of their cultural bias and cost.44 [[These and many more inputs are raised as the cause of a child’s academic deficiencies. Indeed, the big factor that is independent of all of these factors is CC and how PC can remove CC. We’ve had a long list of the symptoms, never a discussion about the CC causes. The language has never existed to have this discussion.]]
· Finally, the criticisms discount the impact of black inferiority and white supremacy. At the behest of a group of black parents, West-African born, UC-Berkeley sociologist John Ogbu conducted a qualitative study of low black student achievement and disengagement in the schools of Shaker Heights, Ohio.45 The Shaker Heights system, which is thought to be among America's best, is integrated. The black/white achievement gap was reflected in nearly every statistical indicator.4 6 For example, there was roughly a 240-point differential between the mean combined SAT scores of blacks and whites.47 For the classes graduating between 1992 and 1996, the average GPA of blacks was 2.20, while the average GPA of whites was 3.34.48 [[The authors focus on the impact of black inferiority as a key variable in the achievement gap equation. Missing in this and all other research is a holistic integrative view of the problem. PC gives us that view.]]
Professor Ogbu found that "[i]nternalization of the belief that Blacks are not as intelligent as Whites gave rise to self-doubt and resignation in regard to [Blacks'] intellectual performance." 49 The black students' teachers held similar beliefs which affected the teachers' treatment of the students. Expectations impacted performance. [[What is self-doubt? PC says it’s all about the mental model. First, it’s a matter of having subject matter Vectors and having inputs in those Vectors. Next, it’s a matter of how GOP and MOP assess the inputs and produce FARTs (Red FARTs are harmful and can be the source of the self-doubt). Next, GOP and MOP’s ability to retrieve any inputs in the subject matter Vectors is a function of the dominance of other Vectors in the Matrix (like the inputs of others – teachers, parents, and other students -- about one’s intelligence). Next, it’s about the ME Vector (one’s outputs become inputs that are assessed by GOP and MOP).]]
***Black students admitted that they did not work as hard as their white counterparts and that if they had worked harder they could and should have gotten better grades. 50 Their "low effort syndrome" reflected their failure to develop "effort optimism" or "the norm of maximum individual effort." 51 Not only did the self-doubt make the students avoid the more challenging honors or advanced placement classes, but it also made them direct their energies into nonacademic pursuits. 52 The students' views reflected the impact of their parents' socialization which was affected by their parents' own negative school experiences. The students were skeptical "about the real value of schooling" since schooling had not translated into success for generations of blacks who came before them.53 The students interviewed and observed by Ogbu did not believe that they had the same opportunities as their white peers.54 As a result, they focused on "alternative strategies that do not require school credentials." 55 They did not see a link between school and their career aspirations; they "did not view their present schooling as a preparation for their future participation in the adult opportunity structure. Moreover, they chose role models "not because of their educational success, their professional success based on education and hard work, or because they possessed attributes conducive to school or professional success. 57 Rather, their role models tended to exhibit "leadership in the 'collective struggle' against White oppression."5 8 In such an environment, peer groups took on increased importance. Black students were admonished not "to act white," which is to say not to have too many white friends or to engage in too many white-identified extracurricular activities or to speak Standard English. The admonition was troubling because "acting white" correlated with some behavior that is conducive to high academic performance. [[Interesting term, “low effort syndrome” (not working as hard). As stated above the mental model is the heart of the analysis. Low effort is what GOP and MOP are doing to create subject matter Vectors, fill the Vectors with inputs, assess the inputs as contributions to survival and flourishing, producing Blue FARTs for the inputs, and not being distracted by dominant Vectors when asked to retrieve the inputs. “Effort optimism” is having MOP “Ride Up” subject matter Vectors to predict being able to “Ride Down” the Vectors to retrieve the inputs on demand. This includes seeing that other dominant Vectors (e.g., the non-academic pursuit Vectors) will not interfere with the retrieval. The Vectors of their parents also affect GOP and MOP’s processing of inputs. Indeed, the entire Matrices of the parents are essentially in the Mommy Vector and Daddy Vector of the child’s Matrix. Students also are doing a “Ride Up” the subject matter and not seeing any connections to Blue FARTs for their futures (this is cross filed to future life Vectors – indicating the need to give students future occupation Vectors that MOP can do a “Ride Up” in the cross filing with the “Ride Up” subject matter Vectors. This has to include showing students production chains required to take advantage of opportunities and/or create opportunities. Currently, black student’s MOP is doing a “Ride Up” future Vectors and predicting inputs that are Red FARTs. They therefore focused on alternative future Vectors and the production chains to attain them. Their role models (people Vectors) don’t have inputs about educational success, professional success based on education and hard work, or needed attributes for success. PC also argues that there must be inputs about avoiding CC. The opposite is true. Their people Vectors are filled with inputs about anti-whiteness (speaking Standard English) and anti-intellectualism.]]
Clearly notions of black inferiority and white supremacy impacted both directly and indirectly the academic performance of the children Ogbu studied. Though relatively few of the black students in Shaker Heights thrived to the same extent as whites and most seemed resigned to a subordinate status, it would be incorrect to say that the black students there and elsewhere are engaged in simple capitulation to the power of white dominance. Researchers (other than Ogbu) have analyzed their disengagement from school and their immersion in black youth popular culture as a form of resistance. [[Ironically, the rejection of school Vectors can be a form of resistance to white supremacy and systemic racism. The only problem here is that education is an ancient Kemetian wisdom tradition. This is the reason for PC: A New Mindset for Education. The students must see any education inputs in any subject matter Vector as their natural PC brain-mind endowment, no matter who is teaching them. Being bi-lingual and bi-intellectual is a wisdom phenomenon.]]
The theory is that the students resort to black popular culture, whether it be television, rap music, or Black Vernacular English, in defiance of an educational system which is steeped in the ideologies of black inferiority and white supremacy. Black students create an alternative, resistant culture, which occupies a space in the school alongside the white, elitist culture in which the teachers and administrators are grounded, in order to endure and even enjoy their school experience. For example, educational ethnographer Signithia Fordham reports that the high-school students who were her subjects treated Standard English like a separate, "socially stigmatized dialect" reserved for a particular time and place, i.e., while they were in school and while they were engaged in communication with teachers and administrators.5 9 The black students refused to "own" a language "they collectively identify as having been a historical instrument of Black enslavement, oppression, and dehumanization."6 ° [[Again, the notion of a resistant culture (a Matrix filled with anti-white Vectors and anti-intellectual Vectors is wrongheaded and a way that “pimps” prostitute young minds. Much better to cultivate a PC Vector that resist CC (i.e., racism is a symptom of CC and therefore, anti-white Vectors only feed CC). PC allows Black students to jump beyond the instruments of enslavement, oppression, and dehumanization to become the masters of their own current and future Matrices and control emotionally and intellectually their time (Planes) produced in the oppressor’s classrooms. Indeed, PC can remove CC from the Matrices of the oppressor’s troupes (especially, teachers and white students.]]
Furthermore, black students may be seen as rejecting the competitive individualism that the traditional academic enterprise rewards on the ground that it is inconsistent with the solidarity blacks need to survive in a racist society. This is the perspective offered by Harvard researcher Ronald Ferguson, who has attempted to account for the disparities between the GPAs of white and black students in Shaker Heights by using student cultural survey data.61 Says Ferguson, "[T]he idea that black students in the United States are part of an oppositional culture ... [resistant] to achievement" is apparently "wrong. 62 Rather, the students seem motivated by
the drive to maintain a shared sense of African American identity that is distinct from.., the cultural system of white superiority within which negative racial stigma is kept alive and out of which insinuations of black inferiority and marginality emanate. 63
[[Indeed, black student’s low achievement can be a rejection of the CC institutions and systems of the American Matrix. The Black cultural Vectors have inputs that are assessed as a contribution to survival and flourishing and have Blue FARTs produced. This is to the converse of the White cultural Vectors that have inputs assessed as threats to survival and flourishing, Red FARTs are produced. We argue that this shared sense of African identity is attained much more powerfully and effectively through PC. The real African identity is the recognition that PC comes out of ancient wisdom teaching. Indeed, black students will come to see that they are able to save the CC white students.]]
Thus, "black racial solidarity serves as a mechanism of mutual validation and a shield against 'rumors of inferiority.'64 [[Ditto. The “black racial solidarity” serves to supply young minds to the racializing political and social pimps.]]
Ogbu would disagree with Fordham and Ferguson to some extent. He argues that the black students' responses to school are misguided. He suggests that they ought to act more like voluntary immigrants who pragmatically separate the pure skills training and essential knowledge public schools offer from the indoctrination in mainstream American ideology which is a part of the lessons. 65 Moreover, black students should be less concerned with how "caring" teachers are and more concerned with how much expertise they possess. 66 . [[We agree with Ogbu. See above PC critiques.]]
It is not particularly fruitful to compare black American children with immigrant children who come from families with very different economic, social, and political histories. The material and social conditions endured by black America, particularly slavery and its successor, Jim Crow, have an enormous impact on the behavior of black youngsters today. The context also suggests that the sort of instrumentalism that Ogbu proposes will be difficult for black youngsters to pursue. Black advancement is tied to the conflict over the amount of cultural capital schooling controlled by whites imparts to children in a multiracial, multicultural world. As education professor Theresa Perry argues,
[S]chooling for work is probably not transcendent enough, powerful enough, sufficient to sustain, in African Americans as a historically oppressed group, the desire to achieve in school in our present society, where the ideology of Black intellectual inferiority still reigns. 67
[[Agreed, because of the American Matrix, the comparison should be with ancient Kemetian wisdom teachers. PC allows for Ogbu’s instrumentalism. The cultural capital schooling controlled by whites become the object of our interpretations and translations. The problem is the CC that our students are exposed to in the classroom (the racism is the symptom that out students have to come to understand). We don’t need separate schools or Black cultural pride; we need to recognize that we are Producers, period.]]
Nonetheless, it is ironic that the black students' resistant refusal to assimilate the dominant culture and its norm of competitive individualism reproduces the status quo. "Being black" and not "acting white" may not be antithetical to doing intellectual work and earning academic rewards in school, but they might as well be. The students should not be entirely blamed for that, however. White supremacy or white intellectual, cultural, and moral superiority is still the dominant ideological underpinning of education in America, although that point of view is no longer coercively imposed on black students as it was before Brown. Instead, today, the schools are simply not structured to produce successful, competent, and confident black students, and black students in turn have responded with an informal, culturally based form of resistance or adaptation that makes their retreat from engagement with the intellectual enterprise of the public schools seem a matter of choice. The youngsters focus on their identities as blacks and their social interaction with each other because culture appears to be the one area pertinent to the fulfillment of their material goals that remains within their control. 68 [[Again, the norms of competitive individualism is CC!! CC is the ideological underpinning of education in America, not white intellectual, cultural, and moral superiority. Though deadly symptoms, our students have to learn to properly contextualize white supremacy as an illness of CC. Therefore, using PC in the CC classroom elevates them to wisdom teaching and living. Right now all attempts have simply resulted in a Matrix filled with Vectors with Red FARTs. The disengagement is a false approach to their Matrix that is actually motivated by CC. We want the same CC stuff that they have. They tell us that the CC stuff is only attained through their educational system. They, however, have historically prevented us from getting the education that will get the same CC stuff. So, we ironically continue to attend their educational systems but disengage. This is clearly to the benefit of the CC racist. What the CC racist don’t want is to have students reject CC and develop a black culture of being spies and infiltrators in their institutions. This is the real struggle. But they can’t fight this battle because too many of their troupes will be positively influenced by PC.]]
All is not hopeless. There are high achieving students who have mastered the art of biculturalism and bilingualism; they conform "to school rules and practices in order to both achieve academic success and to negate state-supported claims of Black intellectual inferiority. '' 69 These students dare to compete with whites; yet they also strive to maintain solidarity with blacks. [[Yes, and this is what the above PC critiques are talking about. Our researchers and intellectuals can only point to these successes. They can’t offer a formula to achieve it. PC does.]]
Proposals abound. Education scholar Fordham argues that black student achievement would be fostered if the warfare between the vernacular and the standard in language and between the popular and the elite in culture were minimized and the stigmatization of the black self in the school environment were reduced. 70 Ferguson suggests that black students would better achieve if they were not so isolated in honors and advanced placement courses. Expanded enrollments through better preparation of all students for challenging work would eliminate the choice black students feel between achievement and solidarity.7' Perry's solutions seem especially sensible, focused as they are on overcoming the deficits attributable to notions of black inferiority and white supremacy. She argues that "there is an absence of spaces or programs in predominantly white or multiracial institutions that are organized to forge the identities of African-American students as achievers, literate, and a people with a rich intellectual tradition." 72 As a corrective, [[But how? All of what is being said here is simply playing into the CC system. You could get better achievement but at what costs? The CC culture that these successful students enter has great cost to their souls. You can only reduce the stigmatization through PC. You can only benefit from the expanded enrollments, reduced choice for solidarity over achievement, and increase the identity of being scholars through PC. It’s PC first then do all of these things.]]
[s]chools, community-based organizations, churches, and groups of families need to create multiple social contexts for African-American youth where being African American is coincident with doing intellectual work and being an achiever." 73 [[Again, we’ve tried all of this. The missing factor is PC.]]
In sum, then, the anniversary of the Brown decision should prompt us to consider what black students might achieve academically if the schools were truly dedicated to the task of affirming black students' humanity and intelligence, and promoting their achievement. Furthermore, the courts should accept their responsibility under the rationale of Brown to scrutinize the contexts surrounding educational inequities for stigmatizing effects and endorsements of the naturalness of black inferiority and white supremacy. [[Black students might achieve academically if the schools were truly dedicated to the task of affirming black students' humanity and intelligence, and promoting their achievement SOUNDS GREAT. But we have to affirm their humanity and intelligence first. Unfortunately, we’ve been doing this under CC for a 100 years. The only way to do it is through PC.]]
P95.
A PERSONAL POSTSCRIPT
The story of Brown is in some ways the story of my life. I was born in 1948. I'll let you do the math and figure out how old I am. I grew up in northwest Washington, D.C. When I was four years old, my parents separated and my mother, sister, brother, and I moved "uptown" to a room in the house that my aunt purchased after her husband died. My mother did not know much about the area; so when it came time to register me for kindergarten, she went to Petworth Elementary School, the closest public school, a mere three blocks from my aunt's home. There we encountered a white woman who, according to my mother, informed us that we "must be in the wrong place." All I remember is that we were told that I could not go to school there. And believe me, I do remember that. Consequently, in September of 1953, I embarked on my public school career at Parkview Elementary School, which was a good fifteen blocks or a fifteen-to-twenty-minute walk from home. Of course, my mother was relegated to making this trip twice each morning, once to drop me off and again to pick me up.
Then came Brown and Bolling v. Sharpe, 74 the case that expressly addressed the D.C. school system, and I was at last able to go to Petworth, for first grade. By the time I got there, however, all but one of the white kids had disappeared; I remember that the sole survivor was named Timothy Bissell. So much for integration. I attended Petworth, McFarland Junior High School, and Theodore Roosevelt High School, which were nearly 100 percent black. I do not remember thinking much about the integration of the D.C. public schools inthose years. We had our eyes and hearts set on going to integrated colleges. Students were tracked back then, and by eighth grade I had worked my way into the honors program. Many of the honors kids were solidly middle class. The rest of us paid attention to our teachers who were socializing us in the academic values of the black bourgeoisie. I suppose we thought of ourselves as young, gifted, and black, and in a way we were. Mostly I was doggedly competitive and determined to go away to college. I became the class valedictorian.
It was twelve years after Brown was handed down that the case had its biggest impact on my life, albeit indirectly. It enabled me to leave home with scholarship money to attend the University of Rochester in upstate New York. Unfortunately, I was one of six black students in a class of more than 600; the six consisted of three men and three women. One year later, only the three women remained. Somehow we all graduated. With my segregated public-school education, I was dreadfully lonely in the cold, nearly all-white environment of the University of Rochester and woefully under-prepared to deal with collegelevel math and science. Soon there were others in the same position. I and the handful of black students who came to the U of R during my sophomore and junior years decided that we had to do something. This became imperative after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Consequently, we seized the faculty club; we hit them where they ate!
As a result of our efforts, the university increased its enrollment of black students via an affirmative action admissions initiative and established a black studies program. Black students took similar action on white campus after white campus back in the late 1960s. Not only did black students want these white institutions of higher education to tackle seriously the problem of producing an educated black middle class, we also wanted them to incorporate our history, our literary output, our many contributions to the arts and sciences into their curricula and intellectual debates. The most revolutionary protestors demanded that the course of study extend to Africa, not just African America. Ironically, all of this was demanded in the name of a seemingly radical black nationalism which set itself apart from and in opposition to the liberal progressivism of the civil rights movement with its emphasis on integration.
I was planning on returning to D.C. after I graduated to become a junior-high-school history teacher when I came to my senses and decided to go to the University of Pennsylvania Law School instead. I studied hard, just like in high school, and graduated with honors in the top ten percent of my class. I went on to clerk for a state court judge and to work for a large prestigious Philadelphia law firm. In 1977, I joined the Penn Law faculty. Now, I watch anxiously as the Law School sometimes struggles to maintain the enrollment levels of black and brown students whose qualifications (meaning GPAs and standardized test scores) are "not what they should be." I protest vociferously when the appointments committee forgets that, insofar as women and/or minorities are concerned, desegregation, not the pursuit of diversity, better defines the goal we should be pursuing at this point in the Law School's history. After traveling to S6ndgal, C6te d'Ivoire, Mali, Ghana, and Uganda, I no longer think solely about the problems of blacks in America, but have expanded the scope of my concern to include the many peoples of the African Diaspora who are enduring the effects of neocolonialism and underdevelopment. Beyond that, I have a better understanding of the role that American imperialism has played in the Middle East, in Asia, and in Central and South America. I recognize the need for black leadership with regard to making America accountable for its moral failings around the globe.
So, on the fiftieth Anniversary of Brown, as a child of Brown looking back on her life, I realize that Brown's mark on American public education is less substantial than the lawyers who litigated the cases likely imagined it would be. Despite Brown, racism and the ideology of white supremacy remain enormous obstacles in the area of public education. The rhetoric of segregation and desegregation has given way to that of diversity and affirmative action and the need for reforms is fuzzier as a result. Though some admission programs have survived an assault in the courts, • 75 minority • •76 scholarships and summer enrichment programs are next in line for attack.
P98.
"Separate but equal" was never achieved; indeed it was abandoned as a litigation strategy by the NAACP lawyers in their pursuit of the Brown decision. Yet, many a segregated public school today likely wishes that "separate but equal" had been pursued in light of the continuing debate about whether inequalities in state funding between rich, predominantly white suburban schools and poor, predominantly minority urban schools actually make a difference in educational outcomes. Accounting for racial disparities in suspensions and discipline, as well as in enrollment in special-education classes, specialized programs like honors and advanced-placement courses, and performance on standardized tests, has opened up a whole new chapter in the continuing attempt to indict minorities for their plight. The inability of the public schools to produce competent, intellectually curious, emotionally whole minority graduates has prompted proposals for such curricular reforms as Afrocentric teaching or structural reforms such as all-male academies. Finally, some of the continuing attempts to desegregate historically black colleges and universities seem more hostile than helpful in enabling them to fulfill their mission as spawning grounds for black professionals.
The effectiveness of Brown was undercut by the underlying social, political, and material inequalities that it did not and perhaps could not tackle head on. Segregated schools were not just determiners of those inequalities; they were a reflection of them. Brown did not thoroughly challenge, and perhaps could not have thoroughly challenged, the intellectual and social inferiority white society still ascribes to blacks after all these years. It did not address white society's objections to black performative and discursive styles. It did not tackle head on the stereotype of blacks as prone to disrespect for authority and lawbreaking. It did not address the importance of the family to minority children's advancement and of schools as institutions for socializing the entire family in the values and practices that are required to guarantee a good life for all of its members. It did not address the relationship between schools and labor markets hostile to integration and black economic advancement. Finally, it left in doubt the significance of black educational institutions and instead created the impression that only white educational institutions were worth preserving.
There is much work left to be done if minority children are to be relieved of the burden black inferiority and white supremacy impose on their ability to achieve in school. Sorry to say, those now in school, on the front line as it were, will have much work to do by themselves. However, the great effort required to overcome the debilitating impact of the black inferiority/white supremacy juggernaut on our young must be undertaken by us all. Our obligation to engage in that struggle is the true promise of Brown
