Prometheus 6   

It is particularly hard if it is true -- as I believe -- that the gap has less and less to do with racism and more and more to do with the habits and attitudes we inculcate among our children.

I can almost feel the resistance from black Americans to the notion that there is something cultural about the underachievement of black students. Almost as palpable is the easy conclusion on the part of many whites (and I'm not talking about racists) that if black people would just buckle down as other disadvantaged groups have done, many of their problems would evaporate.

And yet -- how hard this is! -- the buckle-down crowd may be closer to the mark. That is not to say that the academic gap (as much as four years by the time of high school graduation) is merely the aggregate result of individual black laziness. It isn't.

But as Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom make clear in their new book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning," a significant source of the gap is in the attitudes toward academic achievement that are prevalent in black America, even among the economically successful, college-trained middle class.

And but for a subtle disregard for reality he might have hit it. For instance, here:

…he doesn't actually SAY this is happening in the Black communities, just as he doesn't actually SAY it's not happening in the white communities. And had he written this:

…immediately before, rather than immediately after, this:

…the appearance of compassion may have been stronger.

Raspberry and the Thernstroms are far more sympathetic than they would have you believe. In holding Black Americans to a different standard than the mainstream (for instance, according to Raspberry's approving quote, the Thernstroms write "too few black and Hispanic youngsters -- particularly those in urban public schools -- have acquired the skills to choose their own path," and I would question how many white Americans outside the upper economic class choose their own path), in holding that Black Americans by dint of their own individual efforts can overcome racism (that they do not claim is negligible, but merely reduced) they imply that Black Americans are more capable than those who are not impacted negatively by that racism yet do not rise to the pinnacles of American society.

That oughta scare white folks that are inclined to be scared more than any number of of Black folks with guns. Because guns aren't going to change America. Anyone who thinks it will ought to just disabuse themselves of that notion right now. Egalitarianism, extended regardless of race, would be a fundamental change though…a change so great that most people (again, regardless of race) wouldn't have a clue as to how to proceed from there.

Raspberry closes with

sigh

You know, it's really, really not fair. No nation, no society, no culture has ever been consciously shaped from the inside. If Black folks can pull it off, it will be a first. The odds of success are vanishingly small.

Yet I'm going to climb on that soapbox too.

Not with the verbal lash. Not with willful blindness about the historical causes of the problems or the current processes that perpetuate them. But with a simple observation: we have no choice. And if we start from scratch, rejecting outside opinions and influences to choose that which is best for us individually and collectively, itself a huge task, we could master this requirement.

That, of course, isn't Raspberry and the Thernstroms' message. But the Thernstroms aren't writing for Black folks. And Raspberry has bills to pay.

LATER: I think the reasoning in Chris Bertram's post at Crooked Timber applies as far as assigning responsibility for the problem.