2.9 Doesn't the Achievement Gap Prove Racism?
Although in some schools such as Success Academy blacks perform better than a lot of whites in general blacks do not perform as well as whites in American schools and colleges. That is known as the achievement gap. People who believe Critical Race Theory conclude that the only reason that could be is because of whites being racist to blacks. They believe that if you blame blacks for underperforming you are being racist.
Why are so many blacks underperforming compared to whites? Why don't they do better in school? One way to find out is to take a look at a school that is predominantly black at another school, Huntington North High school that is mostly white and see what is different between the two. We do that in the video below.
Clearly it is much harder to be successful in the Strawberry Mansion High School than in Huntington North High school. There is a lot less violence in the Huntington school. Teachers can teach instead of spending their time trying to keep students from beating each other or themselves up. There is more money for people to apply to college and go to college for kids who attend the Huntington school. The Huntington school is a friendly supportive place. If a black child went to the Huntington school they would be a lot more likely to do well than if they went to the Strawberry Mansion school. If a white child went to the Strawberry Mansion school they would be likely to do a lot worse and get seriously damaged as well.
Why is the Strawberry Mansion school this way? It is located in a poor and violent neighborhood. How did North Philadelphia become poor and violent?
John is an 87 year old resident of North Philadelphia. He lived there since he was 5 years old. He said it used to be safe and had a lot of stores but says a lot of angry blacks from the south moved in.
Over the years John has been mugged twice, once for a hundred bucks, once for the bottle of liquor he’d just bought. His house was once broken into, and he lost coats and money and Christmas presents and his father’s gold watch. A steel-tipped arrow once shot through his rear kitchen window, impaling a chair just after his nephew had gotten out of it. He watched as four or five black men appeared on the block one afternoon and tried to break into his brand-new Chrysler Imperial. John stood at his door—they walked away when they saw him. Last summer he was sitting on his stoop in a lounge chair and went in to use the bathroom, and when he returned, there was no chair—a neighbor watched a black kid take it.
Blacks and the police did not get along. The city, in order to improve relations between blacks and the police had white and black police work together.
On August 28, 1964 a black woman named Odessa Bradford got into an argument with two police officers, one black, Robert Wells, and the other white, John Hoff, because Bradford stopped the car while arguing with her boyfriend and refused to move out of the intersection at 23rd Street and Columbia Avenue. The officers then tried to physically remove Bradford from the car. As the argument went on, a large crowd assembled in the area. A man tried to come to Bradford's aid by attacking the police officers at the scene, both he and Bradford were arrested.
Someone changed the story and people spread rumors that a pregnant black woman had been beaten to death by white police officers. Christian Black Baptist ministers called for peace and calm while Muslims and black Nationalists called for violence. Later that evening, and throughout the next two days, angry mobs looted and burned mostly white-owned businesses in North Philadelphia, mainly along Columbia Avenue. Although no one was killed, 341 people were injured, 774 people were arrested and 225 stores were damaged or destroyed in the three days of rioting. After the riots those white people who could afford to buy new homes elsewhere fled from North Philadelphia.
If black people hadn't spread terrible lies about the police North Philadelphia might be a much safer and prosperous area than it is today. If North Philadelphia was safer and more prosperous the Strawberry Mansion school might be a much safer and better school than it is today. The students at the Strawberry Mansion school might have a much better chance at success. Maybe some of the achievement gap comes from black hate and violence toward whites that destroys communities and that has nothing to do with white racism.
There is another reason and that's lack of discipline. During the Obama administration schools could get in trouble if disciplined black students more often than white students even if the black students were causing the majority of the trouble. That's equity. During the Trump administration this policy was ended. Minnesota started it again. President Biden is starting it again throughout the United States. The result, is more violent schools, and less education.
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