About 10 years ago when I returned to campus to attend graduate school the campus was blanketed with fliers which caught my eye: "Why There Are More Black Males In Prison Than In College". This topic was interesting enough for me to go out of my way to make it to the meeting that particular evening.
The flier, as it turned out, was a snare to get me and other socially conscious people to come to a recruiting meeting for the "American Socialist Union" (I know I have the name wrong). I listened attentively to about 60 minutes of details about how past oppression in America and the present scheming of racist capitalist institutions have channeled Black people into the lower rungs of the social order. Since capitalism needs an impoverished labor force to survive another day - the Black community which is a marginalized constituency having just received its voting rights was a worthy candidate to be the wad of chewing gum under the capitalist beast's shoe.
As I read the article in "The American Scholar" I was made to think about this past episode in which a flier had attracted my attention. The cover title "Affirmative Action's Last Chance" drew my interest and caused me to spend $7.95.
The article enumerated the inferior academic proficiency of African-American student as compared to Asian, White and even Mexican American students. It talked about how Affirmative Actions has lead to the college admissions of thousands of minority students who now are members of the middle class. It talked about the various efforts to remove racial preferences from the college admissions process. The author showed how the removal of these policies by the "assault" from groups that took the policy to the US Supreme Court lead to a precipitous loss of Black students at elite colleges. In summary - remove Affirmative Action and the number of Blacks in college will be reduced. The Black student cannot stand on his merit and compete with other students upon reaching the finished line after matriculating through the public schools.
Since there has been an outright assault upon public college institutions by groups such as "The American Civil Rights Institute" lead by Ward Connerly the duty is to the PRIVATE universities to pick up the slack.
The article illuminated the "Prison Industrial Complex", just as the socialists did at their meeting years ago, though absent the conspiratorial "tail wags dog" illumination of the outcomes that we see. It reframed the individual struggle for admissions by Black people into the nationalized need for an educated labor force for the future to augment our global competitiveness.
The Grand Obfuscation: Looking Backward At The Feeder Schools & The Enforcements Within
I get suspicious when I hear a narrative orchestrated but which looks past several key points. Points that would force the author to indict those that they seek to protect, mostly for ideological reasons.
In the case of this article the glaring flaw is that it chooses to look at the state of Black students at the finish line of their K-12 public school experience. They demand that the institutions ahead of them make accommodations for them while barely making any demands upon the feeder systems to make effective reforms. This would be like demanding a down stream "water treatment system" while desperately avoiding focus upon the industrial operation that is dumping the offending materials into the waterway upstream.
I am made to wonder if the author of this piece even believes that the institutions and the culture that within is even capable of rising to the task. With these institutions we are made aware of the political victory that they represent in the struggle. I am not sure if the author and other people are capable of tying the outcomes with the need for those who grant this power to demand more and to implement EFFECTIVE strategies that would express these outcomes.
In "nationalizing" the problem the people in the institutions ahead are asked to show "compassion". The greatest void in compassion is seen in those who entrenchments disallow them to make the necessary reforms UPSTREAM.
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