Guest Post by Walter E. Williams
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says that the city’s specialized high schools have a diversity problem. He’s joined by New York City Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza, educators, students and community leaders who want to fix the diversity problem. I bet you can easily guess what they will do to “improve” the racial mix of students (aka diversity). If you guessed they would propose eliminating the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test as the sole criterion for admissions, go to the head of the class. The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test is an examination that is administered to New York City’s eighth- and ninth-grade students. By state law, it is used to determine admission to all but one of the city’s nine specialized high schools.
It’s taken as axiomatic that the relatively few blacks admitted to these high-powered schools is somehow tied to racial discrimination. In a June 2, 2018 “Chalkbeat” article, de Blasio writes: “The problem is clear. Eight of our most renowned high schools — including Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School — rely on a single, high-stakes exam. The Specialized High School Admissions Test isn’t just flawed — it’s a roadblock to justice, progress and academic excellence.”
Let’s look at a bit of history to raise some questions about the mayor’s diversity hypothesis. Dr. Thomas Sowell provides some interesting statistics about Stuyvesant High School in his book “Wealth, Poverty and Politics.” He reports that, “In 1938, the proportion of blacks attending Stuyvesant High School, a specialized school, was almost as high as the proportion of blacks in the population of New York City.” Since then, it has spiraled downward. In 1979, blacks were 12.9% of students at Stuyvesant, falling to 4.8% in 1995. By 2012, The New York Times reported that blacks were 1.2% of the student body.
What explains the decline? None of the usual explanations for racial disparities make sense. In other words, would one want to argue that there was less racial discrimination in 1938? Or, argue that in 1938 the “legacy of slavery” had not taken effect whereby now it is in full bloom? Genetic or environmental arguments cannot explain why blacks of an earlier generation were able to meet the demanding mental test standards to get into an elite high school. Socioeconomic conditions for blacks have improved dramatically since 1938. The only other plausible reason for the decline in academic achievement is that there has been a change in black culture. It doesn’t take much to reach this conclusion. Simply look at school behavior today versus yesteryear.
An Education Week article reported that in the 2015-16 school year, “5.8% of the nation’s 3.8 million teachers were physically attacked by a student.” The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics show that in the 2011-12 academic year, there were a record 209,800 primary- and secondary-school teachers who reported being physically attacked by a student. Nationally, an average of 1,175 teachers and staff were physically attacked, including being knocked out, each day of that school year.
In the city of Baltimore, each school day in 2010, an average of four teachers and staff were assaulted. A National Center for Education Statistics study found that 18% of the nation’s schools accounted for 75% of the reported incidents of violence, and 6.6% accounted for half of all reported incidents. These are schools with predominantly black student populations. It’s not only assaults on teachers but cursing and disorderly conduct that are the standard fare in so many predominantly black schools.
Here are questions that might be asked of de Blasio and others who want to “fix the diversity problem” at New York’s specialized schools: What has the triumph of egalitarian and diversity principles done for the rest of New York’s school system? Are their academic achievement scores better than students at New York’s specialized schools? The most important question for black parents: What has been allowed to happen to cripple black academic excellence?
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Black education = oxymoron
If we could just get them civilized it would be a big step forward.
Can’t breed the jungle out of them.
You, sir, are a troglodyte. You do TBP proud.
I worked in downtown Philadelphia this past weekend—at night–from what I saw and heard civilizing them appears to be a bridge too far.
But as the article states, in days gone by – when the entrance test was presumably rigorous, black students were able to gain entry at rates close to their proportion of the population. Only oldsters like Williams and Sowell can remember this, unfortunately. The affirmative action purveyors have reduced the motivation to work hard. And family breakdown has made everything worse. Pat Moynihan was shocked in the ‘60’s by a 25% black out-of-wedlock birth rate (now up to 70%). The progs have been pushing that on everyone, they just did a dry run with blacks first, with government paying black women to not have a husband – which is not to absolve black men or women from taking the bait. Can we even imagine a black community where 75% of kids were born into married families? It was that way into the ‘60’s despite legal segregation and employment discrimination. No wonder there were more black kids who kept up academically when they had two parents in the home.
This is not to say that all racial groups are exactly equal. Neither Williams nor Sowell say that. Still, government has proven adept at making things worse.
For almost 150 years the United States has been conducting an interesting experiment. The subjects of the experiment: black people and working-class whites.
The hypothesis to be tested: Can a people taken from the jungles of Africa and forced into slavery be fully integrated as citizens in a majority white population?
The whites were descendants of Europeans who had created a majestic civilization. The former slaves had been tribal peoples with no written language and virtually no intellectual achievements. Acting on a policy that was not fair to either group, the government released newly freed black people into a white society that saw them as inferiors. America has struggled with racial discord ever since.
Decade after decade the problems persisted but the experimenters never gave up. They insisted that if they could find the right formula the experiment would work, and concocted program after program to get the result they wanted. They created the Freedman’s Bureau, passed civil rights laws, tried to build the Great Society, declared War on Poverty, ordered race preferences, built housing projects, and tried midnight basketball.
Their new laws intruded into people’s lives in ways that would have been otherwise unthinkable. They called in National Guard troops to enforce school integration. They outlawed freedom of association. Over the protests of parents, they put white children on buses and sent them to black schools and vice versa. They tried with money, special programs, relaxed standards, and endless handwringing to close the “achievement gap”. To keep white backlash in check they began punishing public and even private statements on race. They hung up Orwellian public banners that commanded whites to “Celebrate Diversity!” and “Say No to Racism”. Nothing was off limits if it might salvage the experiment.
Some thought that what W.E.B. Du Bois called the Talented Tenth would lead the way for black people. A group of elite, educated blacks would knock down doors of opportunity and show the world what blacks were capable of. There is a Talented Tenth. They are the black Americans who have become entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors and scientists. But ten percent is not enough. For the experiment to work, the ten percent has to be followed by a critical mass of people who can hold middle-class jobs and promote social stability. That is what is missing.
Through the years, too many black people continue to show an inability to function and prosper in a culture unsuited to them. Detroit is bankrupt, the south side of Chicago is a war zone, and the vast majority of black cities all over America are beset by degeneracy and violence. And blacks never take responsibility for their failures. Instead, they lash out in anger and resentment.
Across the generations and across the country, as we have seen in Detroit, Watts, Newark, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and now Ferguson, rioting and looting are just one racial incident away. The white elite would tell us that this doesn’t mean the experiment has failed. We just have to try harder. We need more money, more time, more understanding, more programs, and more opportunities.
But nothing changes no matter how much money is spent, no matter how many laws are passed, no matter how many black geniuses are portrayed on TV, and no matter who is president. Some argue it’s a problem of “culture”, as if culture creates people’s behavior instead of the other way around. Others blame ” white privilege”.
But since 1965, when the elites opened America’s doors to the Third World, immigrants from Asia and India-people who are not white, not rich, and not “connected”-have quietly succeeded. While the children of these people are winning spelling bees and getting top scores on the SAT, black “youths” are committing half the country’s violent crime-crime, which includes viciously punching random white people on the street for the thrill of it that has nothing to do with poverty.
The experiment has failed. Not because of culture, or white privilege, or racism. The fundamental problem is that white people and black people are different. They differ intellectually and temperamentally. These differences result in permanent social incompatibility.
Our rulers don’t seem to understand just how tired their white subjects are with this experiment. They don’t understand that white people aren’t out to get black people; they are just exhausted with them. They are exhausted by the social pathologies, the violence, the endless complaints, and the blind racial solidarity, the bottomless pit of grievances, the excuses, and the reflexive animosity.
The elites explain everything with “racism” and refuse to believe that white frustration could soon reach the boiling point.
What an excellent post !!! Nailed it !!!
Very well put.
Would have been nice to link to the original:
Ten Percent Is Not Enough
Anthony Bryan, American Renaissance, September 23, 2014
Thank you for the clarification on authorship. I received this as an email a long time ago without proper attribution and do appreciate knowing who the author if this piece is.
Yes. The clinical diagnosis for the tiredness and exhaustion is Negro Fatigue.
Let me get this right…
It is necessary for a black student to sit next to a white student in order to learn. THAT has been the premise since the 1950s with the flawed “Brown v. Board of Education” Supreme Court ruling. The (few) decent blacks in existence should have been outraged by that ruling.
The premise that blacks NEED whites to assure educational opportunities has been proven FALSE, because even a few disruptive blacks are enough to disrupt the “education process” for everyone else.
I personally witnessed the destruction of the Detroit “education system”, which was fueled by blacks, who thought that they were invincible and did not have to conform to (white) societal norms. The public schools in the 1960s were turned into “zoos” where “anything goes”. Teachers did the minimum and just “went through the motions” as attempting to “correct” bad behavior by blacks was not allowed. The black school administrators saw to that…
Once in a great while, there was a teacher who truly cared about education and would covertly see to it that those whites who were “stuck” in these dysfunctional institutions were nurtured and given the proper attention, while disregarding the antics of the feral blacks who actually ran these dysfunctional institutions.
If you were a white child attending these schools, you were routinely harassed, robbed, beaten, and even worse by blacks, with no support from those who should have put a stop to such behavior. As “neighborhood schools” were the norm, there was no way out for white students assigned to these dysfunctional schools.
Since school integration did not work, in the 1970s, court-ordered forced “bussing” of white students into predominantly urban black schools was the next social experiment that ruined many suburban schools and the educational opportunities for whites.
In fact, it was routine for blacks to form “black student organizations” (with jewish civil-rights “handlers” help). Even the American flag was replaced with the “Black Students Union” flag at many Detroit public schools.
Public education has been ruined by blacks. PERIOD. There…I’ve said it…
I’m a book geek. A few months back I picked up “The Autobiography of William O. Douglas; the Court Years” (1980) at a thrift for 50 cents. Reading these older books is remarkable in light of current events and conditions. I suspect most here will reflexively trash Douglas … but, in the book are 2 super interesting Chapters, based upon our current situation. One of them has to do w/ Brown v. Board of Education.
In that Chapter, Douglas clearly states that in their deliberations they actively considered alternatives BECAUSE IN FACT IT HAD BEEN THE GOVERNMENT that effectively directed the states to pursue separate but equal in Plessy; “… Justice Clark said that since we (SCOTUS in Plessy) had led the states to believe segregation was lawful, we should let them work out the problem by themselves” (Page 113).
The other interesting Chapter is on The Press.
Without discipline, education is impossible…In the old days of segregated schools, black teachers and administrators administered harsh discipline, and the parents backed them up….today, it’s the Congo..
Blacks: We want what the whites s got but we ain’t gonna be actn white to get it.
It is much more reliable to see what exists and work backward from that to discover what the intention of the political class were rather than to listen to them speak about the plan’s intent and assume that the outcomes are unintentional or unintended.
They want a population of semi-retards. That’s been the goal, not lifting up one race, but suppressing another.
The decline really picked up steam with the forced de-segregation of schools. Ghetto blacks are another money machine, they are contained, they fuel a huge law enforcement, court system, social services system and they are kept appeased to contain them. Educating them is impossible, no discipline allowed, no education possible.
Obama and Holder were responsible for the not punishing the bad behaviour of black kids because….racism.
https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/hans-bader/record-numbers-public-school-teachers-attacked-school-discipline-curbed
Its working.
DeBlasio is a hack. He’s too chicken to point out the real source of the problem so he goes for votes from the cheap seats. There are intelligent people with dark skin but the culture has eaten them alive.
Ahh the hard bigotry of low expectations. Being a little more mature in years if not social graces than the shit stirrers on TBP this article rings true with my experience in the south. Our darker brothers were not quite as intelligent as the average white folk but they were quite similar in culture and so it wasn’t that big of a deal. We expected everybody to behave/work hard support their family etc and whites and blacks (they were no Hispanics back then except for some Cuban refugees in Miami) and for the most part, they did.
So the Bell Curve is entirely accurate on average our darker brothers are not quite as smart as whites who in turn are not quite as smart as East Asians and the filthy Joo’s are the smartest little cohort of all….BUT…..culture has an enormous impact beyond native intelligence. Black culture has obviously become toxic and counterproductive and the insular jews over-perform their relative IQ because of their culture…they get hated for it also.
So no blacks are not incapable of being a civilized productive member of society…..but currently far too many are imbued with a culture that simply is destroying any chance they have of success.
You get more of what you pay for or support……The State has actively supported and paid for Black cultural failure for 60+ years….why is anybody surprised at the outcome?
I would like to suggest a totally new & improved admissions criteria for Africans to New York City’s “elite” schools.
– For males; penis length multiplied by juvenile arrest events as the scoring measurement for admissions.
– For females; butt size. The bigger the butt the better the score. Steatopygeous African females also being given bonus points for having three or more issue without a known father.
That ought to get the Negroes of New York plenty of billets at the “elite” schools of Bill DeBlasio’s town.
Bright students of all other racial groups can pound sand.
For 70 years the liberal/bolshevik establishment has told them how entitled they are, how they are only where they are because of white privilege and discrimination holding them back. Yeah, it’s a shocker when they underperform. It didn’t have to be this way.
Hammer ,there you go again . All these civil rights laws were made for Jews who didn’t give one rats ass about blacks. It ( civil rights ) was backed by Jews who were the brains behind it and blacks were the foot soldiers . Nothing has changed knucklehead .
Hammer ,I to grew up in the South and went to high school. Blacks were well behaved but something happened. In 1985 I moved into an apartment complex that was about half black. From day one it was a nightmare. They were loud and their vile behavior was in the open from every one to see. Anything that wasn’t nailed down was stolen. Sometimes the police were there two and three times a day. It was one of the worse experiences I have ever had and it was dangerous for whites and blacks. I don’t know what happened but something changed . Now I tell everyone to avoid blacks when you can , tolerate them when you must but NEVER turn your back on them. I like you Meathead as in All in the Family but you have alot to learn. By the way my Grandparents love that show. I would go over just to watch it with them. It was produced by a Jew. See I don’t hate all Jews.Just the ones who hate me. Get it?
You are actually correct the civil rights movement of the 60s was led by northeast commie fucks many of whom were Jews. I was the first group bused to the ghetto in 6th grade. Yeah we had fights with the black kids but we were also friends in those days they were just poor not lazy and angry. Not sure exactly where we disagree I hate commies with a white hot passion.
Please! Affirmative action is the ticket for niggers. Even they know that niggers can’t make it on their own ability unless it has something to do with a ball. A certificate from an institution of “higher learning” is their way of getting a never sweat non productive government job and entry into the middle class.
Only whites attacked. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78BdPy0gWcQ
You don’t need education or discipline when the .gov becomes your daddy.
Whites and Asians did NOT evolve from Blacks; that is as big a leftist political lie as CO2 causes Global Warming. Humans were already all over the planet when the Blacks supposedly left Africa. All races mixed with primitive hominids and have traces of their genes in their Racial Genome but Blacks have the most. Blacks have shorter gestation periods, mature faster, produce more eggs during ovulation, smaller brains, lower IQs, higher crime rates world wide, etc.