African American Underclass

Understanding that the poverty of black Americans did not just stay within the home is a big step in understanding urban poverty. Urban poverty reached outside the home, into the parks, schools and playgrounds. With poverties reach being that extensive, there was something other than adversity causing this. Louis Gates wrote an article about this called “Black America and The Class Divide.” (Jr.)

Even at their youngest stages of life, African American males are being told that they’re just following a path to jail from birth. Even figures that as a child you’d look up to are telling young black males that they can’t succeed in this world. The vice-principal of the Rosa Parks School when talking about a young African American male said “That one has a jail-cell with his name on it”. Education institutions are the ones who hold the power to decide and construct who has access to opportunities and resources needed to advance in our capitalist society. The system is setting up African Americans for failure from the start. “The racial bias in the punishing systems of the school reflects the practices of the criminal justice system. Black youth are caught up in the net of juvenile justice system at a rate of two to four times that of white youth”. The profiling starts at a young age as well, planning their future for them. In conclusion, Education Institutions are the ones who hold power in this world. They are the building blocks of the future, as they shape young lives. With institutional racism putting some races ahead of others, however, a majority of students are stunted in their path to adulthood, leading to racial issues and divides that would otherwise not

How this is really seen is as Sumner said in the Ted Talk that by not providing the enough resources. Or even how some students have to go through a rougher road in order to get the education others are getting right at their hands without having to put in extra effort. This is yet the biggest connection within this essay because I had to give up family, friends and a lifestyle that I had been used to for years in order to get the good education in a school in America. But it can also be seen in how the students behave and how they are treated. For example the teachers could be white and treat the colored students poorly or the other way around which would just make other people also do such thing. I really believe this is true especially when a school is very diverse in culture specifically. In a way some schools today are still segregated because some people will believe they shouldn’t be equal with everyone else which is totally unfair. As Sumner stated that thank to the slave trade and slave labor is that the schools were initially made. Which it wouldn’t make sense to keep them out of something that was created thanks to their

We are reminded of that history with every breath we take of injustice. The unfair treatment of blacks can mostly be attributed to lingering after effects of the end of the civil war and the bitter-sweet downfall of the confederacy. Violence that claims the pavement that we walk on and the lives of those who are our future. Poverty takes hold of the lives of the youth. The dehumanization of those who do not fit the social confines that have been drafted by those who try to crush the people they consider beneath them: It creates a new, invisible barrier that many choose to hold as the definitive disparity that cordially distinguishes the blacks from the

The dilemma facing African Americans during the first few decades after emancipation was profound. The post Civil War-Reconstruction era in the South was one where African Americans had political voting rights, members of Congress, and a vision for the future that would extend the principles of democratic government to all black people. Quickly though, it changed to a situation that was akin to slavery itself. With the removal of the Federal forces in the South following Reconstruction, the gains that were made eroded both political power and the civil rights of African Americans. Economically, millions of poor southern blacks were trapped in the sharecropping system structured to ensure that they provided cheap agriculture labor for the benefit of white landlords. Throughout the South, with the institution of the Jim Crow laws, blacks began to be excluded from all public accommodations, denied access to schools and other essential services, and restricted from living in certain residential areas. Essential to the racist assault against black people’s rights was lynching, fear and death.

The system has also privatized the school and prison system, which go hand in hand with the economic reality of today. The racial disparities of today, was triggered by the downfall of the economic system that is in place right now. Families are struggling and individuals are looking for a way out. This paper will identify the realities African Americans face with the issue of economic justice along in the United States.

Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president of the United States and the president who signed the Civil Rights Act into law, once said, “Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.” Many are unaware of how well a person can receive their education when their race differs from the dominant white majority of the U.S. Whether it’s ignorance or the deliberate choice of not giving other races the same opportunity to succeed, we don’t know, but that is what we have set out to find. Throughout all of our literature, we can see examples of people not getting the same choices or opportunities as other citizens

Systematic racism within education Institutions, such as the lack of adequate funding as well as subtle discrimination, continues to be the root of the problem that plagues this nation. Even though segregation was abolished in 1964, the lingering effects that remain are significant and cannot be passively mended. Although it is tempting to think that this prejudice is caused by a select few and not the many, it is clear that this problem holds more depth. Recent studies conducted by the National Education Studies (NEA) have proven that even in school’s African American students are often times targeted and punished at a significantly higher rate when compared to their white peers. The study states “Black students make up almost 40 percent of all school expulsions [in the] nation, and more than two thirds of students referred to police from schools are either black or Hispanic” (Blacks: Education Issues). This study conducted by the Department of Education, cabinet-level department of the United States

Petrella (2012) also notes that “The school-to-prison pipeline disproportionally targets youth of color and youth with disabilities for incarceration, as school policies may isolate them from their peer groups through expulsion, suspension, ineffective retention policies, transfers and high-stakes testing requirements.” There is a direct connection between being African American and lack of education because of learning difficulties that are not being addressed or missing school because of suspension or expulsion. The perception of being doomed from the start can directly interfere with motivation and drive towards a better future. Nittle (n.d.) notes that “Racism in the United States would not have thrived if institutions hadn’t perpetuated discrimination.” The despair of defeat at an early age is hard to crawl out of, without the added pressure of race.

In the summer of 1619, the first Africans were brought to Jamestown, Virginia not to live as free settlers but as subordinate slaves. They worked strenuously for Whites, who considered themselves superior to Africans, without much benefit. Racism is not just the belief that one race is superior to others, but the act of negatively identifying individuals based on the color of their skin. Attributing race to individual character has proven to have negative implications that are difficult to mend. There have been different approaches to rectify the effects of racism dating back even before the Civil War. One of the fruition of these attempts is Affirmative Action, which was initially enforced “to ensure equality in hiring” among minorities. Later, Affirmative Action was amended to include education under its protection. Throughout its duration, however, it has alleviated the racial tension unsubstantially. Affirmative Action’s attempt to halt the racial disparities in higher education that has burdened the African Americans constitutes an inconsequential solution: It forges the same environment suffering the struggle it has been trying to eradicate.

Many Americans point to the suffering of the African American experience from the internal problems in African Americans communities; however, they neglect the external social constraints that African Americans have faces in America. African Americans have suffered oppression through social institution through factors such as Segregation, Racial Crimination, and Mass incarnation. The constraint of segregation was a way of social, political, and economical control over African Americans. African Americans are usually a racial group that is associate with crime. Research and statistics has shown that African Americans are those that are majority incarnated in the United states. Many white Americans kept

Historically in the United States, there has always been a significant difference in the way different races have been treated. Even after many years of laws and bills being passed to create a smaller gap in the inequality of the different races, we still see a large problem with inequality today. One of those inequalities is the difference between white and African American’s, in history whites have always been at the top, and blacks at the bottom, civil rights movements lead by black leaders in the 1950s and 1960s changed the way blacks were treated, but although there was some change our society still recognizes blacks as the inferior race. Looking at inequality today, blacks are still being treated differently in jobs, the criminal justice

For generations African Americans have been disadvantaged in America and effects of these injustices have made a lasting impression. Education is one of the leading problems in the black community. Though there have many reforms in education over the years, racial injustices still exist because no attention in placed on how legislature affects people of color. I was raised in a middle-class family of educators. My entire life I’ve been told to “stay in school, get an education, and work hard so that you can beat the system.” Recognizing the structural forces in my life has helped me understand my place in society. Being able to “understand everyday life, not through personal circumstances but through the broader historical forces that

American society likes to believe that race relations in our country are no longer strained. We do not want to hear about the need for affirmative action or about the growing numbers of white supremacist groups. In order to appease our collective conscious, we put aside the disturbing fact that racism is alive and well in the great U.S.A. It hides in the workplace, it subtly shows its ugly face in the media, and it affects the education of minority students nationwide. In the following excerpts from an interview with a middle class African American male, the reader will find strong evidence that race plays a major role in determining the type and quality of education a student receives.

Black students account nationally for 34% of all suspensions (Mazama). Black students in America are faced with a struggle as they begin to go into school systems. Some students will go into an urban school system and will be surrounded by many minorities and others will attend rural school areas in the south. African American students who live in the south experience a great amount of racism from their peers, their peers parents, teachers, and other school officials. The issue occurs when students of a majority race don't know how to communicate or peacefully get along with students of a minority race. This can be an act of calling a student out of their name or acting violently towards them. Students should not have to worry about whether they are safe at school all because of something they can’t help. Racism needs to be taken out of schools all across the the world. They way we do this is to educate students about black history and how their actions may trigger a student of color.