With the attitude that being willing to try and do well in school being a white thing, and therefore a target of bullying and assault, so prevalent amongst black neighborhoods, an office dedicated to educating these individuals is not going to work. Most black students are either niggers by choice, or (rightly) afraid of those that are.
Fix the culture, first. Change the attitude that good grades are something to be shunned, to be attacked for attaining. Any attempt to do anything else first is doomed to failure.
I once had an African-American student who worked with me on a project when I was in grad school. He confessed that a lot of people from his old neighborhood (a pretty middle-class one at that) called him "Oreo" and similar. His attitude was a good one though: "Screw that. I know what I want to do with my life. Being successful doesn't mean you've sold out your culture."
ReplyDeleteI think he went on to med school.
But not all kids have the same level of intestinal fortitude as that guy had.
Sadly, they don't. That's why peer pressure and bullying work.
DeleteIt's not limited to race, either. I'm white, from a majority poor white school, and I remember being told by the other free lunch kids that me getting good grades was getting above my station, and that I should stop trying.
(I usually had my nose stuck in a book, so I rarely acknowledged that I heard them.)