In 1980, I wrote: “The causes of the disproportionately higher dropout rates and distribution of lower achievement test scores among Blacks and the poor go far deeper than those effects produced by the shortcomings within the education profession and the limitations imposed by the boundaries of the knowledge base in the behavioral sciences.” In a racially and socially stratified society to expect the public schools for the most ravaged victims of racism and socioeconomic deprivation to produce performance results that are comparable to those produced for students from more favorable socioeconomic circumstances is both unsophisticated and disingenuous. Schools in America have never been able to salvage masses of people who have been severely victimized by societal forces structured to ensure their deprivation and disfranchisement. Yes, schools perform the dual role of aiding social mobility, and, at the same time, working effectively to hinder it. Race and ethnic stratification are basic features of the American society, and these forms of inequality are built into normal practices and exclude African Americans from full and equal participation in society’s institutions. Schools reflect the basic ideologies and dominant power structures of the American society. Thus, schools will not only serve but mirror the socially derived inequalities associated with social stratification in the United States. Rightfully criticize and confront the schools for their sins of omission and commissions, but do not expect the schools to cure all of the ill-effects of racism and poverty on the community and family life and developmental experiences of children of color.
Differences in cultural tradition, language, childrearing practices, and so on do not exhaust the environmental factors that may affect intellectual performance. But, it is imperative to look beyond the subcultural of any racial or ethnic group and examine how the larger culture of the American society impinges on African Americans. African American families simply do not have the same degree of flexibility exercised by White families in manipulating the essential component of life. Millions of African American children are denied the full measure of their rights to grow and learn in the American society and the equally important and in separately connected right to be treated as entire citizens of the society into which they have been born. The United States has gone only a part of the way in remedying inequities built into its very foundations; inequities that have been continuously reinforced throughout the nation’s history. Racism in America profoundly structures who we are, how we are treated, how we treat others, and our access to resources and rights. The American Anthropological Association in 1998 sought to set the record straight when it declared:
Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called racial groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances.
More than any other social conditions, poverty has the greatest impact on people’s life chances—the opportunities that they will have or be denied throughout life. Poverty is often used to give an initial view of social class inequality. African Americans have remained consistently three times more likely than White Americans to be poor. Also, about 90 percent of the long-term child poverty-five or more years—is experienced by African American children. About 50 percent of White children grow up in families that have never been poor or lived in a poor neighborhood; this is true for only 5 percent of Black children. Every infant in America is born into a family that already has a particular place in the society’s system of inequality. Race and social class are so closely intertwined in everyday social interaction in America that they have no independent existence. Nothing in America affects one’s social standing as much as birth into a particular family. Ancestry has a strong bearing on future schooling, occupation, and income. Just as surely as a family’s wealth promises a better future for their children, poverty often means growing up in rotting communities and smashed families that place many children on a path leading to warped, empty, and destructive lives.
There is nothing intrinsic or innate in “Whiteness” or “Blackness” that is responsible for the Black-White achievement gap. The Black-White achievement gap is a functional—if not intended—consequence of the cancerous nature of racism and the resiliency of socioeconomic deprivation in the United States. On average, children from low-income and poverty families will score lower on IQ tests and standardized achievement tests than do children, irrespective of race or ethnicity, from middle income families The fact that schools ought to be more instructionally effective for students placed in “harm’s way in an uncaring society,” does not mean that poverty does not matter. Public education has always been the most effective when the environments for living and learning have been mutually supportive. The social environment can unleash or stifle human potential. Genetic and other biological traits establish broad boundaries for individual achievement, but the environment in which a child is raised can cause his or her potential to be realized more or less fully. The fact that some poor children do reach or exceed the national norms does not mean that poverty does not matter. No single cause is rigidly deterministic. In human affairs where multiple causations pertain, causes are not disproved by exceptions.
The treatment of African Americans has been disgraceful throughout the nation’s history. Why? The subordination and exploitation of African Americans is functional to the operation of the American society with the color of one’s skin being a primary determinant of people’s position in the social structure. Institutional and individual racism provides White Americans with disproportionate advantages in the social, economic, educational, and political spheres. Alexander C. Cox (1948) argued that race prejudice in the United States is the socio-attitudinal matrix supporting a calculated and determined effort of a White ruling class to keep some people or peoples of color and their resources exploitable. Derrick Bell (2004) opined that racism has produced an ideology of “whiteness” which asserts that since Whites are in the majority and hold the power, they are entitled to inequitable advantages over non-Whites in the allocation of wealth, income, power, and privilege. Cruel and unfair treatment are often undergirded by myths and belief system designed to justify inequality. The harsh policies of America’s ruling class deny assistance to many who need it desperately, take support away from people who have the will to succeed but need some help, and shift blame for misfortune from society to the victims. There is no “mystical, within group, biological or cultural disorder that is responsible for African Americans being the economic losers in America. African Americans are being destroyed by economic forces; these forces have significant impact their behaviors and culture. The behaviors of the poor that are widely criticized are driven by their poverty rather than a cause of it. Blaming the poor is like “blaming the corpse for the murder, and ignores the system of power, privilege, and profit that makes them poor.”
The psyche—the human soul, or mind—is shaped in large measure by the social system. Whether a child grows up emotionally healthy, does well in school, and leads a successful adult life is grounded in the elements of his or her social environment, in elements outside of the child himself or herself. Racism and excessive poverty are stains on the American democracy. Widespread arrangements and practices within social institutions operate with the intent or effect of favoring White Americans over non-White Americans. The inequalities imposed on African Americans in one generation tend to be systematically transferred to succeeding generations. In particular, institutional racism fosters both an ignorance of and disregard for the overall talents and abilities residing within the African American population. It is disingenuous and deceitful for the policymakers in the United States to demand that the public schools do for African Americans that for which the nation has historically failed to do, provide equality of opportunity. Thus, any major reform movement in public education must encompass improvements in employment opportunities, housing conditions, health services, welfare conditions, and family life, as well as in public education. Richard Rothstein (2002) correctly warned: “The national determination to reform only education and then expect all other forms of oppression to take care of themselves will doom the nation to another half-century of lack of progress.”
James Comer (1989) noted: “Even the best educated people in our country have little knowledge about the way past social conditions have adversely affected the community and family life and developmental experiences of minority group children.” But research for decades has clearly and irrefutably cited that educational performance is linked to socioeconomic background. Politicians in both parties have leaped at “blaming the schools” with full knowledge of the fact that school reform efforts involve relatively little money and ask practically nothing of the nonpoor. Just as certain as smoking increases the odds of having cancer, it is even more certain that racism breeds poverty and poverty breeds lower academic achievement. The challenge of achieving equality of educational opportunity in the United States cannot be borne by the schools alone. Equal educational opportunity is a social goal that demands commitment from the larger society. This discourse provides capsule commentaries of non-school and school forces that operate against both equal opportunity and equal educational opportunity. Hopefully, African Americans, in particular, will rally in massive numbers around the reality: “Equal educational opportunity may be crucial to equal opportunity itself, but the former, at least in part, is a function of the latter. Equal educational opportunity depends upon equal opportunity at large. Equal opportunity and equal education opportunity do not produce themselves; they are the products of a society or community that commits its efforts and resources to achieve such ends.”
– Hugh J. Scott Ed. D.
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