Black
folk say: “We need to get more educated, that’s our problem! We don’t get the
resources the white schools get….but if our children would only study
harder….if we would do a better job at turning off the television more often….
then they could learn and get ahead.” To me, this mixes up some important
truths with some very wrong conclusions.
The
truth is that this system has consistently denied a good education to Black
children and continues to do so today, just like the execution of slaves who
taught other slaves to read.
Today,
the majority (remember, I said majority) of our Black children in public
education are confined to prison-like inner city schools which get much fewer
resources, the true history and dynamics of our society are covered up, and this
leads to little or no attempt to instill critical or creative thinking.
These
schools send Black children the message, in ways spoken and unspoken, that
there is no real future for them in this society. And the real crime is that
many Black youth then end up buying into the system’s lies that they’re
inferior, leading our kids to turn off their own potential to learn, and in
doing so, turn away from the wider world of knowledge and science.
Suppose
every single Black child somehow got an education that enabled them to think
critically and to master the skills involved in different kinds of mental
labor.
Would millions of today’s Black’s then be able
to get good jobs and climb out of poverty? Hell no! Even if you could somehow
eliminate discrimination, so long as the system of capitalism is in effect,
people are employed only if some capitalist can make money off their
employment. See what I’m sayin?
By
that standard, when there is a demand for technical jobs, those jobs are being
shifted to you know where….where people work for next to nothin. The
capitalists know this shit of course, and that’s one big reason that they’re
not providing a good education for the Black children in the inner cities.
In
essence, they don’t want to raise the expectations of Black people too high.
They fear the hell out of a world in which millions of Black people have
knowledge and skills, and therefore expect to get a decent job and a better
life.
Many
old school political operatives of the ruling class recall very well the experience
of the 60’s, when Black people’s hopes and expectations were raised, and then
dismissed. This resulted in the massive explosion of righteous anger and
rebellion among Black people, particularly our youth, and today the ruling
class has a deep fear that again raising expectations would be far too socially
explosive.
Still,
unless and until there is a concentrated effort, backed up by Federal power, to
actually overcome inequality and white supremacy in every scope of life, not
only will educational systems themselves continue to reinforce this shit, but
no amount of education will overcome and destroy it.
Even
today, when somebody Black succeeds against all odds in getting a good
education, the discrimination remains in full effect. Education alone is not
enough; it will take a revolution, in which the rule of the exploiters and
oppressors is broken and state power is put into the hands of our people, to
thoroughly uproot white supremacy.
One of
the key features, and necessities, of our new society will be to encourage this
creativity and critical thinking among our people, developing their potential
and enabling them to increasingly contribute, in many diverse ways, to the
development of society, and the emancipation of humanity. As part of building
the revolutionary movement, we must fight non-stop against the savage
inequalities of today’s education system.
And the revolutionary movement itself must
educate our people in the real history and dynamics of society, in science, and
in the scientific method of critical thinking. But education alone, of whatever
kind, cannot solve the problem. Education as “the way out” turns people’s eyes
away from the real problem and even leads them to blame themselves when it
turns out to be yet another false hope. Don’t be mad at me.
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