mekka okereke :verified:
Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
I'm still not talking about Black history. I'm still talking about white US history.
Q: Why do Black kids not do well in school? Is it because their dads are uninvolved and uncaring parents? Bill Cosby and Herschel Walker told me that, and they are good and wise men that we should listen to! It's Black dads' fault! Boo Black men!
A: No. Black kids only do poorly in school *in extremely racist countries.*
mekka okereke :verified:
"OK, when Black dads are present, they're involved. But too many Black dads are just not there! Why aren't they there?"
In the US, a Black man has a 1 in 4 chance of going to jail. Most likely for "drug use," even though white folk do more drugs. ??♂️
Most Black dads incarcerated have not even been convicted of any crime. They're "awaiting trial," and are too poor to afford bail. You can be waiting for trial for *years*.
mekka okereke :verified:
But is poor school attainment because so many Black kids are born out of wedlock? The Nick Cannon effect?
No. The anecdotes are Nick Cannon, not Elon Musk, or Larry Bird. How many kids does Larry Bird have? That we know of? How many kids does Elon have? That we know of?
But ignore these ovulation addicts. The data shows that co-parenting is the trend for everyone. And it's fine.
mekka okereke :verified:
Black dads are *more* involved in both early childhood activities like bathing and diapering, and school aged activities. From the CDC:
A larger percentage of Black dads
(41%) had helped their coresidential children with homework every day in
the last 4 weeks compared with
white (28%) dads.
Only 30% of white dads take their own kids to activities every day, vs 42% of Black dads.
71% of white dads talk with their kids about their day, vs 79% of Black dads.
Etc, etc.
mekka okereke :verified:
Once you understand white US history instead of Black history, you'll understand why the following interventions will do much more to improve US Black educational achievement than most of the nonsense we're trying today:
• Bail reform
• Fire racist teachers, including the Bill Cosbys
• Retain anti-racist Black, white, AAPI, Latinx teachers
• Get rid of school cops
• Provide all students free lunch. And breakfast. And afternoon snack.
• Transfer police budget to school budget. Bring back art.
mekka okereke :verified:
I'm not surprised that Black US kids don't perform as well as white US kids, or as well as Nigerian, Ghanaian, Kenyan, or Caribbean kids. I'm surprised that any Black kids make it through this hellish gauntlet at all.
When you look at how much the US pays to educate each student, and how poorly it does at Black educational achievement, it's clear that the US is the worst country in the world at educating Black students, by far. Because racism. No one spends more to achieve less.
mekka okereke :verified:
The typical education experience for a Black boy in the United States, is to have almost all white teachers, mostly women, more than half of whom vote for the most racist candidate on any ballot, and no Black teachers. The teachers have low expectations of you, punish you more than your classmates, and threaten to call the cop who works in the hallway on you at any moment.
I don't know how to explain more clearly, that this is never going to work.
mekka okereke :verified:
People looking to minimize the impacts of racism, believe that Black teachers help through the "role model effect." That's part of it but not the whole story.
There are few enough Black teachers in this country, that we can literally ask a good portion of them what's really happening. It's not just the role model effect. Teachers are shielding Black kids from racism.
Until they can't anymore...
mekka okereke :verified:
This can be countered by Black teachers. ♥️👍🏿
Black students randomly assigned to at least one Black teacher in grades K-3 are 9 percentage points (13%) more likely to graduate from high school and 6 percentage points (19%) more likely to enroll in college than their same-school, same-race peers.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w25254
White kids can benefit from this too, and aren't harmed by it. Black kids from privilege benefit a little. Black boys from underprivileged backgrounds benefit the most.
mekka okereke :verified:
So this is where most of the Black dads are: in jail for unjust arrests. A human rights atrocity committed at a genocidal scale. Millions of dads.
But how do some Black kids in this situation manage to overcome this and get good grades anyway? Many factors, but an important one: Black teachers.♥️👍🏿
School in the US is fantastically racist too. A racist teacher cannot teach a Black student effectively. Even teachers that don't think that they're racist, do this:
mekka okereke :verified:
Another comparison is white Europeans, who don't face this racism minefield.
4 out of 10 EU kids are born to unmarried parents. In France, closer to 6 / 10. Lower the marriage rate, the more men participate in childcare!👍🏿♥️
We call them "progressive."
https://www.statista.com/statistics/276802/births-out-of-wedlock-in-the-eu/
mekka okereke :verified:
Some of you will remember that Walter Scott was shot in the back while running from police. But do you know why he was running?
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/10/why-was-walter-scott-running
If your definition of "stability in the household" revolves around marital status or cohabitation, rather than this systemic racism minefield presented to the parents, I urge you to reflect on that.
I mean, half of y'all's parents are divorced. 🤷🏿♂️ That's clearly not the issue.
mekka okereke :verified:
Most of the time, this is not what the mother wants. Her partner has just been falsely arrested and so can't help with bills. She needs to make rent or she'll be evicted. She applies for assistance not to punish her partner, but to not be homeless with the children.
Even if you are innocent, you've just gone from being an employed, present Black dad...
To a dead beat dad, with warrants for his arrest for failure to pay child support, who can't even apply for many jobs due to the first arrest.
mekka okereke :verified:
Just being falsely arrested will likely cause you to lose your job, and can prevent you from applying for a new one.
The mother of your child will likely need to apply for public assistance while you are locked up. The state will give her financial assistance... and then bill you.😮
You will rack up debt to the state *while you are in jail!*. You will be in "child support arrears."
Änn Euing 📜
@mekkaokereke I went to the US as an exchange student. No one even told me how it works, didn't have money on me on the first day. I was super weirded out by having to pay for lunch. And then the options, fries or pizza basically. Food that kids here get at a party maybe but certainly not every day. Ended up bringing my own just because I did not have the stomach for it. And then all the sugary soft drinks! It's 25 years ago, but I'm still not over it.
mekka okereke :verified:
One of the funniest interactions I see online, is when Americans think it's inspirational that a young white US child is raising money not to buy themselves something, but to pay off their less privileged classmates' "school lunch debt."
US readers are like 🤗"Oh that's so precious! That sweet kid has a good heart!"
And EU readers are like 😮"Wait a minute... Go back a few steps... WTF is school lunch debt?! That's a real thing?! What is wrong with your country?!"
Scijones
@thekernelinyellow @mekkaokereke well, you expect the students to either eat the cheapest shit school pizza meal with no nutrition or bring the same cheap unrefrigerated sandwich everyday.
While hanging out with the rich kids who have much better food right in front of you.
The Kernel in Yellow
I honestly can't wrap my head around how you can expect a school to function without providing food to the students inside it.
Edit because I posted too early: I know it's because they're not supposed to function as school but, hell, how do people believe this?
Scijones
@mekkaokereke man, I'm white, but I was a poor kid and just the fact that food was a question had a serious impact.
And that's one factor. Only one factor.
Konstantin Weddige
@taatm @cadenza @mekkaokereke I still can't wrap my head around at-will employment. If it's more difficult to terminate a gym membership than an employee, there is something fundamentally wrong.
The Animal and the Machine
And again in the US EU readings, the US are taking about the circumstances of the false arrest while the EU say, “You can get just fired? We get two warnings in a HR review except if you do something really wrong. Getting fired for judicial support (and a trial is that) would be unfair and you’d be ‘unfairly dismissed’ and compensated to tens of thousands’.”
I wonder why you can just get fired for nothing? Oh yea, racism.
Pamela Ehn
@mekkaokereke I had a friend who was falsely arrested and even though he got out of jail quickly, he still lost his job because of the reputational damage. Never mind that he didn’t commit the crime.
Steve from Hex Games
@mekkaokereke @Unampho @thekernelinyellow
We have a whole cottage industry of spinning deeply dystopian stories into heartwarming ones.
*Employees donate their sick days to co-worker so they can get cancer treatment.
*Child opens lemonade stand to pay for their own brain surgery.
*Community raises money so 85 year-old veteran can retire from job as Wal-Mart greeter.
*Teacher wins funding for classroom by taking part in humiliating competition.
etc.
BlackDutchSnark
@mekkaokereke as a white woman raised in a small town, going to a predominantly white school, I know I was racially biased at some point, but I worked really hard to be aware of it & tried to not be. It helped that my first teaching jobs were in racially diverse schools & I taught w/a diverse group of teachers who weren’t afraid to talk race w/me. Black young men & women usually did well in my English classes as a result of this, I think. I tried to take each kid w/ no pre-judgement
BlackDutchSnark
@mekkaokereke I think 1 of the best things I did was have real conversations w/those co-teachers about unintentional racism & learn from them. I used to love having those conversations w/my kids & letting the white kids learn from the black kids about what they might do which was unintentionally racist & how to avoid seeming racist. Most were organic real conversations around the lit I taught. We had a lot of eye-opening conversations & that’s what the GQP wants to stop.
Humanist Engineer
@mekkaokereke "As a white man, that fact makes me feel uncomfortable. Maybe I should use my majority privilege to suppress that fact by labeling it an evil CRT fact."
Sharonbw stands with Minnesota
This thread has educated me. I knew almost all of these issues, but had never put them all together cohesively. Thank you.
🍵 holly
@mekkaokereke This is a great thread! I grew up in Louisiana and had very few black teachers. But my middle school Louisiana history teacher was black, and she had us watch Roots. I think this was a stroke of genius because I don't remember that much of Louisiana history, but I do remember Roots!
Pamela Ehn
@mekkaokereke I honestly think that if the black teacher I was supposed to get for third grade hadn’t been replaced by an unqualified white male architect, my schooling would have been far less of a nightmare.
Braz
@mekkaokereke One of the best teachers I *ever* had was a Black woman: Clara Jackson. Amherst County High School, in rural and deeply racist Virginia.
Not only was she encouraging, she was deeply involved in our education and outcomes. A wonderful science teacher long before there was the public recognition in the disparities around women – especially black women – in STEM, she was *also* the coach of our Science Team for our Academic Competition (think: College Bowl) Team.
feritae
@mekkaokereke I had Ms. Becton for 6 weeks in 10th grade (we moved) and I learned how to write an essay from her. And to this day, I can't spell 'separate' without thinking of her because it was a major peeve for her when students spelled it wrong.
It was an honors class and a lot of the other students would make snide comments about her, how she dressed, how she spoke, where she lived (rumor had it she lived in a tent).
I am eternally grateful that she was willing to refresh the basics first. I moved around a lot as a kid and while I was in the "smart classes", I missed a lot of stuff based on when a school taught them. I never officially learned math using decimals but I had math classes about using fractions for 3 straight semesters.
She gave a "recap" of what a student would need for the next lesson. I don't know if it was cultural (never thought to wonder) but I learned more in that 6 weeks than I learned from anyone else ever.
She is who I see when someone says teacher.
Graham Knapp
@mekkaokereke I recounted this to a friend. His immediate response: "what is the sample size?" i.e. "can I find a reason to dismiss this information which makes me uncomfortable?". He got it in the end but it took some work, which leads to your next point...
IanMoore3000
@mekkaokereke @Unampho @thekernelinyellow sad but true: not all children in EU schools get free lunches.
Peter Krefting
@mrundkvist Also this:
"she [had] considered leaving Star Trek at the end of Season 1, hoping to pursue a Broadway career. But MLK asked her to reconsider. A big fan of the show, Dr. King underscored the importance of her character, of what it meant to future African-Americans"
Martin Rundkvist
@mekkaokereke
Who was the woman who described watching Star Trek in the 60s, and seeing Lt. Uhura for the first time? "MOMMA! THERE'S A BLACK LADY ON TV, AND SHE'S NOT THE MAID!!!"
Clay Rivers
@mekkaokereke My mom, who taught elementary school for 38 years, always tells stories about how when integration came to Orlando and the way white parents were so fearful for their kids’ safety. They peered through the windows to make sure they’re kids were okay. I guess they thought their kids would be stewed and served w/a side of cornbread.
But she also says that once white parents learned how much better the Black teacher were, they all clamored to get their kids in Black teachers classes.
Bill Mason 🖖 🎶 📖 🥅
@mrundkvist That was Whoopi Goldberg.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.