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I don’t know any other way to say it but... Black Students nationwide are falling further and further behind their fellow White students. Granted before the Covid Pandemic millions upon millions of Black students were grade levels behind White students in the core areas of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Not to mention, when it comes to Black students’ Emotional development” and competency. Tragically yet predictably it coincides with their academic success or lack of.

I've labored and toiled in the trenches of public education for over two decades, and there are a few conclusions I've come to which I can unequivocally and without hesitation nor reservation stand by.

One, the public education process is like making sausage or McDonald's nuggets - you don’t want to see it happen, you don’t want to go behind closed classroom doors and see it being made - you’ll throw up.

Two: the lack of Black parental involvement is pathetic, pitiful, and trifling. Sorry, there are no other words to describe it - we (85%-90%) never show up to the schoolhouse unless Junior is in trouble. End of story. Black Parent participation in everything from attending back-to-school nights and Parent-teacher conferences is sad. Attend a PTA meeting… negro please, the vast majority of Black parents simply don’t. Supposedly everyone can’t make it, they’re all at their 2nd or 3rd gig… negro please, that sounds good, but it doesn’t hold up. The Ethiopian, Sudanese and Nigerian Parents - who work 7 jobs, they show up, Black Americans… We've left the education of our children to White folks.

We trust them I guess.

We trust Trump-backing Teachers, administrators, counselors, and coaches to dig this - prepare, Black kids for the corporate/capitalist rat race to attain and maintain the American Dream.

This tragic fact leads me to this observation: By far the worst move Black America has made since 1619 is handing over, relinquishing, abdicating, surrendering ...call it what you want - the responsibility of enlightening our children to a system set-up and designed-by and for White folks… who by and large, according to all facts, opinions, polls and voting records do not like nor respect Black America as a whole.

Is there a debate about that now, in 2021?

Look, on one hand, you’ve got “Missionaries,” the well-intentioned little White girls from Sunnyfield suburbia who just want to help the poor, under-privileged Black and Brown Children, but they are so socially disconnected from the cultures they simply can’t. Then you’ve got the “get-tough” disciplinarians who want to punish, suspend, expel and place on the pre-school to state prison pipeline - they claim to be helping the wayward students by throwing the book at them now, over any and all infractions, because, when those kids get in the real world it will be so less tolerable of Black kid’s antics - they're really just trying to help the Black kids.

Together, as a group they fear Black and Brown children, classroom management is just about non-existent, it’s hard to maintain discipline and structure when you’re scared and intimidated… wait, by kids who want to scare and intimidate you, and their youthful parents, some who were just in high school a decade earlier, many of whom simply don’t respect teachers...of any color and have informed and trained their kids to ignore and defy school rules.

They hated school and wow, gee what do you know, their kids hate school.

Denver Public schools, like most of America, are segregated because most, not all, but most White “hipsters” want to live in a revived urban center, but they don’t want their kids in “Black” schools.

Classrooms are segregated: IB, advanced, Honors whatever those classes are 90% white, while mainstream classes, where 10th graders are doing 6th-grade fractions and still seeding about Jack and Jill went up the hill. White classes, vastly quiet and working. Black and Latino dominated classrooms… it's a clown show, on their phones, socializing more than studying, almost leaving the class and then just walking out. There are enough Black kids in the hallways during class to have a parade. Yet that underachieving is accepted and tolerated because the Black parents don’t value the educational process, and they trust the school to parent their child. The White faculty has “gutter low” educational and social expectations for Black kids while they believe Black kids should be allowed to behave in ways and manners my grandparents would never tolerate - like the incorporation of the word Nigger into everyday conversation.

All-day you've got Black kids yelling "Say Nigger, hey Nigger. Yo nigger…" it's never-ending. "Nigger" this and nigger that. Everyone's a nigger, The Jewish librarian, the Japanese lady subbing in math, the White English teacher, and the Black science teacher (they're as rare as a Black unicorn) are all branded and called, to their face Nigger, "nigger, you can't take my phone! I ain't got no homework to turn in, I don't do no homework…yep 2021 Colorado and I can't count the Black students who have the vocabulary of an 1861 slave in Mississippi.

Our participation in the arts, i.e., theater, band, and the choir is wanting and lacking. Speech and debate… we don’t do that. Science Club, Business club - for far too many of us, it’s socializing time at the mall.

I’m as serious as a stroke.

Mr. Cortez, nigger ain't no bad word, my momma and grandma use it all the time."

I'm a serious heart attack. They are days when I think I'm in an Iceberg Slim novel set in 1957 Chi-town. “Bitch,” “ho,” “Trickbaby” and “Mofo” are thrown around like “g-i-r-l- and m-a-n used to be.

Sure, of course, White kids break rules, fight, drink, curse, and fail classes, but as with all ills and woes, when it comes to this issue, White folks have a common cold, we Black folks have stage 7 brain cancer.

Black folks my age, straight out of the 20th century, in the building hardly try anymore because the younger woke MSNBC Black cocoa puffs offer endless rhyme, reason, and the rationale why it's ok and not a big deal. And granted I think it's ludicrous and ignorant to devalue yourself in a hostile nation that wants to put us back in chains.

Then you’ve got the deliberately disconnected White teachers who are there for just the perceived perks: off every holiday known to humankind, the forgiveness of student loans and it looks good on the ol’ resume when you can sight a few years behind enemy lines at MLK middle school or Booker T Washington High… you garner immediate street creed with your peers from Stanford, Liberty University or Idaho State.

Over my years in working in three metropolitan Denver public school systems, as well as having two kids, both in International Baccalaureate programs attend public schools, I’ve encountered the same old same old over and over again - the vast majority of Black students are merely being warehoused until they move on to their prescribed place in US society: either they’re working at Wal-Mart, or they’re in prison, or they’re in the cemetery.

My answer: A national online Black school system, either as a primary source or as a tutoring supplement, nevertheless we need help!

Additionally, because of the fractured and dismantled status of the Black family we need to pour our hearts into a Black Boy and Girls Scouts program - our kids are in desperate, dire need of all the attributes and values Scouting can supply, the hands-on involvement, the structure, the attention to details, the responsibility it fosters, the problem solving it contributes to, the teamwork it creates.

Now understand, as I make these observations I will be branded both a 'racist" and a sell-out "Uncle Tom '' for criticizing Black folks. My daddy said "tell the truth son" he didn't say much about sparing their feelings.



BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Desi Cortez, who also writes for BlackAthlete.com & NegusWhoRead.com, was hatched in the heart of Dixie, circa 1961, at the dawning of the age of Aquarius, the by-product of four dynamic individuals, Raised in South-Central LA, the 213. At age 14 transplanted to the base of the Rockies, Denver. Still a Mile-Hi. Sat at the foot of scholars for many, many moons, emerging with a desire and direction… if not a sheep-skin. Meandered thru life; gone a-lot places, done a-lot of things, raised a man-cub into an officer n' gentleman, a "man's man." Produced a beautiful baby-girl with my lover/woman/soul-mate… aired my "little" mind on the airwaves and wrote some stuff along the way. Wordsmith behind America's Ten Months Pregnant . . . Ready To Blow!: Even Trump Can't "Make America White Again." A New, More Inclusive, Diverse 21st Century America - Love It . . . Or Get The Hell Out!. Contact Mr. Cortez and BC.



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