Education Has Always Been An Imperative Aspect Of The

I will be using a wide array of sources to discuss this topic including: Neda Brisport’s “Racism & Power: The Inaccessibility of opportunity in the educational system in the United States” and David J. Johns presentation “Disrupting Implicit Racial Bias and Other Forms of Discrimination to Improve Access, Achievement, and Wellness for Students of Color”. I will be incorporating more sources in the future, but these are strong sources to start with as they not only go into what our education system is supposed to be like, but they take the time to trace the history of the United States education system, including all litigation issues it underwent, to illustrate how far we have come today. Considering John’s presentation is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, it will add a lot of credibility to my

In the mid 1800s, the question of whether slavery was ethical or not was a particularly contentious matter. Slaves struggled to withstand the harsh treatments from their master’s, along with getting an education, until 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment formally abolished slavery. Although slavery was no longer tolerated, the racial bigotry did not end. Fast forward to the 1950s, and racial inequality is still prevalent in society. Segregation existed in almost every aspect of life ranging from miniscule topics such as where one can sit on the bus, to more serious topics such as quality of education one child receives. This discrimination was fought through protests in the civil rights movement throughout the 1950s and 1960s. As an American high school student in a country still plagued with racial discrimination today, it is imperative to remember the true value of a quality education. While James Baldwin’s “A Talk to Teachers” and Frederick Douglass’s “Learning to Read and Write” both emphasize the need for racial equality in education, Baldwin’s forceful and angry tone ultimately make his speech the more rhetorically effective of the two.

America’s education system is one of the most respectable, reputable and sought after commodities in our society, but it is also the most overcrowded, discriminatory, and controversial system ever established. Most people yearn for a higher education because it 's what 's expected in this society in order to get ahead. It means a better job, more money, power, prestige and a sense of entitlement. But this system has let down the children that are supposed to benefit from it. Education discriminates against minorities, and poorer class students are not expected nor encouraged to attain a higher education. The education system is set up to ensure that every child get a basic

Personally, I believe education is the key to combating racism. We must education our peers on our cultures. We must explain that “colorblindness” in society is not what’s best. Only by embracing and recognizing each other differences we will be able to break the social bubbles we live in. I’ve gained a stronger sense of racial awareness through this course. I have the ability to challenge and change other people’s ideologies and understand my own. I know because of my social position have scholarships, financial aide and the values of hard work and education instilled in me by my parents and grandparents. I’m also aware that many people are not able to gain that same access. Because of my racial awareness there is so much more I want to find out about the contributing factors that led to my family’s social position in New Orleans. It is through my racial awareness I plan to beat the system.

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.” –Richard Wright, Black Boy. The author suffered and lived through an isolated society, where books were the only option for him to escape the reality of the world. Wright wrote this fictionalized book about his childhood and adulthood to portray the dark and cruel civilization and to illustrate the difficulties that blacks had, living in a world run by whites.

The United States has been plague with racism. While a percentage of Americans choose to deny the existence of it, the problem thrives. In the Brown vs. Board of Education of 1954, the separation of race in public school where outlawed. The southern states had a difficult time adapting to the change, thus causing riots and violence. After years of trying to overcome a dark past, we are still faced with the same problem 60 years later.

Much of America’s past is a controversial subject that many Americans would like to remain an untold history. Americans like to believe that damaging events like slavery and state-sponsored oppression took place lifetimes ago, and that we have proudly moved on together as a nation. However, the belief that these events are exclusively in the past and that we are a new, more open-minded society is seeing history through a white racial lens. It is easy for a white in the United States to say that the past should be left in the past. Yet, for minority racial groups, specifically African Americans, the past still has staggering effects on their people today. One formal system where white Americans greatly exceed African Americans is in the quality of education. Both in the past and now, whites have enjoyed a much higher education standard than African Americans. Whites seem to have greater funding, more dedicated teachers, higher qualities of materials, better infrastructure, and much more. This issue must be better addressed. With the current system, the United States is losing the potential opportunity for its African American citizens to excel. My hope is that you will discover through the information I provide that our education system still is unequal. Mrs. DeVos, you can use your power to help African Americans through funding, fighting discrimination, and collecting unbiased, truthful data.

Education has always been a basic human right across every society around the world. We have always needed to disseminate information and teach people about different skills in order to perpetuate our societies, as they cannot function if people will never go beyond the basics and specialize. However, it is also because of education that we become more holistic people, taking in new ideas and thinking about them, allowing us to develop ourselves as an individual. This is why education is important in creating informed citizens within our own societies, creating our individual “voice” and instigate change within our societies. James Baldwin’s article A Talk to Teachers stresses this, as he discusses that education is important in the liberation of people of color from discrimination and oppression. As long as knowledge about issues are spread, people will think and act once they possess the knowledge to. This is why Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow” informs people about the issues of mass incarceration, because if people aren’t knowledgeable about such issues, they will never act to change it, or have any reason to care. Knowledge is a powerful weapon, and it is our responsibility to use it for the better.

It wasn’t that the black students weren’t as advanced, it was just that they were not given the opportunity to gain more knowledge as easily and weren’t given the opportunity to show off what they knew. In the end, white students ended up being more successful, but not because they should have been. It was because black students were not given the opportunities that white students seemed more advanced. Though in comparison to schools for black kids they were great, it wasn’t as though schools for white children were top schools in the world either. “One-room grade schools were still common in York County, Nebraska, and other Great Plains states. Children from several grades sat in one room, often led by a teacher not much older than the students.” (Reinhardt and Ganzel). The majority of public school children, which was a large percentage of the country’s students, did not graduate with enough knowledge to go on to college or a well paying job. The Great Depression made funding the schools hard, so even white schools weren’t very rich, not to mention how little black schools

Race affected American education in many different ways with segregation and integration. But it wasn’t easy integrating schools to positively affect American education, they had quite a few challenges with it. Segregation had the negative affects on American education. One of the sources states, "Segregated schools have never been equal, Kelly said, largely because high minority schools are often high poverty schools." (Shaw pg.1).

Children are not being taught about things like colonialism for instance, and when it is, it is through a biased, “white lense.” This is ultimately because it is being told from a privileged, “outsider” point of view. American universities still lack the diversity needed to include people of colour throughout the curriculum. Although there is a lot of diversity among students as time goes on, there are voices and perspectives that continue to go unheard. (Frances 2010, 5) According to Racism in the Canadian University: Demanding Social Justice, Inclusion, and Equity, education creates a “free, independent, and thoughtful learner.” (Frances 2010, 6) But of course the curriculum does not create this if they are only teaching ideas through an ethnocentric, colonized lense. As well as only including examples of white people; white historians, scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers. When a university has predominately white instructors, and then teaches predominantly biased material that attempt to make white people look good, this creates a white privileged university. A person of colour who steps foot in that university will recognize this, as it is a form of othering. People who are not white may feel ostracized as there are no people of colour to be a

American public schools haven’t changed as much as we think they have since the twentieth century. We still have schools divided among different parts of the city, however, in recent times we are becoming less diverse. Schools are becoming segregated due to the fact that certain schools only accept students for certain regions and those regions of the city are not diverse, which leads some schools into looking the same way as they did before 1950. Up until the mid-nineteen-hundreds, segregation was the norm and “separate but equal” was what kept it alive. But, African-American students were not given equal treatment. It has been installed in humans especially in the past to see anyone different than us to be unequal. People were very

A autobiography called Black Boy, by Richard Wright was written seventy-five years ago. In his autobiography, he tackled some of the issues that are currently still happening in the United States. As a child, when Wright went to school and worked at different jobs, he’d seen a much of the racial discrimination, violence and unemployment along with other forms of racial inequality. Although racial discrimination, stereotyping and unemployment have decreased in the United States, it is still an active problem that people of color face. If Wright was alive in 2018, writing a novel about a black boy in United States, he would write about the racial discrimination, stereotyping and unemployment the black boy would have to go through.

In the autobiography, Black Boy, by Richard Wright, Wright takes us on a journey through his childhood to his adulthood. As a child, Richard was very curious, and a bad kid. He killed a cat, burned the house down, and many more. He has grown up with a passion for reading and writing. He even wanted to pursue a career in writing, however, he wasn’t supported. He grew up in a society where people of color are not supposed to know how to read or write, where people of color are meant to run errands for the white people. Many were convicted of crimes they weren’t even apart of. Because white people were constantly believed over blacks. Richard Wright was born after the Civil War but before the Civil Rights Movement. If Wright were writing an

Black Boy is a denunciation of racism and his conservative, austere family. As a child growing up in the South, Richard Wright faced constant pressure to submit to white authority, as well as to his family’s violence. However, even from an early age, Richard had a spirit of rebellion. His refusal of punishments earned him harder beatings. Had he been weaker amidst the racist South, he would not have succeeded as a writer.