Shame of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol
Shame of a Nation is a compelling book, and could easily make someone want to reignite the snuffed-out flames of Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, but there is much that Kozol doesn't address, and this has left me with many questions. Speaking as one who has spent eight and a half years toililng in all black schools, I will do as Thomas Merton said and "say what things are and…give them their right names."
1. Many of "my kids" are primarily middle-class blacks in that they live in private homes and have parents who have steady jobs. They come to school with $150 Nike sneakers, $400 video iPods, the latest Baby Phat fashions, yet they (mostly the boys) indulge in ghetto behavior -- listen to gangsta rap, dress like homeys (a style appropriated from the prisons because they think it's cool), and use the F-word in every sentence. Worse still, they come to school unprepared to learn -- no paper and pens, no homework, and then cut classes. The parents don't visit during Open School, but they complain the schools aren't doing their job of educating their children. How do we fix this?
2. Kozol cites a Gallup poll done for Newsday and I question its validity. The poll showed that in NYC, only one in 10 blacks wanted to live in all black areas, but precisely how was the question asked? Was it, "Did you want to move to an all black area?" or was it, "Why did you choose to live where you live?" The first question requires only a "yes" or "no" answer. The second is open-ended, requiring a pollster to do a lot of writing, and tabulators to code the answers -- time-consuming and more expensive. I don't trust this statistic. I believe we all create our own ghettos. When I grew up in Brooklyn there were Jewish ghettos, Italian ghettos, Irish ghettos -- you get the idea. People need to be with their "own kind" because it's comfortable. Does the comfort factor outweigh the benefits of living in an integrated community? If so, how do we make integration comfortable?
3. Shelby Foote, a man of mixed race and author of The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America, blames blacks themselves for their plight. During the civil rights movement in the '60s, blacks took charge of their fate; afterward, they then put their fate into the hands of society. "We just kept saying, 'Well, you guys haven't given us a good enough school yet. You haven't given us good enough this, or good enough that.' We had this wonderful excuse." Bill Cosby echoes this same opinion. How does the black community now take back their power?
1. Many of "my kids" are primarily middle-class blacks in that they live in private homes and have parents who have steady jobs. They come to school with $150 Nike sneakers, $400 video iPods, the latest Baby Phat fashions, yet they (mostly the boys) indulge in ghetto behavior -- listen to gangsta rap, dress like homeys (a style appropriated from the prisons because they think it's cool), and use the F-word in every sentence. Worse still, they come to school unprepared to learn -- no paper and pens, no homework, and then cut classes. The parents don't visit during Open School, but they complain the schools aren't doing their job of educating their children. How do we fix this?
2. Kozol cites a Gallup poll done for Newsday and I question its validity. The poll showed that in NYC, only one in 10 blacks wanted to live in all black areas, but precisely how was the question asked? Was it, "Did you want to move to an all black area?" or was it, "Why did you choose to live where you live?" The first question requires only a "yes" or "no" answer. The second is open-ended, requiring a pollster to do a lot of writing, and tabulators to code the answers -- time-consuming and more expensive. I don't trust this statistic. I believe we all create our own ghettos. When I grew up in Brooklyn there were Jewish ghettos, Italian ghettos, Irish ghettos -- you get the idea. People need to be with their "own kind" because it's comfortable. Does the comfort factor outweigh the benefits of living in an integrated community? If so, how do we make integration comfortable?
3. Shelby Foote, a man of mixed race and author of The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America, blames blacks themselves for their plight. During the civil rights movement in the '60s, blacks took charge of their fate; afterward, they then put their fate into the hands of society. "We just kept saying, 'Well, you guys haven't given us a good enough school yet. You haven't given us good enough this, or good enough that.' We had this wonderful excuse." Bill Cosby echoes this same opinion. How does the black community now take back their power?
posted by book1 | 3:47 PM
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