Whites and Blacks who can afford it move to the suburbs, leaving the lower income people in the city. Which means now that Blacks make up around 30 percent of the city officially, but probably more like 40 percent unofficially, they are naturally going to make up a higher percent of the school population in comparison to 1989 when more Whites were living in the cities.
But just like you can get a quality education at Black Colleges, why can’t Blacks get quality educations at Black high schools. Why do we have to be sitting next to White kids in order to get an education? Instead of crying about Whites not attending schools in Black communities, or Whites sending their kids to private or charter schools, we need to start creating schools in Black communities that Whites will fight to get in.
Education and Jobs, Education and Jobs, Education and Jobs are what we must make our priority, not integration. We need to stop teaching our kids that if it’s Black it’s inferior. If you look around Pittsburgh, just like all urban cities, Blacks are concentrated within the inner-city, with Whites living in the suburbs.
Inner city schools must find ways to uplift their educational programs and stop wasting time dealing with what percentage of the school is Black. What they should be concerned with is the racial achievement gap in which Whites are scoring much higher than Blacks, especially Black males. Now that is what’s really important. Why?
The money USC spent on this research report to tell us what we already know, could have better been spent on closing the racial gap in education or improving the education to job percentage in inner cities throughout this country.
This is not just a Pennsylvania issue, every state that has a large urban area has the same issue, increasing numbers of Blacks in the urban inner city schools. Because as much as we keep talking about how racial relations have improved, they really havn’t.
Whites move as far away from Blacks as they can, and until Blacks solve the Black on Black crime problem I don’t much blame them.
We need to follow the teaching of Booker T. Washington who taught Blacks to “put down their buckets where they were.” Meaning make the most of where you are. If you are in an all Black school, or community make the most of it. Find out what needs to be done to improve conditions and do it, stop waiting on the White man to make it better. He’s not. We will literally be waiting until Jesus comes.
If we need to improve our educational system so more Blacks are trained, then do it.
If we need to improve our employment system where more Blacks are hired, then do it.
By any means necessary.
***
I’m a big movie buff, DVD that is. I rarely go to the movie. Just like sports, I prefer watching it in my recliner, with my food, on my big screen. Well I picked up what was a big movie at the theaters and I thought I would really enjoy a movie from scripture, the Bible, starring one of my favorite actors, Russell Crowe called “Noah.”
Anyone who has been to church or knows anyone who has been to church knows who Noah is. Well, whoever wrote this movie apparently has never been to church, or was sleeping when the minister was preaching and never bothered to read this part of the Bible. It was like the Anti-Christ wrote the movie. Noah was depicted as a heartless cruel man doing what a heartless cruel God had selected him to do.
We all know that Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth and they each had wives. These were the eight people aboard the Ark, and all mankind were built from these eight people after the great flood.
Well, not so. This movie had Japheth as a mere child, Ham didn’t have a wife, and Shem’s wife was barren. Basically Noah believed that they would be the last of mankind and that God was erasing the world totally, instead of killing off the evil while giving man another chance through Noah and his family.
And instead of people building the Ark, there were rock creatures, which looked like Transformers, building the Ark and protecting Noah and his family from the people. This is not the Noah I read about in the Bible and if the creators of this movie had taken time to read the Bible they could have told a great story. One of the greatest ever told, instead of one of the worst. Crowe was great as he always is, but the movie was terrible. I’m surprised that there wasn’t a major uproar from the Christian community over this lie called a movie. It was a true waste of time, but very creative.
(Ulish Carter is the managing editor of the New Pittsburgh Courier.)
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