BLACK BOYS IN CRISIS:
“BLACK PEOPLE CAN’T BE DOCTORS”
BY MATTHEW LYNCH, JUNE 6, 2017
“BLACK PEOPLE CAN’T BE DOCTORS”
BY MATTHEW LYNCH, JUNE 6, 2017
I denne artikelserie fokuseres der på sorte drenge i USA, men de fleste af problemstillingerne er også relevante for drenge i minoriteter i andre lande:
Forfatteren til disse 10
artikler introducerer serien sådan:
"In this series,
appropriately titled “Black Boys in
Crisis,” I highlight the problems facing black boys in education today, as
well as provide clear steps that will lead us out of the crisis.
When I was in elementary school
(the mid-1980’s) one of my teachers periodically brought professionals from the
area to our class to talk about their careers. On one occasion, she brought in
a black male doctor from a local hospital. He spoke for about fifteen minutes
and then opened up the floor for questions. One of my friends (also a black
male) raised his hand. “Are you really a doctor?” he asked. The man replied
that he was, and my friend retorted, “Black people can’t be doctors!” To be
honest, my friend echoed what the entire class must have been thinking. I know
that thought had surfaced in my own mind.
Sure, we had seen black doctors
on television and movies, but we thought they were make-believe, like the
cartoons we watched on Saturday mornings. We only believed what we could
experience or see for ourselves. And since we had been to plenty of family
clinics and hospitals and had never seen a black doctor there, we automatically
believed that he was not being truthful. That was how brainwashed we were.
Recognizing the Crisis
There is a crisis in America today.
It’s a crisis in education; a crisis that predominantly affects minorities. And
perhaps the most affected subgroup is young African-American males. This is my
background: I was a black boy growing up in one of the poorest counties in
America, in a school district so dismal it was eventually taken over by federal
authorities. Though I succeeded in pulling free of the mire, many of my
classmates did not. Shortchanged by their education and left with few
prospects, they fell into a cycle of criminal activity, drug use, and jail
time. From my time as a student and, later, as a teacher in the Mississippi
public school system, I know firsthand the struggles, temptations, and apathy
black boys face. But I also know what it takes to turn a life around; I know
what it means to watch a flower spring from trampled ground.
One out of three black men in
America will be incarcerated in his lifetime, and more than a third of the
prison population is black. But this unequal rate of discipline does not begin
at adulthood: it has its roots in the schools. Federal data indicate that black
students account for 15 percent of the total K-12 population but make up over
one-third of those students who are suspended once from school, nearly half of
students who are suspended more than once, and over one-third of students
expelled.
Over half of black young men who
attend urban high schools do not earn a diploma. And of those dropouts, nearly
60 percent will go to prison at some point. It should be apparent that this
crisis does not just affect the African-American community: the enormous costs
associated with retaining students, supporting dropouts who cannot find a job,
and incarcerating large numbers of young men are borne by society as a whole.
This series aims to serve as
both mirror and roadmap. I have pulled out the seven issues that I feel are
most critical in the lives of young African-American males: income inequality,
incarceration, racial stereotypes, anti-intellectualism, etc. The series will
begin by addressing those issues with statistics and stories culled both from
my personal experience and from the experiences of others. They will move on to
a more general discussion of the topic and examine efforts to overcome the
difficulties. I intend to hone in on what works; on practical steps to move us
from the current crisis to a future of parity and promise.
Links til artikeloversigt og
alle 10 artikler:
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Dette blogindlæg supplerer afsnittet ”Anden uddybning: kampen for at få alle med”
i mit kapitel Hedegaard, E. (2017): "Uddannelsespolitik og globalisering - uddannelsesreformer i en usikker tidsalder"
i bogen P. Ø Andersen & Tomas Ellegaard : "Klassisk og moderne pædagogisk teori". København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
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