The African American Achievement Gap:

Thesis statement: Hughes wrote this when Jim Crow laws were still imposing an bitter segregated society in the South. There were still lynchings of innocent African Americans, there was no Civil Rights Movement, there was no Civil Rights legislation yet, and Blacks couldn't eat at lunch counters in the South. Harlem, however, was not at all like the South in terms of blatant, legal segregation. However, racism was very much in place in many places in America. Blacks were second class citizens, their children attended schools that were ill-equipped, and the dreams of Black citizens were not being realized in this period.

The upper-class blacks shunned the lower class viewing them as being “embarrassingly vulgar” (Dickinson 323). Overcoming African-American prejudice was a major focus in most of Hughes’ writing. For example, he wrote about the joys, sorrows and hopes of the black man in America (Dickinson 321). Not all of his writings were so encouraging however. Other themes Hughes wrote about include lynchings, rapes, discrimination, and Jim Crow Laws. He commented that when he felt bad, he wrote a great deal of poetry; when he was happy, he didn’t write any (Dickinson 321).

Hughes's poem builds on top of Whitman’s poem in more ways than one. Every single person with their described job in Whitman’s poem was said to have been sung loud and strong as to what they were doing when working, meaning that they took pride in how they worked and what kind of work they did. With how there's so many types of people and jobs being talked about in Whitman’s poem, you would think it would include the lives of blacks and how they have dealt with all the racism and stuff at the time (later on too). Hughes’s poem is a type of add-on to Whitman’s poem in the way of including the whole of black people into the mix, with many lines in the poem stating things of which overall say that even if you’re black you should still be allowed to partake in things and be in an area without any prejudice towards your skin color.

In my last paper, I discussed the achievement gaps within the low-income African American community at Steele School in Galesburg, IL. Now that I have looked into the history of low-income African American students, I am now going to research even more by exploring trends, issues, evidence-based remediation practices, the preferred learning styles and the identified achievement gap of low-income African American students. Through the chart I am going to display, this will show various ways that low-income African American students are struggling at Steele School. However, I am hoping with the information below I can use this to display to others how certain multicultural education, learning styles, and culturally responsive teaching can enhance learning environments for all underachieving students.

Hughes thinks that everyone has rights to be them self and everyone has their own beauty. People can be what ever they want they can be black artist if they want or they can white artist if they want, the only thing he wanted to tell people was that be proud of who you are, don’t try to be someone else who you are not. Langston Hughes gives an example where a young poet says “ I want to be a poet – not a Negro poet” Hughes thinks that the young kid wants to be white. Form my point of view the young poet said he wants to be poet but not Negro because in during 1920’s white people were like superior and they have higher chances to become well known person. So when the young poet said he doesn’t want to be a Negro poet he actually meant that he would become well known poet if

The pressures of racism on today’s society are being perpetuated by socioeconomic shaming against less fortunate black schoolchildren to look to the future of becoming less successful than the more financially stable white schoolchild sitting in the next classroom. The most unfortunate part about the white-black achievement gap is that there is no easy solution to solving it. One large proponent of the achievement gap between all schoolchildren is the factor of wealth and affluence in their homes. The racial achievement gap compared to the wealth achievement gap is quite staggering. Diane Ravitch states that “in contrast to the racial achievement gap, which has narrowed, the income achievement gap is growing…[and is] nearly twice as large

It should be on revelation that African Americans like other minority groups are already receiving an unjust education compared to their white counterparts. Being an African American in today’s education system can already be considered a disadvantage, and from multiple sources such as; Brookings.edu article over “Unequal Opportunity: Race And Education” and Pew Research Center.org article over “On Views of Race and Inequality, Blacks and Whites are Worlds Apart”, all the data can be traced back to African Americans falling behind on the achievement scale and the educational gap only continuing to rise, and this is without the negligence of Ebonics being factored in.

As minority students increased in urban public schools, they have now become the majority of the school population and have brought difficult topics to the surface; race and ethnicity. In Another Inconvenient Truth: Race and Ethnicity Matter, Hawley and Nieto published their beliefs on how cultural differences are not to be tucked away and hidden in an educational setting, but embraced and celebrated to promote education by the teacher in an academic journal: Educational Leadership. Their appeals and claims provide various instruction to guide professional educators to overcome the achievement gap.

The root of the African American education gap originates from anti-intellectualism. It would be disheartening to think that what is holding African Americans back is part of African American culture itself. However, only if African Americans, and all Americans, are honest about their flaws, will we be able to fix the flaws and make progress forward. It is believed that African Americans are not naturally inferior in intelligence; actually, based on the article by researcher Lindsey Cook, African American students are reported as having high learning potentials when they first attend schools. What African Americans really need is a driving force that motivates them to excel in academic fields. The first step for African Americans to initiate

When the conversation about achievement gap is broached, it is often offensive towards minorities. Mainly because it implies that you’re acknowledging the fact that there is and achievement difference among their race and Whites. Personally I have no problem with the term because it is factual. It’s what school officials are not doing to close this gap that i have a problem with The achievement gap is sustained by poor school management and teaching—not other social or cultural factors. In order to close this gap among students, school officials must better prepare teachers, implement a common core curriculum, and encourage positive teacher-student relationships.

Langston Hughes is one the most renowned and respected authors of twentieth century America not simply one of the most respected African-American authors, though he is certainly this as well, but one of the most respected authors of the period overall. A large part of the respect and admiration that the man and his work have garnered is due to the richness an complexity of Hughes' writing, both his poetry and his prose and even his non-fictions. In almost all of his texts, Hughes manages at once to develop and explore the many intricacies and interactions of the human condition and specifically of the experience growing up and living as a black individual in a white-dominated and explicitly anti-Black society while at the same time, while at the same time rendering his human characters and their emotions in a simple, straightforward, and immensely accessible fashion. Reading the complexity behind the surface simplicity of his works is at once enjoyable and edifying.

The socioeconomic gap that exists between white and black Americans is a topic that no one seems to know how to solve. In previous years it was easy to collectively point to one factor that caused this gap but in more recent times it has became a point of discussion and disagreement in the black community. The debate rests in the question of whether or not the socioeconomic gap between blacks and their white counterparts is a result of blacks being lazy or it is because of structural discrimination that are embedded in the laws and policies of the United States. The general consensus is that it is a mixture of the two explanations. People differ on how many of each explanation contributes to the problem and in turn they disagree on what the solution should be.

African American students in an affluent, suburban district have not successfully closed the achievement gap. These students’ are generally lower performing that whites and Asians and sometimes lower than Hispanic and/or socio-economically disadvantaged. According to Sohn (2012) the phenomenon of the black white achievement gap has returned. Slaven and Madden (2006) assert “The gap in academic achievement between African American (as well as Latino) children and their White peers is arguably the most important of all educational problems in the U.S.” (p. 389). This leads to continued disparity in educational goals and mastery and ultimately adulthood successes.

In From The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, Hughes states, “Most of my own poems are racial in theme and treatment, derived from the life I know”(807). Hughes is aware of the fact that because he is a Negro he is different, and is treated differently. He bases most of his poetry off of that fact. In the rest of the paragraph he goes on to discuss the fact that even though he knows he is different, he does not let that stop him from accomplishing his goals, and writing what he wants to write. Hughes continues to be questioned by his “own people” because of the content in

The achievement gap is defined as the an unequal or inequitable distribution of educational outcomes and benefits. Researchers have identified a variety of reasons why the achievement gap between whites and blacks continues to persist. Fryer and Levitt (2002) argue that initially there is no difference between equivalent Black and White children upon entering kindergarten. Supsequently as they continue in school they take very different paths due to Black children falling behind their White counterparts. Jencks and Phillips (1998) found that family experiences and preschool are instrumental in creating the achievement gap. They also argue that there is already a significant disparity between Black and White students as they enter kindergarten, which is different than the assertions of Fryer and Levitt.