American Blog

Mr. Michael Vass is author of www.mvass.com :

“These are our children and we will benefit by or pay for what they become.” – James Baldwin

Have you ever had the situation where you are reading an article and it mentions a source or quote and you wanted to find out more about it? In the cases where you are doing the reading on the internet, you then search out the information only to be lead to even more items that enthrall you? I have and when this chain of events starts to unfold for me I generally wind up with a very long night and little sleep. And waking tired the next day is worth it for the knowledge I have gained. Today is one of those times.

I was originally just looking for interesting news in entertainment that was focused on Black African Americans and/or Hispanics from a source other than Yahoo News [Yahoo tends to have a good base of news on most subjects] or the Fox News cable network [which is biased I realize]. What I found had little entertainment but intriguing facts. The start of this trail began with an unrelated article from blackamericaweb.com. That lead me to usnews.com, followed by dailyprincetonian.com, thecrimson.com, frostillustrated.com, and ultimately The”>http://www.jbhe.com/”>The Journal for Blacks in Higher Education.

What I found is this. In 2004, the last full year where data is available, 4.4% of the higher education enrollments were Black African American males. That’s 758,400 in total. The number is pitiful, but it gets worse. The percentage of foreign-born black males that have a four-year degree in the nation is 28%, White American males are in excess of 28% with four-year degrees. Though the number was not presented in any of my readings, considering that as a guesstimate 10% of enrolled students fail to attain a degree I shudder to think of the percentage of Black African American males with a 4-year degree. Now get ready. This is the highest number of enrollments ever.

The outlook may improve somewhat in the near-term. In a manner of speaking. Harvard has started the ball rolling in getting universities to eliminate early admissions. Princeton has followed and many more are expected to do the same. Why this is important is that early admissions, especially for top-rated universities, tend to have higher acceptance rates. Harvard accepts around 50% of its class in early admissions, Princeton around one third. At Johns Hopkins 77% of all black early applicants were accepted, in comparison to the 36% of acceptance of all black applicants. Early admissions make a massive difference. The reason being is that most universities require commitments for the early admission. Lower-income students often cannot know what kind of financial aid they can receive, either from the government or the university and thus can have a serious income gap. This often prevents access to early admission. Personally, back in 1986, I know this was the case for me, thus there was no chance at Harvard or equivalent institutions.

So the playing field will even out a bit in the future. Of course I do mean a little bit as less than 10% of the student bodies at Harvard and Princeton are African American. In fact a study done in 2004 by researchers from the University”>http://www.jbhe.com/latest/harvardendsearlyadmission.html”>University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University found that 41% of black students at 28 colleges were immigrants or children of immigrants. By comparison 9% of the entire United States population falls into that same category.

But what does the African American student have to look forward to? When I was in high school, in the Bronx and it was public school, my history book summed up all of African American history as 2 sentences on Egypt, 2 or 3 on Crispus Attucks, and another mentioning that slavery was legal then and will be discussed more in the chapters on the Civil War. That was about it. Perhaps the fact that most of the school books I had were 10 or more years old was a factor [my college-bound physics class had a textbook that was 21 years old, 3 more than me in my senior year] but I think not as my youngest sister (14 years my junior) had a history book that had a total of 2 pages on the subject. So I was interested in taking classes on African American history at my college. Had I gone to Princeton I would have been sorely disappointed. Had I desired to, I could not have majored in African American studies. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=514388″>It has taken Princeton 37 years to create a concentration in the subject.

It’s taken 37 years, and it will still take another 5 to build into a major according to current plans. Some wonder why there is a discrepancy in the highest levels of business, or why the African American middle-class is so small. I think this gives a partial answer to the insensitivities and difficulties of that question. Add to that the fact that in most all colleges and universities the overwhelming numbers of alumni are not African Americans. Recognize that the parents and grand-parents of many students never had the option to go to universities, especially those at the top, Princeton included. For those that could go, we are speaking of a small number of higher income families.

This is why I agree with this statement by University of Illinois professor Walter Benn Michaels, “>http://www.jbhe.com/news_views/52_harvard-blackstudents.html”>“When students and faculty activists struggle for cultural diversity, they are in large part battling over what skin color the rich kids have.”

So lower income African American students (in particular the males) are still waging an uphill battle. Even initiatives such as the Harvard financial aid program that eliminates loans for students that have families with incomes under $60,000 have not prompted an increase above 10% for students of low income families (in which African American students are predominant).

What is to be done about this I ask? If you are a Democrat, there are promises of reforms to education; yet the same promises have been made since before I was in high school. Inner city youth are decidedly worse educated now than at any time prior. Estimates ranges around 70% of African American males are dropping out of high school. Initiatives to improve this percentage have been blocked as cited by Mike”>http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/sayitloud/kane928″>Mike Bowler, former Baltimore Sun education reporter in 1995 “In Detroit a judge declared all-male academies unconstitutional after the National Organization for Women took the district to court. The federal Department of Education killed an experiment in Miami, saying it amounted to gender discrimination. And Philadelphia, school officials canceled a single-sex program that seemed to be paying off in higher school grades and improved attendance after the American Civil Liberties Union complained.” The ACLU and NOW are both strong supporters of the Democratic Party. Republicans have done slightly more, in my opinion, but nothing that would truly stem the tide.

Even with all this one thing is clear to me. This cannot go on. Complaining about the current situation is not an action. To quote what some would call a silly character in a silly fantasy movie “Do or do not, there is no in-between.” [Yoda, Star Wars – The Empire Strikes Back] Allowing things to remain status quo is a death sentence to the minds of the African American youth of this nation. Having compiled this information I am doing something in providing what I have gleaned. That is one part of why I write my posts. The next step is up to the masses.

Higher education is not just an idea for “rich kids” or “white people.” To think so is to delude ones self into a vortex of disappointment and suffering. Knowledge is one of the most powerful tools available to anyone on the planet. Knowledge has allowed me to travel and live in Russia, be a stockbroker, work in investor relations and become the owner of my corporation. I’m not rich, yet, but I can make it and it’s only possible because of what I have learned. Rich is a subjective term though. To live well is a richness, to experience life and cultures from across the globe is attaining richness. To be able to communicate the thoughts in one’s mind to another human being in any format is a form of richness.

Money is a tool to attain the greater riches that life provides, at least to me. Knowledge is a currency that cannot be sold but can be used, invested and profited from. Granting the youth of today and tomorrow the ability to have that currency in the same amount available to any other kid in America is an obligation. I’m not waiting to die to give my nephew an inheritance; I’m helping to give him a currency he will be able to use throughout his life. What are you doing?

This is what I think, what do you think?