There has been much back and forth as to be expected about the movie especially since Tyler Perry was involved in its production. However, since every black blogger has an obligatory "For Colored... [insert whatever's fucked up about the Black community here]" who am I to be any different.
Not to get into a black gender war or anything, but since the movie - from what I heard - had more to do with "colored boys" and their dysfunctional behavior. I wanted to take a moment to shine some light on some pretty damning news via a study released yesterday by Council of the Great City Schools, via The New York Times:
An achievement gap separating black from white students has long been documented — a social divide extremely vexing to policy makers and the target of one blast of school reform after another.Great, because this news is so bad that this is something we must discuss, folks. As a matter of fact, in light of this revealing study, I'm now motivated to start an online movement in an attempt to save our "colored boys".
But a new report focusing on black males suggests that the picture is even bleaker than generally known.
Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.
Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.
The data was distilled from highly respected national math and reading tests, known as the National Assessment for Educational Progress, which are given to students in fourth and eighth grades, most recently in 2009. The report, “A Call for Change,” is to be released Tuesday by the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocacy group for urban public schools.
Although the outlines of the problem and many specifics have been previously reported, the group hopes that including so much of what it calls “jaw-dropping data” in one place will spark a new sense of national urgency.
“What this clearly shows is that black males who are not eligible for free and reduced-price lunch are doing no better than white males who are poor,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the council.
The report shows that black boys on average fall behind from their earliest years. Black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate and black children are twice as likely as whites to live in a home where no parent has a job. In high school, African-American boys drop out at nearly twice the rate of white boys, and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower. In college, black men represented just 5 percent of students in 2008.
The analysis of results on the national tests found that math scores in 2009 for black boys were not much different than those for black girls in Grades 4 and 8, but black boys lagged behind Hispanics of both sexes, and they fell behind white boys by at least 30 points, a gap sometimes interpreted as three academic grades.
The search for explanations has recently looked at causes besides poverty, and this report may further spur those efforts.
Yep, I'm sure you'd be shocked to know that the real underlying issue here, are boys being raised by single mothers. I mean that is the problem with the black community, no? You know, irresponsible black women?
“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”I dunno what that Ronald Ferguson guy was talking about. Doesn't he know that the success of black children in life is predicated on the marital status of their parents? The nerve of him to suggest something as "liberal-minded" as increased funding for schools and mentoring programs to cater to black children.
Those include “conversations about early childhood parenting practices,” Dr. Ferguson said. “The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.”
The report urges convening a White House conference, encouraging Congress to appropriate more money for schools and establishing networks of black mentors.
Anyway, I just wanted to bring this information front and center so we can have a realistic yet solution oriented discussion on the issue at hand. That would be, "colored boys" who grow up to negatively impact the lives of "colored girls", out of their frustration of being unable to find decent employment because of gold fronts. Umm, yeah, please don't mention anything about underfunded inner-city schools or property taxes.
I mean certainly when a parent gives an ethnic sounding name to a "colored boy", he is automatically put at a disadvantage. Add to that the fact that he's raised by a single mother surely he's destined to fail in school; and life in general. Without many choices, he's forced to take to a life of crime by selling drugs while holding on to the dream of being a rapper. You know. pretty much as all "colored boys" are known to do, right?
