I have been writing for some time about the problems of public education. I also have been highly critical of the elements in popular culture that encourage young people toward illiteracy, brutishness, hatred of women, whorishness and mindless materialism. Now we find that these troubles are combining in yet another way: as obstacles that prevent black kids from doing well in society.
It is often difficult to talk about these things, because those who function on the racist circuits of our nation describe poor academic performance by black kids as proof of inherent inferiority, the intellectual quicksand of bad genes.
Racists are always ready to say, "Here we go again. No matter how much money you spend on them, no matter what the excuses are, they just can't do it."
Such people will be thrilled to learn that, according to a newly published study, the gains in reading scores that black kids had made in recent years to narrow the gap with white kids have begun to fall away.
Whether in the low or middle or upper middle class, black kids are not performing as well as their white counterparts. Even white kids who are less than well-to-do are performing better academically than the black children of well-to-do parents -- parents who have graduated from college and always believed in hard work. The black kids are not suffering from any fundamental learning difficulties, and their intellectual capabilities are the same as those of the white kids.
So what is happening? Here it is: They have a perverted sense of "authenticity," and they fear being seen as rejecting their roots in favor of "trying to be white." Any black person who raises these issues is accused of "self-hatred" or "hating young black people."
In the recent past, many bellowed that the biggest hindrance to progress was that black people hated themselves too deeply to take charge of their fates. From what we now see, the tragedy is that too many young black people so deeply love the wrong things
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