If we got 100 teachers in a room, statistically I would be one of just two Black males in that room and one of 50 who will leave the profession within our first five years. I am now in my fifth year of teaching and I want to stay where I am.
Month: March 2018
Low net worth means low performing schools
Why do Americans need violence and guns in 2018?
I will start by thanking the students of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High school for stepping up to the plate that Blacks in the past had to face against dangerous tactics that included murder, and currently were ordered by American laws that stifled them from protesting and by using the legal right to speak out about what was not right happening to their race because of their color.
We Just Say No
Fair housing’s unfinished 50-year journey
Protest. Petition. Call your senators. Nothing changes, right? No matter how large our demonstrations get, no matter how many millions of people write and petition politicians, no matter how many people get arrested in front of the White House or at our state capitols, it seems that our (supposedly) elected officials keep turning a blind eye and deaf ear to our cries for change.
Normalizing Violence
It’s time to listen to the students. Across the country, teenagers have walked out of classes, stood in holy silence, and delivered stirring speeches calling out their elders for failing to prevent their schools from becoming shooting ranges for raging men.
In the 1950s, Topeka, Kansas, where Linda Brown lived, like a lot of America had dual de facto school systems. One for Black children and one for white children. Black children might be living only a few blocks away from a school but could not attend that school if it was a “white” school. Instead Black children would be shuttled miles away from their neighborhood school to a “Black” school.