Are Black Americans oppressed?
It is taken as gospel truth that black Americans perform poorly in school because they are oppressed: Black America is not ‘behind’ because we are inferior but because we are forced into an inferior education, which maintain its inferior status in this ‘democracy.’ When the highest court in the land reinforces that status, the results are devastating. If any race of people had experienced the same degradation, oppression, and inferior education as African Americans, a cycle of poverty and crime would encase them all. – An African American Manifesto on Education, Rose Sanders, In Motion Magazine There is a growing consensus among educators, however, that class rather than race is the more significant factor, according to Don Nielsen, former vice president of the Seattle School Board: Statistics tell us that poverty is a much greater determining characteristic in academic achievement…It also happens that in some cases people of color are poor. – Class, not race, a better determinant of
