EXCERPTS RE EDUCATION AND HBCUs
FROM A SEAT FOR EVERYONE, by Ron Edwards
Page 16
In higher education, the picture is also bleak. There are 105
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). And yet
some are in such financial disarray that they could close. How
bad is it for Blacks in American higher education? Only 3% of
American colleges are "Historically Black." And yet,
24% of Black college graduates come from these schools. There
is no way to explain this other than discrimination against Blacks
in the major universities, despite a quota system that seems geared
to low quotas, not higher ones.
We need to make our inner cities hot beds of education and training
in order to teach our kids professions and trades. Instead, we
have allowed the inner city to become a graveyard for crack cocaine
zombies, and training ground for gang bangers, where one of the tragic
myths is that “education is white”. And rather than
calling out these bad habits, our community celebrates them in hip-hop
music.
The inner city offers an opportunity for a partnership between HBCUs
and inner city churches, where HBCUs establish satellite campuses that
have distance (on-line) learning housed in buildings of churches, especially
those that sponsor HBCUs, demonstrating that there is a path to jobs
through education and training if they stay the course and graduate. The
satellites could also provide mentoring programs for young inner city
Black men in order to enable them to better understand their role as
a vital part of our community, to be protectors of it, not predators
in yet separate from it.
Page 17
What about employment? So now you have a large number
of young Black people who don't even have a high school education. Can
they get work somewhere that doesn't require a diploma? Not in
my city. And if you have one? It still doesn’t seem
to matter. As you drive around the Minneapolis area, you rarely
see a Black person on a construction site.
Page 20
On the same subject, Nellie also noted that for sixty years "they
had a lot of education in the projects, a lot of people had jobs there,
Black and White." She pointed out that the "concentration
of poverty is nothing new," and that progress comes from people
sticking together to get ahead, not by dispersing them and making minorities
within minorities. Like Nellie, I am opposed to the taking or selling
of Black land.
Page 29
That's the problem with our vicious circle: no education no jobs, no
housing, no families – no hope. …..
We must reform the entrenched interests, reform the obstructionist
teacher's union, and reform the public bureaucracies. We need to reform
individuals and institutions, and commit to achieving both
education and jobs for our people
Page 31
The lesson I take from what happened with Dr. Peebles is that we need
a different approach to education in the inner city: we must broaden
it beyond the schools. So long as the government is content to
have inferior public schools, we must resolve to supplement the education
of our young. Fortunately, we have a number of private institutions
to help with this very cause. Imagine communities partnering
with churches and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)to
provide education to inner city youth. This would create a bridge
during the time it takes to improve the public school system, so that
while bureaucrats and politicians drag their feet, at least our children
will be educated.
Page 37
We can make a difference if we concentrate on being agents for change
in the areas of education, jobs, and housing. The rest will
then take care of itself.
Page 50
….. my seven main areas of interest.
1. Education,
and how Historically Black Colleges and Universities could help bring
about an educational renaissance in the inner cities, as no one else
will.
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