African Americans have made significant gains during this century, victorious in the election of a Black president as well as many Supreme Court decisions. When there is opposition, there is opportunity. The greater the opposition, the greater is the opportunity. The students must understand that freedom is not free, and many people had to pay the cost. They sacrificed their lives so students can have futures not funerals. I would like to see a movement like the anti-lynching movement to be in effect against gun violence in the community. I believe the NAACP has the resources for the elimination of racial discrimination through lobbying, legal action, and education.
I struggle with ways to teach my students how difficult it was for African Americans after slavery. That so many have fought for freedoms that they take for granted, like where they eat, where they study and whom they study with. I personally never experienced being deprived intellectual commingling with other students, but I believe there are still hidden racist tactics that are being used by the admission process to schools in this present day and time. Schools are using discriminatory practices to determine applicants through surnames which implicate their nationality or ethnicity. Standardized testing is non-effective for assessment and higher performing schools are receiving the best resources for education. The book "Fight for Freedom: History of the NAACP", by the great poet, Langston Hughes is an old book, not particularly well know, but one of the most riveting, compelling books and compulsory reading for all students. Respectfully, it is unfortunate that so many of our youth are so painfully unaware of the history of the NAACP. I would have the students collect data on the challenges facing African Americans (or blacks in New Haven) today. The class will debate; conduct interviews and exam case histories pertaining to past and present civil liberties v civil rights decisions. The students will be able to attend college debates like the Yale University v. Morehouse College; these teams were debating Gun Control and the efficacy of Charter Schools during the Connecticut NAACP 5th Annual Great Debate April 11, 2013. The debate will be used as a dramatic demonstration to encourage participation from the entire school population.
It's imperative that we educate our youth about the struggle. How can we develop young freedom fighters if they feel the fight is over? Hopefully, we are beyond the stage where dolt behavior is occurring. As some people say, "If you want to hide something from a black person, put it in a book". Having said that, I believe just as they say, "ignorance of the law is no excuse", so too, ignorance of one's history is never an excuse. The Jewish people do not allow it, Why should African Americans? Juan Perea, Richard Delgado, Angela Harris, Jean Stefancic, and Stephanie Wildman's book, Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Diverse America, presents a critical perspectives on race and racism. It also provides expanded treatment of Japanese-American internment, Jewish Americans, and native Hawaiians in the U.S. This book is an awesome resource to use when presenting cases such as Grutter and Virginia v. Black, current statistics, and enhanced coverage of voting. The students will be able to make connections and linkages to other nationalities other than their own by using cases as a tool to ignite conversation about the treatment of major racial groups in the United States: African Americans, Indians, Latinos/Latinas, Asian Americans, and Whites. The book contains information that explores implications of enslavement, conquest, colonization, and immigration, as well as on equality, education, freedom of expression, family and sexuality, stereotyping, and crime, all areas of interest to support the question, is the NAACP needed at this time? The purpose of this curriculum unit is to educate students, as well as make connections to increase relevancy for students, including connections to different lessons, to different content areas, and to each student's world outside of the classroom. The students will learn about how the African American people were in crisis, and if they continue to be in crisis.
Is the NAACP needed at this time? Education Inequality and Disparities in Connecticut
Our school profile and schoolnet data demonstrated that the suspension rate and poor attendance have increased for the 2013 school year. School and class attendance, suspensions, expulsions and dropout rates are increasing in New Haven schools. According to an online news source, the New Haven Independent (December 13, 2013) article by Melissa Bailey reported that the dropout rate is rising in New Haven. The high school dropout rate for the Class of 2013 rose from 20.7 to 22.9 percent, and the four year graduation rate fell slightly, from 70.0 to 70.3 percent. Many of the students are "giving up" the very same freedoms that the NAACP fought for over two centuries. This curriculum will be used to ignite a dialogue about NAACP: Then and Now, and its efforts in the elimination of racial discrimination through lobbying, legal action, and education.
Not much has changed since the "Little Rock Nine" and New Orleans' "stand alone" student Ruby Bridges, as she courageously crossed their school's steps during the infamous Integration Crisis in the 50's. Several recent court opinions speak volumes like Sheff vs. O'Neill. An arduous journey was started in 1989 by Elizabeth Horton Sheff of Connecticut, when her son, Milo, was a fourth grade student at Annie Fisher Elementary School in Hartford. She felt he wasn't receiving the level of education as other students. Elizabeth joined with ten other families to redress the inequity between the level of education provided to students in Hartford public schools and that was available to children in surrounding suburban districts. This journey has become known around the State of Connecticut, and throughout the United States, as Sheff vs. O'Neill–a landmark civil rights effort that seeks to prepare all children to live and prosper in an increasingly diverse, globally connected world. Still Hartford has exhibited problems within their educational system. Hartford parents are divided on integrating CT's schools. On January 16, 2014, Jacqueline Rabe Thomas stated that nearly half the students from Hartford now attend integrated schools as reported in The CT Mirror News article. Another article with Alvin Chang, "By the numbers: Integrating schools in CT", Jacqueline reported;
-
"Over the last 10 years, the state has spent about $2.5 billion to offer Hartford students enrollment in an integrated school. Most of the state's spending has gone toward opening new magnet schools in the region to encourage Hartford minority students and white students from the suburbs to enroll. These efforts follow the Connecticut Supreme Court's ordering the state 17 years ago -- in its ruling in the Sheff v. O'Neill lawsuit -- to eliminate the inequities that exist because of Hartford's largely minority-student population." Despite these efforts and all the changes, more than half of all Hartford's 21,000 students continue to attend segregated schools, a term used when more than three-quarters of a school's student population are members of minority groups. And, as John Logan, a sociology professor at Brown University, reported to state legislators this month, a comparison of Connecticut's metro areas to those of most other metro areas in the country show that black and Hispanic students are more segregated in the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk area, the New Haven-Milford area and in Hartford than most other cities."
Is the NAACP needed at this time? Criminal Injustice/ Mass Incarceration
As studied by many sociologists, "A black male resident of the state of California is more likely to go to a state prison than a state college." Tyranny and the sense of fear have always affected African-Americans, from 12 Years A Slave to 12 Angry Black Men. The NAACP has handled many landmark cases, like McCleskey v Kemp, Brown v. Board of Education, RICCI ET AL. v. DESTEFANO ET AL. (2009) just to name a few, but their work is their work finished yet? People play fair on the basketball court, because the rules are clear, but when the NBA is investigating LA Clipper's owner Donald Sterling for alleged racist comments about Black people, the NBA is in trouble and this nation still has a long way to go to stop racism. Prisons are being built up while schools are being torn down. Black on Black crime is at an all time high, in this country. The oppressors are still using literacy tests, employment discrimination, economic injustice, incarceration, and segregation to provide an inferior life-style for African-Americans.
From state to state, African Americans were being victimized solely for their skin color. Studies show that that African-Americans were more likely to receive a death sentence than any other defendants, and that African-American defendants who killed white victims were the most likely to be sentenced to death. Numerous studies conducted in the 20 years that followed McCleskey have shown that race continues to play a critical role in virtually all aspects of the criminal justice process. In 2006 a study on Punishment and Inequality in America by sociologist Bruce Weston, his findings were "that the extent of racial disparity in imprisonment rates is greater than in any other major arena of American social life; at eight to one, the black-white ratio of incarceration rates dwarfs the two-to-one ratio of employment…while 3 out of 200 young whites were incarcerated in 2000, the rate for young blacks was 1 in 9." Loury also believes that mass incarceration has now become a principal vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchy in our society.