Pandering Progressives:Is AG Holder Right about Racism?

The black culture is dysfunctional. It is not dysfunctional because of any distrust and avoidance by anyone except blacks---or are you completely unfamiliar

Are you so dense that you don't know that there is NO De Jure discrimination in the USA anymore. Any discrimination which exists has to be DE FACTO.

Much of the DEFACTO discrimination exists NOT because of distrust and avoidance of blacks because they are black, defacto discrimnation exists because blacks do not want to change their dysfunctional culture.

I have a solution. It is not easy to do and will take time but it is a solution.

Blacks should imitate another minority--Asians. If they began to do that, many problems would begin to disappear.

I agree but we will never be able to get black people to imitate Asians with regard to attitudes about education until blacks learn that they are not victims, that they can( with hard work and persistence) achieve well and that( and this is most important) they have to drop the attitude so prevalent in black schools---Why do you want to study? Do you want to be white?

I do believe that BLACK PEOPLE who are not familiar with the everyday challenges of another person's life might misunderstand that person's response to those challenges.

I think that WE CANNOT get a deeper understanding because the dysfunctional black culture does not allow MOST ordinary blacks to get a deeper understanding BECAUSE most blacks look on whites as the enemy.

If you don't know that, get a job in an inner city for a while. You will soon find out that you are hated by blacks who see you as the enemy.

Dialogue? You're kidding. How can you dialogue with people who believe that the USA was responsible for 9/11?

How can you dialogue with people who believe that Jewish doctors created AIDS t o decimate the black population?

Obama's pastor said those things. An astonishly high percentage of blacks believe them.

Under such conditions, there can be no dialogue.

... By the time I entered high school we weren't required to take American History - in fact, in my school system it wasn't even called history- it was called Social Studies. And it was more of an amalgamation of current events, civics, and sociology than anything else. Very interesting, actually- and I enjoyed it- but weak and lacking in terms of the real factual history of the US. It wasn't until I was in college, that I was required to take a course in American history as a core course as part of my liberal arts degree.

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We are entering our fourth decade of affirmative action with respect to Black Americans. I believe that is enough and do indeed resent its continuation. More importantly, I believe that the real victims here are the Blacks themselves, who are being systematically deprived of responsibility for themselves and ownership of the successes they increasingly do achieve.

I do agree with this.

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With respect to our public schools, there appears to be a growing emphasis on indoctrination in "approved" social values and themes, all as an unhappy substitute for real education in history, literature and science. In such a system I suppose the list of fashionable themes needs to be updated periodically, but that is at best an unfortunate substitution.

I also agree with this.
But a problem that I always come back to ( which brings me back to Holder's speech and what I find to be the validity in it) is the fact that I know, because I have seen, that there are very distinct differences in the level of school or academic readiness in many communities. Unfortunately, it often breaks down by race. Not surprising really, when you once again go back to the demographic facts, which cannot be denied, about different racial subsets.
And there IS an historically real and present causative factor in some of the negative attitudes which inform the behavior that becomes, in essence ,self-defeating.

Okay - these are facts. And yes, I agree that these attitudes and behaviors are certainly not productive and indeed self-defeating. But my frustration comes when those on the other side of the issue (which I will say is a barrier if only figuratively, and nothing more than a lack of understanding) say- 'We've done enough- get over it-we're not talking about it anymore, and we're done helping.'

Because what has not been changed - I don't think- is the level of acceptance of and/or understanding of how being looked at as 'less than' affects a person- and that person's children-and that person's grandchildren. And how a lack of educational and economic opportunity can affect a family generationally.
It also affects a person's willingness to participate in the society and that society's institutions, which has historically looked at and treated them as 'less than'.

Again, I do realize the wise thing to do would be to say, 'So what - I'm gonna do what I need to do for myself and show them who's less than.'
And I think more and more people are doing that - but I also think there indeed does need to be more dialogue and social desegregation so that maybe those who still feel that others are looking at them as inherently 'less than' will see that maybe that's not really the case.

And I'm going out on a real limb here and saying that I think higher education, as long as it remains as prohibitively expensive as it has become, is elitist.
And given the facts about our country's racial demographics and history of academic and economic inequalities-I personally believe that there should be a tuition cap, making it more attainable and available to people of all economic, social, cultural and racial backgrounds.
And until something like this is implemented- on a national and federal basis- not state by state- there will always be a great divide among those in our society who are able to access education and subsequent economic security and those who aren't.

. The text has been dumbed down-really dumbed down--and there are more pictures. Nice pictures of black children, Asian children, etc. etc.etc.
The books have been completely taken over by POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.

Unfortunately young blacks are the principal victims of all this: they (and nearly everyone else) get a lousy education in public schools which - as you described - emphasize "social studies" over history;

they get untimely reinforcement of the notion that they need (and deserve) favoritism in many forms to get ahead; that society and not themselves is responsible for their behavior problems.

Worse, all of these distortions of reality are reinforced by self-appointed (and self-promoting) black "leaders" who loudly campaign for the maintenance of the illusion of collective responsibility.

In all of these areas the indoctrination and feedback they get is contrary to common sense and exactly the opposite of that which was behind the successful assimilation and economic/social ascent of previous immigrant groups . I find it quite amazing that there is so little public discussion of this point - or that the esteemed Mr. Holder could call for more courage in our public discorse and yet fail to mention it.

You describe private schools as "elitist". While some may well be so, the central fact here is that it is public education in this country that has failed. The change in relative performance between private and public schools is almost all attributable to that failure in public education and the teacher's unions, educational associations and government bureaucracies that have led it. Describing the result as elitism in private schools (blaming it on someone else) is yet another example of the nonsensical, collectivist thinking that has so badly served all Americans in public education, and blacks in particular.

With respect to the labelling of children as "behaviorally impared" as opposed to "learning disabled", I suppose you are right as far as that goes. (The labels intrigue me though -- what about a kid who is merely without self-discipline and refuses to make the effort? Is he "learning disabled" - the title suggests it isn't his fault.) However, whatever the label, advocates of affirmative action still call for favoritism in admissions to the next level of schooling.

Minorities in Special Ed
The disproportionate placement of some minority groups in special education continues to be a central problem in the field. As noted in a report by the National Research Council (2002), the categories with the highest incidence of disproportionate minority-group placement are also those categories whose criteria are based on clinical judgment: Educable Mental Retardation, Emotional/Behavioral Disorders, and Learning Disability. The categories whose criteria are based on biologically verifiable conditions"such as deafness or visual impairment"do not show disproportionality by ethnicity.
Across the United States, African American students are represented in the category of Educable Mental Retardation at twice the rate of their white peers; in the category of Emotional/Behavioral Disorders, they are represented at one and one-half times the rate of their white peers. In some states, Native American and Hispanic students are overrepresented in the Learning Disability category (National Research Council, 2002).
The roots of this problem lie deep in U.S. history. Looking at how the mandate for school integration intertwined with special education, Ferri and Connor (2006) analyzed public documents and newspaper articles dating from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 to the inception of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975. The authors show how African American students entering public schools through forced integration were subject to low expectations and intense efforts to keep them separate from the white mainstream. As the provision of services for students with disabilities became a legal mandate, clear patterns of overrepresentation of Mexican American and African American students in special education programs emerged. Plagued by ambiguous definitions and subjectivity in clinical judgments, these categories often have more to do with administrative, curricular, and instructional decisions than with students' inherent abilities.
Dilemmas of LD and EMR
The label of Learning Disability (LD) used to be assigned mainly to white and middle-class students. African American students"and in some states, Hispanic and Native American students"were more likely to be disproportionately assigned to the more severe category of Educable Mental Retardation (EMR). More than two decades ago, various scholars offered thoughtful analyses of these patterns. Sleeter (1986) argued that the Learning Disability category came into being to create a space for students from predominantly white and middle-class homes who were not living up to family and community expectations. She noted that the other side of this coin was that students with learning difficulties who were from low-income homes were more likely to end up in the Educable Mental Retardation category.
In a careful examination of how the construction of the Learning Disability category affected African American students, Collins and Camblin (1983) argued that the definition of learning disability and the means of identifying it guaranteed this pattern. First, the requirement for a discrepancy between IQ score and academic achievement was designed to indicate that the student was unexpectedly achieving below his or her measured potential. This requirement was intended to ensure that the learning difficulty was the result of a specific, not generalized, learning disability. In other words, the student was capable of higher achievement, as evidenced by his or her IQ score, but some specific disability seemed to be holding him or her back.
But how do we measure cognitive potential? Through IQ tests. It is widely acknowledged that IQ tests are really “tests of general achievement, reflecting broad, culturally rooted ways of thinking and problem solving” (Donovan & Cross, 2002, p. 284). It is not surprising, therefore, that if we measure intelligence this way, then groups with inadequate exposure to the skills and knowledge required to do well on these tests will score lower than their mainstream counterparts. Thus, as Collins and Camblin pointed out, African American students' lower scores on IQ tests make it more unlikely that their scores will reflect the “discrepancy” required for admittance into the Learning Disability category.
Collins and Camblin's second argument focused on the “exclusionary clause” of the Learning Disability definition. In addition to ensuring that the student does not have some other intrinsic limitation, such as mental retardation or sensory impairments, the exclusionary clause requires that school personnel establish that the source of the problem inheres in the student, not in his or her environment or experience. Consequently, African American students living in poor socioeconomic circumstances were less likely to receive the Learning Disability label because their environments tended to exclude them from this category.

Dilemmas of EBD
The use of the Emotional/Behavioral Disorders (EBD) label grew by 500 percent between 1974 and 1998, from just over 1 percent in 1974 to just over 5 percent in 1998 (National Research Council, 2002). This category is plagued by as much ambiguity as the Learning Disability category is. To qualify for the EBD label, a student must display inappropriate behaviors to a “marked degree” and for a “length of time.” These criteria depend on subjective judgment.
Also, decisions about what evaluation instruments to use vary widely across states (Hosp & Reschly, 2002). Some states use projective tests, which are well known for their inherent subjectivity. Students respond to stimuli, such as pictures or sentences, and then a psychologist interprets their responses as a projection of their feelings. Other states rely on checklists, which are equally subjective. Our research revealed that different teachers using the same instrument rated the same student very differently. For example, using a behavioral checklist to rate a 2nd grade African American boy, one teacher checked four items relating to poor self-concept as occurring “excessively” (more than 50 percent of the time), whereas another teacher checked those same items as occurring “seldom” (1"10 percent of the time).
One teacher in the study commented, “They're not disturbed. They're just a pain in the neck!” As many scholars have observed, it's often difficult to tell whether the behavior is mostly troubling to school personnel or whether it reflects a troubled child.

Two Distorting Lenses
The intertwining of race and perceptions of disability are so deeply embedded in our way of thinking that many people are not even aware of how one concept influences the other. Let's consider how this works in light of the study we conducted.
The Disability Deficit Lens
Many teachers in the study saw disability as a simple fact. One teacher noted, “These children have disabilities, just like some children have blue eyes.” When a student experiences continued difficulty mastering academic skills, all too often the first question someone asks is, “Does this student have a disability?” The Learning Disability label requires that we exclude potential environmental reasons for the student's difficulties. But barring obvious developmental limitations, how can we separate a student from his or her social and cultural experience?
Let's consider some environmental experiences that could interfere with a student's learning. Most often, the experiences cited as exclusionary include poverty, detrimental home and community environments, or lack of opportunity to learn. In and of itself, poverty does not cause learning difficulties. Most children from poor homes have effectively mastered the usual developmental childhood tasks of motor and language skills, and they have learned the values and social practices of their homes and neighborhoods. But they often haven't learned particular forms of the language or the ways in which schools use that language to the extent that their middle-income peers have.
For example, in a study of African American preschoolers' language development, Brice-Heath (1983) demonstrated how their social environments prepared students for an imaginative form of storytelling but not for answering the testlike, factual questions prevalent in schools. Moreover, the students' vocabularies may not be as extensive or as sophisticated as those of children growing up in middle-class homes. Students may also not have had extensive experience handling printed materials or listening to stories told in the linear fashion so common to many children's books. Their lack of experience in some of these areas can make children seem unprepared for academic learning.
Absence from school as well as poor instruction in the early years can also be sources of a student's low achievement. Our research found that school personnel were always ready to blame the students' home contexts but seldom examined the school context. Even when students were referred for special education evaluation, members of the placement teams seldom asked whether poor classroom climate or instruction contributed to the students' difficulties or whether peer pressures could be the source of their withdrawal or acting out.
The Social/Cultural Deficit Lens
When a habit of looking for intrinsic deficit intertwines with a habit of interpreting cultural and racial difference as a deficit, the deck is powerfully loaded against poor students of color. Speaking about her African American 1st graders, one teacher in the study pointed out that “they don't know how to walk, talk, or sit in a chair. It's cultural!” Comments like this really don't refer to whether the students can or cannot do these things. Instead, they show that the manner in which the students do these things is unacceptable to the teacher. The teacher's focus on deficiencies predisposed her to see the students as limited by their culture and, ultimately, to refer almost one-half of her class of normally developing children for evaluation for special education.
If it is evident that students' early home and community experiences have not prepared them well for schooling, what do schools do? Do the schools then provide the students with adequate and appropriate opportunities to learn? Does instruction begin where the students are? Does it move at a pace that enables them to become accustomed to the new norms and expectations? Are the students made to feel that the school values the knowledge they bring from their homes and communities? Do teachers build on these “funds of knowledge” (Moll, 1990), or do they see only deficits in the students?

I still remember the opening comments by the Jesuit scholastic on the first day of freshman Latin in High school. It went something like -- 'Learning is an active verb. I can teach well and you can still fail to learn anything. Conversely I can teach badly and you can still learn a great deal. Learning is something you must do yourself. The best I can do for you is to require, motivate, and possibly inspire you to make the effort. I will do that: you must do the rest.'

The best I can do for you is to require, motivate, and possibly inspire you to make the effort. I will do that: you must do the rest.'

...Exactly. Learning, for anyone, can't happen unless that person makes or allows it to happen.
In the end, there's no other answer than that anyone who's experiencing any difficulty, get up, brush themselves off, and get on with it.
What's the alternative?

I just wish that every child had a teacher who was as committed to say this:

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The best I can do for you is to require, motivate, and possibly inspire you to make the effort. I will do that: you must do the rest.'

and then follow through.