Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

education as a constructive cultural
institution among our people .
Aside from the need for white
schools to perpetuate the "white
lie" mentioned above, other considerations
seem to point to the
ultimate need for all-black school
systems and consequently the necessity
for African-American educators
to take stock of their present
condition and to prepare for the
essential move back to black .
The concern of all public schools
is obviously educating the public .
in America, that public contains a
large predominance of non-blacks
and a considerably smaller number
~of Third World peoples, the majority
of whom are African-Americans.
Because of their historical
and ethnic differences, these two
groups are decidedly distinct culturally
. Yet the American public
education system, operating in ac-
~ord with the country's melting-pot
myth, works on the erroneous assumption
that there can at once be
a basically homogeneous school
system to serve all American inha
:it ::nts .
This is, in fact, a myth because
the historical existence of Africanoid
peoples in America has been
one of separateness. Therefore, a
balanced black-white educational
program is a contradiction of both
ethnic and- historical reality . And
36
hence we must consider the alleged
massive failure of African-Americans
to adapt to the American
school system not so much as a
psychological maladjustment to be
relieved by remedial and compensatory
programs which, in essence,
seek to find new ways to stuff the
same rotten food down ever-rejecting
throats, but rather as a sociocultural
mismatch, a poorly balanced
diet, which is indicative of
our even broader paradoxical,
self-contradictory existence in
America .
In short, when there are consistently
so many dysfunctional products,
we must question not only the
raw material, but the nature of the
machine itself . The failure of a
round peg to fit into a square hole
is not because the peg isn't square,
but rather because it wasn't made
to fit in a square hole in the first
place .
The question can now be raised
as to whether or not the present
school systems can in fact be
changed to meet the needs of African-Americans?
Are such changes
realistic? More important, are they
desirable?
First of all, it seems as though
no American school has yet affected
sufficient changes to satisfy the
ever-increasing demands of black
students at all levels . And perhaps
this inability is illuminated by two
observations . On the one hand, and
already mentioned above, since the
American schools are part of the
total American sociocultural com-
March 1969 NEGRO DIGEST