HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: guillory@crhc.uiuc.edu (Stanford Guillory)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Education
Date: 28 Dec 1992 19:30:56 -0600
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
NNTP-Posting-Host: bach.crhc.uiuc.edu

galan@netlink.cts.com (Greg Gross) writes:

>In keeping with my own wish to advance the discussion, will pose a 
>question:

>How do we improve our educational system so that all children get an 
>equally good grounding right off the bat?

I think the first thing we could do is not try to give all children
"equally good grounding right off the bat". Since children are not
going to come into contact with the "educational system" until the
age of five, it is painfully clear that the abilities of kindergarteners
will run a broad spectrum. Thus the goal should not be an equal
grounding, but rather an equal peak. By this I mean that education
should not be age-based, but knowledge based. There is no sound
reason for everyone in the 7th grade to be 13 years old. There is
every reason in the world for all 7th graders to be competent in
arithmetic and prepared for pre-algebra. 

If we allowed grade advancements only on competency, I think we will
have gone a long way towards a competent system. So what if some
high school graduates will be 25 years old. If those 25 year olds
are well prepared for a college curriculum, the next 25 years of 
their lives will be so much better than if they were ignorant 18
year olds, or worse yet, dropouts.


>And within that, a sub-question:

>While we're trying to improve education across the board, how do we 
>ensure that black children and other minority children don't end up being 
>psychologically sabotaged in the classroom by the very people they look 
>to to teach them?

I think our children run a much greater risk of being psychologically
sabotage in their own homes than in the classroom. If a teacher
tells a confident, self-assured 9 year old that he/she is stupid,
that 9 year old will think the teacher is the stupid one. 


>In the event that school districts fail or refuse to meet these 
>responsibilities, how do we go about obtaining on our own a good 
>education for our children?
>G.

I guess the obvious answer is to start our own schools, a noble
effort that I would be happy to take part in. However, there are
around 20 million minority children to educate, so I think we had
better make sure those school districts don't fail.

>--
>Gregory Alan Gross      Welcome to life, where no good deed goes unpunished.

Stanford S. Guillory
guillory@crhc.uiuc.edu
From: djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: Education
Date: 3 Jan 93 02:51:06 GMT
Distribution: soc
Organization: University of Florida, Gainesville

In article <1992Dec28.190119.16645@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> q2tj@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:

#         This issue has been dealt with in a very unusual way by
#
#                 Peter Farb, in a book "Word Play"
#
# He had a most excellent idea on this subject.  May be part of the
# ANSWER. He's a linguist who claims that most black children speak a
# dialect of standard American English.  He refers to it as Black
# English. It has different grammatical structures to it, and since
# the blak kiddies learn from textbooks that use standard english
# grammar a frustrating confusion can set in early.  these grammar
# structures are unconscious, and even a black school teacher will be
# unaware of what's going on (they may have long since forgotten
# their own struggles adapting to a new grammar)
#
# Well, because of this problem, the black kids have problems reading
# from the outset, get frustrated (and yelled at by the teacher) etc.
# and the rest is history.  All our education is based on reading
# skills!
#
# Failure in education coupled with all the other negative messages
# in our society will have a negative impact on black kids of
# disastrous consequences.
#
# Farb recommends, in effect, that black kids, besides becoming
# bicultural, need to be educated to be bi-dialect-ical.

This idea was hot in the early 70s -- and notice that Farb's Word Play
was written in '74.  It was tried out in the Ann Arbor, Michigan,
school system, as I remember, but as far as I know, it was pretty much
a failure.

As I remember, one major problem was getting anyone to write the books
or getting black teachers to use the dialect of the inner-city kids.
And obviously, no one wanted white teachers to even try.

But the whole thing may have been a wild goose chase.  It's not at all
unusual, even in industrialized countries (France, GErmany, Italy,
Taiwan, and many others) for kids to suddenly have to learn a new
dialect, which may be much farther from their home dialect than black
English is from "white" English, and in some countries, like India and
many African countries, education is in a totally different language,
like English or French.  Yet these kids adapt quickly and learn their
lessons.

There has been a little flurry of interest in this subject recently --
I remember something about black kids not understanding arithmetic
because they grow up saying things like "twice as less" meaning
"half".  I don't believe a word of it.  Kids are extremely flexible in
language in grade school, and it wouldn't take them a day to realize
that there are just certain ways you say things in school.

Personally, I think the experts ought to stop looking for a magic
bullet and just admit that kids aren't going to learn when everyone in
their life is telling them that it's not important.

David




Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
From: dem2@pyuxd.uucp (Me)
Subject: Re: Face it...  We depend on white people...
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 22:42:37 GMT

I think the original article posted by Dennis is best understood
if we realize that it speaks to reality, not potential. 
As we (African Americans) exist today *in the USA* we are heavily dependent 
on whites for just about everything from the basic necessities 
to the indulgent luxuries (thus, it is little wonder why we as 
a people are relatively disadvantaged). That is not to say we 
are incapable of self-sufficiency; history does prove otherwise. 
Ironically, it is the same history that has brought us to this 
current state of unfortunate dependency. Several Black leaders 
before, after, and including Garvey have recognized our vulnerability and 
have crafted their messages around self-help and self-determination. 
Its time for us to move beyond just talk of self-determination, and
actually implement it. But the "bootstrapping process" is a bitch
when you don't even own the bootstraps! Yes, there are some prominent
examples of Black ownership and control, but somewhere along the line
they are ultimately dependent on whites. This is not true in reverse.
Consider what would happen if *all* the white employers decided to
fire *all* their Black employees one day. What would become of us
socio-economically in this country? Now consider what would happen
if *all* the Black employers fired *all* their white employees one
day. The socio-economic impact on whites would be minute at
worst. You can do other "thought-experiments" of this kind with
any other basic service or function in society and come up with
similar results. As far as I can tell, the greatest impact we
Black folks can have in our current state is as consumers: if we
all decided to stop buying from whites it would be a major blow --
but it would also be a major change for us. We'd have to look for
sources outside of this country -- the independent nations of 
Africa are our best bet IMHO. We desperately need to get to the point
where we have ultimate control over our own lives and prosperity,
and don't have to answer to any people who's history with respect
to us has been less than benevolent. I know this has been said before, but
if it were as easily done I don't think anyone would ever bother saying it...
	Darryle
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled,       |
| public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should     |
| be tempered and controlled, and the assistance of foreign lands should |
| be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt."  -- Cicero, 63 BC             |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
From: cmort@NCoast.ORG (Christopher Morton)
Subject: Re: *Secret of MIM
Reply-To: cmort@ncoast.org (Christopher Morton)
Organization: North Coast Public Access *NIX, Cleveland, OH
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 01:53:21 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.african.american

As quoted from <BzzsL8.4rn@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> by Maoist Internationalist Movement <SCIENCE@mitvma.BITNET>:

> Now that Christopher Morton has clarified that the Maoist
> Internationalist Movement is not affiliated with Bob Avakian
> and the RCP, there is not much left to his criticism
> of our movie review of "South Central" directed by Steve Anderson.

Oh, there's a WHOLE lot left.  You can exploit the ignorance of the
poor and uneducated without ANY connection to Bobby.

> The only thing left is his implication that we somehow support
> independent Black drug-dealing in Black neighborhoods. People
> need to go back and read our original review that said, "While
> drug-selling shows the self-destructive and capitalist side
> of gangs and must be eradicated, the rest of his talk could be
> a Maoist speech about building power of the oppressed to seize
> power." (MIM Notes 70, p. 8) This sentence referred to a
> depicted gang leader in the movie.

You're certainly willing to countenance it, AREN'T you?  And the ironic thing
about this fantasy is that if you ever DID come to power, you'd be SHOOTING
the people doing the drug selling without reference to race, creed or color.

Obviously it's ok to destroy the Black community... UNTIL you come to power, at
which time any and all competing power bases are snuffed out with a bullet to
the brain.  That's not supposition.  That's history.



-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------  

"Well whose opinions did you THINK these were...?" 
------------------------------------------------------------------
From: q2tj@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: "Minorities" <-- does this term bother you?
Date: 2 Jan 93 17:22:51 EST
Distribution: usa,soc
Organization: Cornell University

In article <1993Jan1.002349.17043@sr.com>,
gaff@sr.com (Jon Gaff) writes: 
> [deleted..]  I just thought people should at least make an attempt to
> understand how racist this term is.  The root word is "minor" as in not as
> good, lower than, not as important.  Yet another example of how language is
> the tool we consciously and too often unconsciously use to degrade others.
> 
	Ditto!  And there's more to it than that!  On college
campuses the word "minorities" is being used as a euphemism
for black or AfAm, as in "minority problems"  "minority retention"
"minority issues"  "minority conflicts"  "minority programs"
There is much negative associations with these words.
And even in the abscence of such negative associations it
is absolutely ridiculous that whenever the word minority
pops up we're supposed to think "oh,  African American"
(or hispanic, occassionally asian....but NEVER episcopalian,
even though they are the "group" with the highest disposable
incomes....which obviously puts them in a tiny minority)
And no offense to episcopalians, just want to illustrate the
absolute nonesense way that words and arbitrary group divisions
and stats can be played with.

People even *say* the word *funny* at times, and roll their eyes
as in "minorities are that way"

I am always suspicious of code-words and euphemisms because it 
means that someone doesn't want to talk honestly.

SteveS
From: sawyer@utahep.uta.edu (Lee Sawyer)
Subject: Re: separate but equal???
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: University of Texas at Arlington High Energy Physics Group
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 21:10:00 GMT

In article <1hp9rgINNdeo@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>, cr614@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Monee C. Kidd) writes...
>[deletions] 
> 
>Another thing I heard that kind of saddened me. I read a few
>days ago that a judge in I believe either Louisiana or 
>Mississippi ordered two of his states Historically Black
>Colleges to merge with the state school. Seems the HBCUs had
>good football teams and the state school's team was struggling.
>The judge ruled that 'separate but equal' had to apply to the
>athletics, and since the athletics weren't equal, the schools
>couldn't be separate. Yeah, right.
>-- 

 Hello Monee,

  This is an extreme oversimplifacation of the La. desegregation
issue, and in fact as far as I know no one has mentioned the
fact that both Southern and Grambling had pretty good teams
this year.

  A little background : Higher education in Louisiana is
_de facto_ segregated, with separate adminstrative boards
for the LSU system, non-LSU predominantly white schools
(NLU, La Tech, SE La, etc), and the predominantly black
Southern system. The state is now under federal court
order to merge the systems, and in some cases to merge
university programs.

 A specific example : La. Tech and Grambling U. exist
within a few miles of each other, are of comprable
size, and have overlapping curricula. Grambling is
an HBU; LaTech predominantly white. What should be
done here ? One side of me thinks it is stupid and
Jim Crow-ish to maintain two separate universities;
the other side of me would hate to see Grambling lose
its historic identity and be subsumed into Tech. In the
past joint programs have been offered, duplication
of new programs forbidden, and other incentives offered
to slowly merge the two instituiions; it really hasn't
succeeded.

  Its a hard question, one which is sure to elicit 
bad feelings on both sides. but I can assure you that it has little
to do with football (for once !)

       ================                           
         Lee Sawyer                                  

         Dept of Physics                          
         Univ. of Texas                            
               at Arlington                        

Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
From: dowdy@tochtli.biochem.nwu.edu (Dowdy Jackson)
Subject: Re: Who cares what whites think about racism ?
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 01:12:58 GMT

     There have been quite a few angery white folks posting and sending me
all types of mail. I am a little taken aback by all of this simply because I
NEVER said that whites, who are willing to help AfAms, should be excluded.
The point I was making was that many whites who post here are completely
clueless in regards to how AfAms are treated. I think that many of you think
that as long as AfAms aren't being lynched to the same degree that we were
during slavery, that all is well. Yes many have said that they know that 
racism still exists but these appear to be just mere words said to appease
any AfAm who would obviously challenge them. I guess because you have a black
freind, wife or live next to a couple of blacks that you understand what AfAms
go through. Well I disagree. The fact of the matter is is that many whites
are and will continue to be racist. I only said that I want AfAms to do the
same things that whites do like whites support white businesses, whites live
in predominately white areas, whites attend white schools. When I say that I 
want AfAms to do the same things, then of course, the white scream that this
is seperatist. Is it seperatist because I don't want AfAms to continue to
run behind whites and continue to beg them to accept us ? 
     Whites have supported their own for centuries. It is about time that
AfAms support each other. I don't care what whites say about my desire to
help other AfAms because whites haven't ever cared about Africans. Yes I KNOW.
Some whites will say that some whites did help the slaves and have fought for
equal rights for AfAms. This is true. But AfAms had to stand up for themselves
and some whites stood along side. This is what I want. If you want to help
the AfAm community by supporting black owned businesses, donating to the
various charities that assist AfAms then by all means do so. But don't think
that you know what its like to constantly hear whites say:

1. AA programs hurt whites.
2. look at the media, its those blacks committing all of the crime.
3. You are inferior because you are AfAms that have the benefit of AA
4. Racism isn't as bad as it use to be so stop whining.

and the list goes on and on. There have been many shows about racism that
show that whites and blacks ARE treated much differently but many whites
still continue to say that they don't agree but they aren't racists. I think
that AfAms have better breaks than whites due to AA but, I'm not a racist.
I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY.... Most whites ARE racist and I don't care what
most whites say about racism because you just don;t KNOW!!!!
Xref: sparky soc.culture.african.american:13365 misc.education:5605
From: lashlepi@newton.ccs.tuns.ca (Phillip Lashley)
Subject: Re: Education
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 14:30:38 GMT
Organization: Technical University of Nova Scotia, Halifax, N.S.

In article <gyigwB2w165w@netlink.cts.com> galan@netlink.cts.com (Greg Gross) writes:
>In keeping with my own wish to advance the discussion, will pose a 
>question:
>
>How do we improve our educational system so that all children get an 
>equally good grounding right off the bat?
>
>And within that, a sub-question:
>
>While we're trying to improve education across the board, how do we 
>ensure that black children and other minority children don't end up being 
>psychologically sabotaged in the classroom by the very people they look 
>to to teach them?
>
>In the event that school districts fail or refuse to meet these 
>responsibilities, how do we go about obtaining on our own a good 
>education for our children?
>G.
Hmm.. Perhaps by doing what everyone else has been doing for ages - starting , or rather consolidating our own educational system and structures. As a community, i would believe we are capable of determining appropriate educational avenues for our children. It is then a matter of providing wide spread acess to this: questions of funding, staffing, etc will turn up, but given the history of accomplishing much with little, there remains hope. Im not advocating seperatism here (shades of quebec) but as has be


en continually  pointed out, if you have a particular value system, and you want you kids to espouse this view, they will undoubtedly have to be inculcated in it.  I would hope that the values taught our children might be such that white people say, hey thats cool, that is a relavant viewpoint for life, why dont i get my kids oriented in that direction. but that can come later. Right now too many of my friends have to put up with having ther kids BSed all day, just to get an education.
im out
My editor doth develop problems
No Justice, No Peace in '93
Jah bless
SELAH

********************************************************************************* Leave the damm ting on the tree, so other people can pass and see            *
*lashlepi@newton.tuns.ccs.ca                                                   *
*Fax: (902)-420-7858                                                           *
*    Look, anything i say, i am responsible for thinking and writing, not      *
*                   withstanding divine intervention                           *********************************************************************************
>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Goodbye, Jason...
From: galan@netlink.cts.com (Greg Gross)
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 92 19:33:53 PST
Organization: NetLink Online Communications, San Diego CA

Jason:
Having shown your true colors, so to speak, with your police officer bias 
remarks, I don't think there's any need for us to be communicating 
anymore.

More than you, I hope to see affirmative action one day become a thing of
he past, not merely because some disaffected whites bitched and moaned 
loudly and often enough about it, but this society will have truly and 
totally left behind its racist heritage and abandoned its racist conduct.

Meanwhile, as I said in an earlier post, affirmative action is neither 
our problem nor the solution to it. If it disappeared tomorrow, very 
little in the lives of most of us, black or white, would change.

As I also said once before, you have a lot to learn, and most of it is 
probably *not* on the MIT curriculum. And while experience may be the 
best teacher, her homework is a bitch. Remember that.

Remember too that the only reality that means anything to the average 
human being is the one he or she is living at the time. If you truly wish 
to understand why others don't see the world as you do, you first might 
try to understand how that world looks from where *they're* standing.

Clearly, you are not ready to do that yet. And while that remains the 
case, attempts to communicate with you are pointless. 

I wish you good health, long life and eventual enlightenment that does 
not come to you entirely the hard way.

Goodbye, Jason. Where I'm concerned, you can forget to write.
G.

--
Gregory Alan Gross      Welcome to life, where no good deed goes unpunished.
San Diego Union-Tribune         (619) 293-1270 (voice)
P.O. Box 191                    (619) 293-2333 (fax)
San Diego, CA 92112-4106        galan@netlink.cts.com (Internet)
Xref: sparky soc.culture.african.american:13270 alt.discrimination:5461
From: lkk@panix.com (Larry Kolodney)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american,alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: I'm Still Waiting
Date: 27 Dec 92 16:58:20 GMT
Distribution: usa,local
Organization: The Devil's Advocate

In <ISBELL.92Dec22083900@pop-tarts.ai.mit.edu> isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell) writes:

>lkk@panix.com (Larry Kolodney) writes:
>|>>  Brazil if it is so brutal as compared to the U.S.?
>|> 
>|> The same reason there was not civil unrest among U.S. blacks except in
>|> the past two generations.  Besides, Brazil has been under military
>|> dictatorship for most of its history.  Your observation demonstrates
>|> nothing.  

>But, actually, this isn't true, unless you're defining some really
>strict meaning of "civil unrest."

I guess I meant "civil unrest sufficiently widespread to cause real
changes in popular attitudes on the subject."

  Racial riots tend to occur in
>bunches about once a generation (~25 yrs--those who have been on the
>net long enuff recall I said three years ago that the next set were
>due 1992-1993) and in the case of US Blacks this goes back to around
>the time of the civil war (as I recall) and, if you count slave
>revolts and the like, even much further back than that.

Yeah, but only in the 60s (correct me if I'm wrong) was there a
systematic political movement to change U.S. racial policy in
conjunction with widespread civil unrest.

-- 
larry kolodney:(lkk@panix.com) 
_(*#&)#*&%)@(*^%_!*&%^!)*&#+!*&$+!?&%+!*&^_)*&#%)*&^%#+&
The past is not dead, it's not even past.   - Wm. Faulkner
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american