The Mis-education of Black Youth in America
The public education system is actually the brain child of corporate America, who understood that their success was dependent upon a permanent working class with specific skill sets to perform the multitudinous jobs necessary for these companies to produce their products and services.
Pressure, through lobbying and packs, pushed the Federal government to create a public education system that would produce students who were literate and conditioned to function on the corporate plantation. Now this system is, to a certain extent colorblind, conditioning all races to function on the plantation; however, it is important to understand that it is Eurocentric in its origin, and white privilege exists in every facet of our existence in America — meaning that white students will still be treated with preferential reverence over non-whites, especially blacks and the poor.
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This system was originally created during segregation, so white students were not forced to get their conditioning along side blacks, but Brown vs. The Board of Education changed that. This meant that color could not longer be used as the criteria for separation, subsequently introducing “special education” as the new arm of segregation. Since the introduction of special education into the public school system in the mid 70s, black students have been disproportionately assigned special educational titles, such as learning-disabled and mild mental retardation, as well as being misdiagnosed for certain mental disorders, such as ADHD, Opposition Defiant Disorder and more.
Basically, the system looked at certain behaviors that were common to black children, which more than likely was the result of historical and cultural influences, and they made these behaviors pathological. This is especially true when it comes to young black males.
Being that the vast majority of teachers in the special education system is made up of white, middle-aged women, the presence of young black males, who are perceived as inherently violent, is unacceptable, so special education has become a way to remove them from the classroom.
There is something more pernicious about this systematic approach, and that is the fact that this same system that labels our children is also used as the staging grounds for the school to prison pipeline that feeds the Private Prison Industrial Complex machine. Basically, the system has found a way to still profit off of free labor, with young blacks making up the majority of the population in these prisons, despite blacks only making up 13 percent of the nation’s population.
So, in essence, the public education system was never designed or meant to empower its students for true success in life, and it was definitely was not meant to empower blacks. ~ Dr. Rick Wallace, Ph.D.