An Opinion on the Black in America CNN Series - Donald H. Smith, Ph.D.

My good friend, Dr. Walter Stafford, Professor of Sociology at New York University, has described it well when he has stated "A black boy comes out of the womb stamped GUILTY". I watched the entire CNN special, "Black in America" and found its major fault is that it presented no historical, socio/political context for the four hours of mostly pain among Americans of African descent. Who labels that newborn as guilty? And why? Aside from a few terms used sparingly such as discrimination and racism, there was no effort to explain international white supremacy, and unearned white privilege supported by institutional and governmental white racism. There was only a feeble attempt to explain class and color divisions among African Americans, divisions which emanated from the days of enslavement when the children of slave masters received special privileges. However, as I watched I was deeply touched by the depiction of many issues we have experienced again and again. As I always am I was moved by the issue of single mothers who raise their children, almost fatherless. My own mother was such a mother, and my father only in a separated background. There was no insightful explanation of why young fathers often walk away abandoning their children, no recognition of the criminal neglect of the educational system in preparing them for fatherhood and work, no real discussion of the racist denial of employment, no understanding of how employers dog them and refer to them as "boy", no criticism of the media, film and the music which demean Black males, as well as females. I was also moved by the data on HIV/AIDS, data with which I am very familiar: women and children of African ancestry have the highest infection rates in the country and people of African descent, as a whole, have the highest rate of infection and deaths. I lost my best friend, many colleagues and students. The story of the teenager who was paralyzed by gunshot wound was the story of the present day tragedy where our youth are killed, often by each other, at an epidemic rate. I could not help but remember a boy I met in the hospital. I was in New York's Metropolitan Hospital for surgery on a broken wrist. It was my birthday, and several friends brought me birthday cakes. When I learned of a 17 year old paralyzed boy who was in the next ward I sent him a piece of cake. Like the boy in the CNN story he had been shot. In this case he was shot by a grocery store owner as he attempted to leave with a stolen piece of pastry. He would never walk again. Two days after the piece of cake, the boy wheeled himself into my room to say thank you. I was told it was the first time he had spoken to anyone in three weeks in the hospital. Like many of the African Americans in Black in America, I had grown up in poverty, received public assistance and lived in a housing project. Of my own choosing I taught for six years in an all-Black high school in Chicago, the most meaningful professional experience of my life. These were the children who came out of the same life circumstances as I did, and I loved them. Yes, I was very moved by the stories of CNN, but there were no truthful explanations of the causal circumstances or the posing of solutions. Bill Cosby/Dr. Alvin Pousant and Senator Barack Obama are only partially correct, as was Maya Angelou who was not able to state fully her concerns before being cut off. I fully support the idea that there are many things we must as a people do to change the lives of all of our people. Some of these changes must be political, social, educational, values and spiritual orientation. But Cosby, Pousant and Obama do not factor in the historical, political and social circumstances that have resulted in racist treatment of our people in health, employment, economics, housing, education, politics and criminal justice. There can be no significant changes of the lives of the least of us until we confront directly the factors in which over half of our children never finish high school, in which 70% of Black inmates were school dropouts, in which young people with criminal records cannot get jobs. And this brings me to my final point. I have no quarrel with Dr. Roland Fryer's experiment with paying economically disadvantaged children in New York City for doing their homework and for attending school. Children from advantaged economic circumstances receive ample rewards for the same efforts. Nor do I disagree with Dr. Pedro Noguera's emphasis on the necessity for "qualified" teachers of the public schools' children, the majority of whom are of African and Hispanic ancestry. What I insist upon, however, is that the children be taught the glorious history of their ancestry, that they are the proud descendants of that ancestry. I do not accept the contention that any administrator or teacher who does not know the history and culture of their student population and who does not infuse that knowledge in pedagogy and curriculum can be designated as "qualified". Our children must be taught critical thinking to be able to analyze their present circumstances and to discover strategies to change those circumstances. The late scholars Dr. Asa G. Hilliard, III and Dr. Barbara A. Sizemore and others wrote in the classic SAVING THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CHILD of the National Alliance of Black School Educators: " Excellence in education must prepare a student for self knowledge. . . no child can be ignorant of or lack respect for his or her own unique cultural group and meet others in the world on an equal footing. We believe that this type of excellence in education is a right of the masses and is not merely for a small elite". Donald H. Smith, Ph.D. Former chair, the New York City Board of Education's Commission on Students of African Descent

Dr. Donald Hugh Smith is a native of Chicago. He was the founding director of the Center for Inner City Studies at Northeastern Illinois University and the University Community Educational Programs. He is credited for establishing the Malcolm Marcus Martin Scholarship Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Smith is the founding president of the New York Alliance of Black School Educators. As past president of the National Alliance of Black School Educators he coined the term “Black Academic and Cultural Excellence” and commissioned NABSE’s seminal report, Saving the African American Child. Dr. Smith received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He is an active retired educator who resides in New York and Florida.