Fairness Is Providing 200 Years of Superior Education for Blacks

The call for reparations has taken on a momentum that few would have predicted even five years ago. In academic, political and community settings, the demand for reparations has an intensity and vitality that commands the attention of the dominant culture. The focus on African American reparations has gained renewed legitimacy in the aftermath of such compensation for Japanese Americans who were internees during World War II and Jewish Holocaust victims.

Many broad plans have been proposed that would provide uniform relief to those whose ancestors were subjected to the most horrifying and degrading public policy in the history of this nation: slavery.

But the discussion takes on an absurd focus when it centers on the image of putting checks in the mail to every person who marked the “black” box in the race category on the 2000 census.

Instead, the discussion should be about what is the U.S. government’s proper response, one that would lead to appropriate and measurable outcomes while providing both immediate and long-lasting benefits.

As a career educator, I am convinced that the public education system is the most powerful public institution and the greatest influence on the future of African American citizens.

My own education from the 1940s to the 1960s was in the segregated schools of New Orleans, which along with other Southern public and private schools provided separate and often unequal educational opportunities for African Americans. I have seen firsthand what progress can be made when we are given even limited access to quality education.

During the past 25 years, African American mayors, school superintendents and other leaders in many Southern cities achieved their positions even though their families were never given the promised 40 acres and a mule (although this benefit was authorized by President Andrew Johnson, it was retracted by Congress just before it impeached him, and last I heard, the mule died); but what they did receive was an education.

During slavery, we were afforded numerous “accommodations.” Slaves were fed, clothed, housed and given free medical attention. Some slaves were permitted to use their acquired manual skills to earn wages and thus buy their freedom. As property, they were encouraged to procreate to sustain a healthy and growing work force. So interested were the slave masters in the expansion of the black population that they engaged in procreation with the slaves.

The one general benefit that was never available--free or otherwise--was education. In fact, education was systematically denied to all slaves under the most severe penalties to those receiving or offering it. Government leaders realized then--as well as today--that an uneducated population is more easily enslaved than an educated one.

Therefore, public education should be seen as the primary reparation for our people.

The right to an equal education has certainly been a long-fought struggle since the end of slavery made it legal to educate African Americans.

But this alone will not suffice as a reparation. An appropriate reparation for America to offer is not just an equal education, but a superior public education for the next 200 years to all African American children.

No child--regardless of race--should be subjected to the inferior conditions that black children have suffered.

It is only fair and morally appropriate to restore to our people that most precious commodity of education with the same intensity and governmental resources that were utilized to deny it to us for the same period.

The national culture would need to commit and deliver to African Americans the very best education of which this nation is capable, making sure that no excuses are tolerated and no scarcity of resources ever shortchanges us.

The failure rates of many African American students in public schools are evidence of our need to repair that which was destroyed for so long.

Particular emphasis would be placed on every African American student performing below grade level. This would include several initiatives, such as the assignment of the most-qualified teachers to schools that are heavily populated by African American students, specialized training and incentives for these teachers, extended school-year calendars, one-on-one tutoring, parent centers on each campus, peer support and counseling for students and parents, and guaranteed vocational educational employment opportunities upon graduation from high school.

Ample advanced placement classes would become available and extracurricular academic activities (museums, libraries and hands-on opportunities) would be routine. Adult education would be available for those who need retraining for advanced employment opportunities, including the many who have been incarcerated and now are able to return to society.

Educational reparations would be long-lasting and would create a true emancipation of those who have suffered for generations. The result would be a population of citizens who are able to compete, achieve and produce at a superior level.

Cash reparations without education might well be worse than no reparations at all.