"What it's Like to Teach Black Students?"/ A MUST READ, TRUST ME.

I hope the BPN board doesn't get up-set with me for posting this.

This is a very long essay but it's worth the read. I only copied & pasted certain points, the essay is very long. I pasted the web address of the whole essay at the bottom of the page.
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"What it's Like to Teach Black Students?"
After you read this essay, I hope you'll post your thoughts on what if any implications you believe this has for what we should do differently to better serve the needs of African-American kids, their non-African-American classmates, and in turn, the nation as a whole.

I have noticed when reading about black educational problems is the blame is always placed on the teachers and school. However, when discussing white and Asian achievement there is almost never a mention of the quality of teachers and schools which results in the achievement of Whites and Asians.

For decades, the country has been
lamenting the poor academic performance
of blacks and there is much to
lament. There is no question, however,
that many blacks come to school with a
serious handicap that is not their fault.
At home they have learned a dialect that
is almost a different language. Blacks
not only mispronounce words; their
grammar is often wrong. When a black
wants to ask, “Where is the bathroom?”
he may actually say “Whar da badroom
be?” Grammatically, this is the equivalent
of “Where the bathroom is?” And
this is the way they speak in high school.
Students write the way they speak, so
this is the language that shows up in
written assignments.

Most of the blacks I taught simply
had no interest in academic subjects. I
taught history, and students would often
say they didn’t want to do an assignment
or they didn’t like history because it was
all about white people. Of course, this
was “diversity” history, in which every
cowboy’s black cook got a special page
on how he contributed to winning the
West, but black children still found it
inadequate. So I would throw up my
hands and assign them a project on a
real, historical black person. My favorite
was Marcus Garvey. They had never
heard of him, and I would tell them to
research him, but they never did. They
didn’t care and they didn’t want to do
any work.

Anyone who teaches blacks soon
learns that they have a completely different
view of government from whites.
Once I decided to fill 25 minutes by
having students write about one thing
the government should do to improve
America. I gave this question to three
classes totaling about 100 students,
approximately 80 of whom were black.
My few white students came back with
generally “conservative” ideas. “We
need to cut off people who don’t work,”
was the most common suggestion.
Nearly every black gave a variation on
the theme of “We need more government
services.”

My students had only the vaguest
notion of who pays for government
services. For them, it was like a magical
piggy bank that never goes empty. One
black girl was exhorting the class on
the need for more social services and I
kept trying to explain that people, real
live people, are taxed for the money to
pay for those services. “Yeah, it come
from whites,” she finally said. “They
stingy anyway.”

“Many black people make over
$50,000 dollars a year and you would
also be taking away from your own
people,” I said.

She had an answer to that: “Dey
half breed.” The class agreed. I let the
subject drop.

Many black girls are perfectly happy
to be welfare queens. On career day, one
girl explained to the class that she was
going to have lots of children and get fat
checks from the government. No one in
the class seemed to have any objection
to this career choice.

Surprising attitudes can come out in
class discussion. We were talking about
the crimes committed in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina, and I brought up the
rape of a young girl in the bathroom of
the Superdome. A majority of my students
believed this was a horrible crime
but a few took it lightly. One black boy
spoke up without raising his hand: “Dat
no big deal. They thought they is gonna
die so they figured they have some fun.
Dey jus’ wanna have a fun time; you
know what I’m sayin’?” A few black
heads nodded in agreement.

My department head once asked all
the teachers to get a response from all
students to the following question: “Do
you think it is okay to break the law if it
will benefit you greatly?” By then, I had
been teaching for a while and was not
surprised by answers that left a young,
liberal, white woman colleague aghast.
“Yeah” was the favorite answer. As one
student explained, “Get dat green.”

There is a level of conformity among
blacks that whites would find hard to
believe. They like one kind
of music: rap. They will
vote for one political party:
Democrat. They dance
one way, speak one way,
are loud the same way,
and fail their exams in the
same way. Of course, there
are exceptions but they
are rare.

Whites are different.
Some like country music,
others heavy metal, some
prefer pop, and still others,
God forbid, enjoy rap music. They have
different associations, groups, almost
ideologies. There are jocks, nerds,
preppies, and hunters. Blacks are all—
well—black, and they are quick to let
other blacks know when they deviate
from the norm.

One might object that there are important
group differences among blacks that a white man simply cannot detect. I
have done my best to find them, but so
far as I can tell, they dress the same, talk
the same, think the same. Certainly, they
form rival groups, but the groups are not
different in any discernible way. There
simply are no groups of blacks that are
as distinctly different from each other
as white “nerds,” “hunters,” or “Goths,”
for example.

How the world looks to blacks
For the whole essay click>http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-teacher-speaks-out-wha...
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After you read the essay do you think the NABSE- National Alliance of Black School Educators would find this essay a lil' look in the mirror, so to speak?http://www.nabse.org/index.html or would the National Association of Black Journalists print something like this? http://www.nabj.org/conventions/2009/index_redirect.html
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Yours truly,
Anthony Smith

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Yes, unfortunately that's basically us in a nutshell. Similar things were said to me by young black juvies in the juvenile system as well. One of the reasons it was very difficult for me to go to God's word that went contrary to what the culture had obviously conditioned many of us to think this way. Why when I speak up against abortion and question some of Obama's policies, so many black folx even on BPN are quickly to attack. We I guess are supposed to walk the proverbial "black" line and those who deviate as the article suggests is labeled as something other than being black. I'm a conservative, not a democrat nor a republicrat. I vote biblically rather than racially, since I'm not black first and Christian second. If it doesn't line up with the Word of God, its a ....LIE, HERESY and DECEPTION. And its not just the young, it mainly comes from the adults as well. So the question is, how do we reverse the misconceptions, lies and deception to be able to foster what biblical truths we need to have an abundant life that Christ calls us to have if we only would make Him Lord over our lives and allow Him to transform us truly so that we can...LIVE in harmony with our fellow man by communing with our God.
brother Anthony,

I suspect the basic motivation for this article is sheer stereotypical propaganda ... written by a racist white who in my opinion has no business teaching black kids,. This is a teacher who will stifle an academic gift, or misdirect academic talent because he doesnt believe the student has a chance anyway. How do people like this get into classrooms? Its pretty transparent.

C'mon, dont you know black people who like music other than rap? And how many folk u know making more than $50K these days? and the half-witted "ebonics". Gimme a break. And as for voting democrat, I took lot of flack from my family for voting for GW both times. Sure I was feeling pretty ill and outraged by the end of his administration. I wanted to shot him and cheney and call it an accident much like the way cheney shot his own friend, covered it up and got away calling it an accident. At the time he first ran, given the attack on WTC and the fact that his daddy was former prez I believed him to be the better choice. You know, kingship passed down to sons as in biblical days and alla that. I know, I know. Now.

Prez Obama is not perfect, but he does a lot to raise the overall esteem of blacks in general and black men in particular. Sure, there are whites that are livid he got elected. Too bad, it is what it is. Only thing is, his election motivates essays like this one, designed to tear down and not build up.
Raising the "self-esteem" among blacks? Thought we were called to "Deny self" rather than esteem self? Thought we were to seek self abasement rather than self esteem? We are to only esteem Christ. And there goes my point. When we are just dirt and water that needs and seeks to be esteemed is contrary to God's innerant Word. Trust you don't want me to esteem myself. Who am I, oh wretched man that I am to esteem me?

Php 2:3 "doing nothing through faction or through vainglory, but in lowliness of mind each counting other better than himself;"
Php 2:4 not looking each of you to his own things, but each of you also to the things of others.
Php 2:5 Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

And this is the problem I am seeing in our communities, a hyper selfish and esteeming self the point of fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, based on parents doing the same and pastors and clergy not teaching and preaching how to abase oneself, but instead teaching the wicked and false doctrine of "health, wealth and happiness" that only seeks to bless oneself, instead of being a blessing to others through much sacrifice and suffering to further the Good News of Jesus Christ by leaving the comforts of life to engage the harvest for our reproach.

Heb 13:13 "Let us therefore go forth unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach."

Our children are collectively dying because the Sons and Daughters of Thunder have surrendered and not set the standard high in expectations that Christ mandates us to have!

So welcome to the terrordome.....
ok, yu know I had to go check this out .. this guy Marty isnt the teacher (he is bascially a reporter), but claims he heard from "someone" in the trenches. Heres a part of his intriduction to the piece above:

"... We rarely, however, hear from a more typical teacher who, day to day, teaches low-achieving African-American kids. So it was with interest that I read this truly depressing account from a teacher. I've edited out a couple of unnecessarily snarky sentences, which are irrelevant to the issue. ... The essay does make me feel uncomfortable because while it presents an eye-opening report from the trenches, it is just one person's report and one that feels more extreme than what I experienced when I taught in a heavily African-American school. Also, while the author made passing mention that not all Blacks behaved as he described, those comments felt, to me, too parenthetical.. Of course, many black students are high-achieving and motivated...."
Anthony, dear Anthony can't you see that the 'WHITE' writer of this article is NOT different from bigoted, blinded, bred white racists? He claims 'blacks are all the same' while simultaneously his words prove that white 'bigoted' America is all the same whether they call themselves, KKK, Neo-Nazi, Jewish, Italian, Irish, German, Polish, etc. as they express this demented outlook with regard to Black America?

If you are college educated or blue collar working class or poor working class, how many blacks do you know that speak such things as this 'being' professed? Heck, just look at this board of diversified believers, how many have professed, 'dey not right' or, 'white man stingy anyway?' Where oh Anthony are you really coming from to post such nonsense? Do tell?


Oh, don't get me wrong, yeah sure, some factions, in fact, an increasingly amount of disenfrachised from respectable AA culture black beings do speak this way. They are of a Willie Lynch slave mentality and since they and their parent are limited in education or connection to the black church, true black history, etc., they would speak such ignorance. They fell along the wayside. Let us pray for a revivial in our community to set such increasingly captives free.


At any rate, the point I would have you comprehend is this, Has not African/American believers been kind to YOU since you've come on this board? Are not we a broad spectrum of AA society? How then could you dare to give credence to some 'hick, blinded, right-wing, devilish, abomination?' What is your point? You believe him? Or, you want blacks to become as ignorant as he and proclaim his voice the voice of the few rational Caucasians who we know are out there? Unlike this blind, bred, ignoramus, we are people of truth, we can't do that as It would make no sense especially in light of the fact, that the 'FACTS' contradict his assertions.

I reitierate, think about it. Again, , just look at this very board. Rev. Raleigh Jones says this very
board now consist of 10,000 members.
The majority are AA voices. As so, how many of them have you heard belt out such ignorance as described in the article?

I have had some cruel black forces come up against my well-meaning, sincere, speech but I could not before a Just and Righteous God proclaim them of the sort as described in the article, lest I be a liar like the being in the article.

Now granted, if I had this abominable beings attitude that more or less consisted of, going into the poorest of the poor, intellectually deprived sections of AA community where poverty, drugs, illicit behavior is set up as the norm. Then, purposely blind myself to their dreadful circumstances and proclaim their circumstances the WHOLE of what AA's are about that would not only make me a racist, psycho, insane to the brain bigot, with a right-wing agenda but it would also make me suspect among AA's for not recognizing that such madness still exists and presents such moronic, ignorant, bigotry as 'intelligentsia'. Get the picture?

African/Americans are so intelligent from the least educated to the greatest that we refuse to blind ourselves to the fact that there are many well meaning Caucasians who do NOT reason like this buffoon. In fact, that goes for the, as the article put it, 'they all stingy whites' and 'dey be dis or dat' speaking AA's. Yes, such in their illiteracy show themselves more SOUND, rational, and INTELLIGENT than this buffoon who dared spoke this 'they all alike' rhetoric.

Yeah, tell it to President Obama, and the MILLIONS OF INTELLIGENT AFRICAN/AMERICANS WHO VOTED HIM INTO OFFICE. Heh....what a pack of white bred 'all alike' perceiving, filth. God Have mercy on them and let us as intelligent African/Americans thank God that we KNOW not all whites perceive such madness along the lines that this poor, deluded soul whose article YOU posted perceive it. I hope YOU won't either Anthony. Yes, I hope your eyes will be opened to black unity and not black destruction via thoughts of this sort of white festering in your soul.
I read the article and must admit that although not completely accurate, it is very factual. 7 of my 12 years as an educator have been at predominately black schools. I mean schools that are Title I (where 95% or more students are on free or reduced food programs). The academic achievement level among those students are horrifying and I am a product of an ALL BLACK (only white people there were about 10 teachers) and a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). I did student teaching at a predominately white high school and multicultural middle school. The students I have experienced at the predominately black schools reflect much of what the author wrote. They all dress, act, and think alike. Many are so afraid of being smart that they intentionally fail tests they know they could pass (which was frustrating on my part because I would end up dumbing down tests to achieve decent grades for students).

Many students were surprised to learn that some of their favorite rap artists listened to music genres other than rap and hip hop. Many students were surprised to find out that Black people like myself could share different religious and political views. And what got me the most is that when I showed different behavior (like choosing to investigate incidents of alleged racial prejudice or discrimination instead of just shouting and calling for people's heads) I was called the meanest of things by both parents and students.
I can admit that being an educated black male from the hood (whatever that means now), who lost a mother and didnt know his father until his teens, and was a ward of the state causes me to wonder why there is such a problem with black students today. I continue to tell my students that their success or failure is no one's fault but their own. There are plenty of obstacles designed to defeat black youth, but they are only obstacles that can be overcome and not defeating. Even after sharing my testimony and background, I still hear far too many of my black students say three fatal words that even I with all the anointing and power from God cant change and that is " I DON'T CARE!"

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