STRAY PIGEONS, SLAVERY, AND THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP
"Black Americans and their leaders would
be far better served if they would address the real problems in black education instead
of the superficial and misleading issue of the name of a school." So begins
the April 19, 2005 Berkeley Daily Planet commentary by Berkeley resident Michael
Larrick, writing on his opposition to the petition to change the name of Berkeley's
Jefferson Elementary School.
The petition was submitted to Jefferson Elementary principal Betty Delaney in the
spring of 2003, and called for the name change on the grounds that Thomas Jefferson
"held as many as 150 African and African-American men, women and children in
bondage, denying them the very rights which he had asserted for all in the Declaration
of Independence. .... For some ... a school name which fails to acknowledge or respect
the depth and importance of their people's collective sorrow is personally offensive...."
The question of whether the name of Jefferson Elementary should be
changed has been argued at length in the letters to the editor pages of this paper,
and elsewhere, and the issue of whether it would be changed was decided this
week by the Berkeley School Board, which denied the petition on a 3-2 vote.
But Mr. Larrick's commentary raises a different point, which is whether
the issue of Thomas Jefferson as a slaveholder-and by extension, the issues raised
by the institution of American slavery in general-should be a topic of such discussion
at all, given the many problems being faced by African American children in the public
schools. It is Mr. Larrick's opinion that such a discussion is, at best, a waste
of time, and takes away from a concentrated attack on what has been come to be called
the "achievement gap"-in which the educational results of black students
in general (as measured by standardized test scores and grades, for example) persistently
lag behind the educational results of their white counterparts.
"The name of a school has absolutely nothing to do with academic achievement,"
Mr. Larrick argues. "The real reasons for the 'achievement gap' are uncomfortable
for many to discuss so the portrayal of blacks as perennial victims is used to absolve
them from having to accept responsibility for their own actions and bad choices."
He concludes that "the black community needs to look to the future and make
some changes in their approach to education and it goes far beyond the name of a
school. Time is running out on the ability to play the victim card. Doing something
to change incredible school drop out rate and the number of single mothers is what
should be a priority or you may as well just change the name of the school to San
Quentin Prep."
Mr. Larrick has let fly a number of stray pigeons out of this bush, in all directions
at once. Let us pick them off quickly, one by one, before they get too far away.
The first stray pigeon is the inference that African Americans suffer from the "Gerald
Ford Syndrome," taken from the remark by President Lyndon Johnson that because
Mr. Ford had played too much football without a helmet, he could not both walk and
chew gum at the same time. The apparent contention by Mr. Larrick is that African
Americans cannot explore the historical causes of our present problems while simultaneously
working to solve those problems, but, like Sam told his son, "you can either
plow this field lengthways, or you can plow it wideways, but if you try to do it
both at once, you're gonna end up on the highways."
But that first stray pigeon is actually downed by Mr. Larrick's own second, which
is his contention that the Jefferson name change petition was brought by something
he calls "black Americans and their leaders." Actually, the name change
was not brought forth as part of some general black agenda, either local or national,
even if such a general black agenda exists (which is doubtful). Instead, the Jefferson
name change idea was initiated in part by Jefferson Elementary school teachers-some
of them African American, some of them of other races-who pursued the name change
issue on their off time-breaks and lunches, evenings and weekends-while continuing
at their day job of educating the students at Jefferson.
But Mr. Larrick has set forth a third stray pigeon-the implication that a prolonged
discussion of American slavery is unproductive-which has flown far and fast, and
we must hurry to catch it.
The question comes, to what cause can we attribute what Mr. Larrick identifies as
the "lag of black performance?"
In his commentary, Mr. Larrick cites, as one example of that "lag," the
work of Dr. John Ogbu, who "found that the very same problems plagued both Oakland
and the affluent black suburb of Cleveland, Shaker Heights Ohio. Black students were
absent more often, did less homework, watched more television and had less involved
parents. They did not value education … [Dr. Ogbu] found that the students own attitudes
hindered their academic achievement." Dr. Obgu's study, Mr. Larrick continues,
"raises some uncomfortable questions about race, opportunity and responsibility."
Yes, but what are the answers?
One can say, as Mr. Jefferson himself once did, that blacks underachieve because
we simply don't have the tools to compete. "Comparing [blacks] by their faculties
of memory, reason, and imagination," Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1782 essay
Notes On Virginia, "it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the
whites; in reason much inferior… and in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and
anomalous. … They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as
prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated.
But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of
plain narration…"
Or one can blame it, as Mr. Larrick now does, not on genetic inferiority but on what
he calls the black cultivation of what he calls a "victim mentality," a
sort of code word for saying that African-Americans are too lazy to get up and solve
our own problems, but find it easier to simply shuffle along while continuing to
blame our plight on a long-ended situation.
But could the persistent "lag of black performance" have some roots in
slavery and could a serious study of slavery-not a mere condemnation-reveal those
causes and have a hand in the cure? Beyond that, could a serious study of slavery
be profitable in understanding other aspects of American life? Having run out of
space, we must leave the answers to those interesting questions to another time.