The "Choices" that Warriors Make

In watching Central: 50 Years Later, it was clear to me that Minnijean Brown's pain and agony at seeing a segregated classroom today was troubling. Was it more troubling that the students self-segregate and see nothing wrong with it? That the teacher would allow such segregation? That African American students seem to be tracked in lower classes? Or was it troubling to think that all her sacrifices had been for naught? My heart aches for her and all of our Civil Rights warriors who look at the state of affairs with today's youth.

Revisiting the whole issue of integration and the Civil Rights Movement brings up painful, lingering questions that I'd struggled with in my academic career and personal life. The most prominent question or issue has been - Do the advantages and benefits of integration outweigh the disadvantages and detriments to the African American community? It's a hard question to answer as I ride down Chicago's once thriving African American neighborhoods and look at what could once be described as the "Black Metropolis."

The "metropolis" has declined into a segregated ghetto on the verge of "progress" by way of gentrification. A byproduct of integration and the opening of city and suburban areas to upper middle class and upper class Black families in the 1960's and beyond. What is to become of Black youth whose daily role models are those that thrive on a life of crime and quick money? Gone are the throngs of educated entrepreneurs and businessmen/businesswomen that were a consistent visible sign of the benefits to hard work and cooperative economics.

When I think about the modern educational system and my own experiences in it, similar sentiments arise, but also other questions. Would it have ever been possible to develop a "separate but equal" system? Would that have been wrong? I think about the hundreds of Blacks that sacrificed personal safety to gain an education and advanced degrees in segregated institutions, but I also think about the thousands that earned degrees in historically Black colleges and universities. Up to the 1960's, maybe even late 1970's, the bulk of these scholars returned to their communities as educators, activists, politicians or entrepreneurs dedicated to uplifting the race in any way possible. How many of today's African American scholars have the same drive or dedication? E.W. Blyden worried about such a phenomenon in the late 1900's- "All educated Negroes suffer from a kind of slavery in many ways far more subversive of the real welfare of the race than the ancient physical fetters. The slavery of the mind is far more destructive..." Has education just become a means to acquire material wealth in the hopes that you will be able to get out of the old neighborhood rather than a means to come back & improve that neighborhood?

What about those youth that don't even make it to college? What do integrated schools have to offer them? What is authentically engaging to these Black youth - so consumed with pop culture and materialism? Could the smaller schools with dedicated teachers and community support of old be a better way of keeping them enrolled? I wonder what would have happened if segregated Black schools would have had the same books, resources,etc. How well would the students have done? Many did well with less. What's the problem today? Do the numbers indicate that more children of color drop out or don't graduate today than before integration?

I don't know the answers to all of these questions. I know that we will never go back to segregation legally, but I also recognize that economically, segregation does exist in our urban centers. I recognize, too, the value of small, independent schools aiming at culturally education alongside academics such as, the Betty Shabazz Charter School in Chicago, Sankofa Shule in Lansing, Blyden Delany in Milwaukee or Malcolm X Academy also in Milwaukee. In these schools, I see the type of community spirit that I feel when reading about Minnijean Brown, Melba Patillo Beals or any of the other "Little Rock Nine." In the current public educational school system, the same sense of urgency, collective work, responsibility, unity, faith and purpose isn't there. Schooling is not about strengthening communities and building new leadership it's about individual success. This is the antithesis of what "the Nine" fought for, in my opinion.

Jomo Kenyatta , in Facing Mt. Kenya, expressed it this way, "..to the Africans the ideal is the right relations with and behavior to other people...knowledge thus acquired is related to a practical need, and therefore, knowledge is merged into activity and can be recalled when that activity is again required." Ignoring the need for this practical, human element in education, Kenyatta warns, "creates conflicts of ideas in the mental outlook of pupils." What can be done to encourage our youth today to make better choices? What can be done to improve not only the educational system, but society so that they have a real desire to participate as proactive citizens? How can we improve their mental and moral outlook? With the Civil Rights Movement (1950's-1960's) and the Black Power Movement (1960's-1970's), the Black community (with the backing of community groups, new legal precedents and new legislation) found ways to motivate children to academic success and encouraged them to be vanguards in community maintenance and development. It took an entire nation to make this happen then...is the nation ready to do it again?