UrbanBlackThink

Originally printed 3/22/03

Tonight I attended a Joliet fundraiser for my buddy, Fred, who is running for his school board. I was joined by Jamilah, me and Fred’s grad school little sister, and her new boyfriend, Ben. I was gonna have some fun the instant I saw Ben. Jay shot me a “don’t” look, so I left him alone. As a result, Ben was not subjected to the grilling Fred and I give Jay’s guys. Lucky sucker. He really had it coming, dressed like he just came down from the mountains with Fidel and Che. Anyway, Jay and I did some catching up while ignoring Ben. We both taught at “behavior” schools, where kids labeled as having behavior disorders were shipped too after causing too much trouble in mainstream institutions (so much for those graduate Business studies). Ben chimed in that he was doing studies on BD schools as part of his grad thesis on inner city studies. He waited for me to look at him in awe and congratulate him. I didn’t. Jay kicked me under the table.

I did want to pick Ben’s brain for any tips that I could use with my student body. Armchair revolutionaries with upper middle class rearings always know how to solve the hood’s problems. Ben’s answer: “Black folk shouldn’t have left the city.” Huh? What? As the conversation grew more intense, I found myself frustrated with Ben’s inability to apply practical means to solving a problem. Students like Jay’s and mine often leave school needing therapy and instruction in how to perform the most basic of societal tasks. Without these skills, a life outside of the mainstream may quickly lead to incarceration for our students. I asked SoopaBrotha’s opinion on how one should approach this societal and academic problem facing troubled kids. His solution? Condemn folk ‘cause of their ZIP code? Man, when you lead that revolution, whitey better be standing still*. UrbanBlackThink rears its ugly head. Again.

Urbanblackthink is a mentality that I find common in Black Chicagoans who have never lived outside of the city’s borders. Followers of such logic are often well off financially. This is why they can afford to stay in the city. Their parents are often tied into the city government or have made money off Black folk telling Black folk about themselves. Either way, these folk are plugged enough to ensure their offspring can attend the city’s best public schools without encountering a waiting list. The kids, in turn, are in all of the right clubs and do all the right social functions as youngsters, before following in their parents’ footsteps.

UrbanBlackThinkers conveniently forget that Chicago Blacks have been exhorted to stay in “the community” since we were well below the Mason-Dixon. We left Alabama, where many of us were landowners, for the cities of the north, where many of us became tenants, in search of “better jobs”. The relatives that we left behind acknowledged the South was bad, but that was our “community”, to which we were bound by both family and economic ties. The ones who left were “sellouts.” Those of us who arrived in Chicago were herded into Bronzeville, where the poor and rich lived as separately as two classes can live within a several square block radius. The minute areas such as South Shore, Pill Hill and Chatham opened up, they became “the community”. After the first of us who moved there were “sellouts”. Blacks who moved out to Morgan Park and “The Hundreds”, as my wife’s grandparents did in the late sixties, were considered sellouts. The tale goes on and on.

My point is this: The Black community is mental. While it always takes that one family of Walter Lee Youngers to integrate an area, we know that where there’s one of us, many more aren’t too far behind. Five years from now, the Southern suburbs will be the new “community”. I think it’ll be for the better. Hopefully Blacks get a chance to run their own townships, build new business bases, and accomplish something “the community” ain’t done in Chicago in almost 20 years. Elect and retain Black municipal administrators. Trust me, Chicago’s Black politicos are aware that the next place “the community” train is stopping holds political potential for people of color.

The fact that we don’t all have the same lifestyle implies that we might not all share the same problem. The Black tax is real, but it is graduated. Blacks in, say, Matteson or Homewood are at the lower end of that bracket. Those in Englewood are getting hit the hardest. My point is that we are not a monolith. The way we live and present ourselves is that we have some very real layers, and circumstances are often dictated by where in those layers one fits. This applies in everything from solving problems with municipal services to solving problems in schools.

UrbanBlackThink says that Blacks have problems in general because they move outside of the city. The issue of schools is no exception to this rule. Folk possessing this logic feel that by leaving the city’s borders, you have doomed your child to terrible schooling, and it’s your own fault. Forget the fact that unless you are a principal’s kid you face a crapshoot on Chicago high schools that are more dangerous than SuperMax. Moving to the suburbs, according to UrbanBlackThinkers, subjects kids to teasing and ostracism that makes it difficult for them to learn. Worse, such a move forces them to further buy into the white man’s culture. Then per the grand plan, they forget their Blackness. It is that easy to forget.

Being forced to attend a district school where the teachers failed the Basic Skills test in a war zone, according to these folk, is far more preferable. Nothing solidifies your Blackness like dodging bullets on the way to Algebra. Funny, UrbanBlackThinkers have never set foot in such schools themselves unless that is where they collect their paycheck. If they could, they’d put “Niggers Not Allowed” signs outside the schools their own children attend.

Blacks who live in suburbs usually aren’t pioneers anymore. Those that are may end up on a shrink’s couch, but they don’t end up in Behavior Disorder classrooms. Losing Blackness after losing a 606 ZIP code is not an issue. There is a new suburban problem facing Black students. Kids from the inner city are often enrolled in alternative schools for things their city teachers let slide. Like learning to read. By age 13. Like jumping on other kids. Bringing weapons to school. Stuff like that. Suburban districts intend to keep their schools as safe as possible, and by Kwame’s third time bringing that blade to school, he’s out. Seldom are these middle class kids. By and large, BD classes are filled with the children at the other end of the Black social strata. Rubbing my bruised shin, I shared this opinion with Ben. Then I asked Ben how he felt we should practically approach this problem. Him studying inner city issues and all.

The response that I got wasn’t very encouraging. I paid lip service to Ben’s suggestions of making course curriculums relative to the Black experience (transposing Shakespeare with Pushkin, Fitzgerald with Wright, and so on). I nodded blankly through his reaching Black students through the languages and controls to which they subscribe dissertation (Ebonics, anyone?) At the end, though, it seemed that most of Ben’s plan involved a revamp of curricula within the school system. This would take a generation, at least, and would probably ultimately require Blacks erecting their own schools and pushing their own curriculum. Of course, Ben, these would be private schools. People you accuse of oppressing you are not going to fund your revolution. That’s UrbanBlackThink for ya. The revolution must be subsidized.

A system like Ben’s needs parents that have no issue with paying for a school to keep it running. I explained to Ben that I’d happily support such an institution and can afford to make tuition payments when he opens it. That, however, does not solve the here and now problem. Nor does it account for those parents who either for reasons financial or social, insist on enrolling their children in public schools. As a teacher, I am not looking for a quick fix, but for a more practical answer than the “one-size-fits-all-colored-folk” solution. How do we work with kids from the city who demonstrate seriously antisocial behavior and keep them out of BD schools? Ben shook his head sadly and tried to catch his reflection in the shine of his combat boots.

Silly UrbanBlackThinkers keep pretending that attributing them problem to phantom circumstances will create a solution. Or at least will keep providing these folk with someone to blame. Revolutions must be profitable. Solving problems kills the golden goose. The blame game isn’t working here, though. These folks’ hypocrisy is not helping lower-income, bright Black kids that are being herded into Special Ed BD classes like cattle. It is not reversing adverse effects such moves will have on these kids’ futures. That somehow repatriating all suburban Black kids fighting the ever disappearing suburban Black identity crisis would solve this problem is a stupid idea. I said it. Stupid... The assumption that more Blacks staying in shitty urban schools will improve the lot is equally stupid. One has so little to do with the other. To even compare the two and apply one as a solution to the other is absurd at best, scary at worst. Perhaps, if parents of guys like Ben stopped using the system in the city to slide their kids into the best schools, we could reach a fairer conclusion than the one he proposed. Perhaps.

UrbanBlackThink is dangerous. It is often the product of better-educated Blacks who have the least to lose by buying into it. I love it when well educated Black folk make themselves available for solutions on how to solve the problems of their lesser fortunate brethren. Creating long term plans we can ill afford, solutions we cannot practically apply, and conspiracy theories which we too quickly believe without verifying. Several of Ben’s “leaders” came up with these plans, and are living in well integrated neighborhoods. Their kids attend schools where they often are in a very small population of people of color. Trust me, I know, because I was there, too. “Yo daddy is who? Why ya’ll out here? I’m catching flak for being a sellout for living out here and ya’ll got here before we did? What the hell?” One day we’ll have a Black president, and I wonder from which community he’ll emerge? Probably not one of those well off, all Black enclaves like the Highlands. Chances are he would not have attended special, “Plugged Black Kids Only” schools. Time will tell.

Solutions such as the ones Ben presented don’t solve the problems of my other buddy Fred’s school district. His, like many small towns and suburbs, is predominantly Black. The logic of “you shouldn’t have left the city” and "revamp the curriculum with culture” are not going to solve the problems of parents looking to send their kids to college. The HBCUs, which graduate more undergraduate Blacks than any other American college system, have entrance standards. They have to, in order to keep competing with cheaper state colleges. This logic, again, is silly.

Intellectuals studying for a solution to the Black education problems need to come up with more realistic plans that truly address our legitimate issues. Save the pie-in-the-sky blame Urbanblackthink bullshit for the cocktail parties with their peers and the pseudo revolutionaries, where it plays better. We’re in crisis mode here. There is no time for paving roads to hell with good intentions.

I "accidentally" stepped on Ben’s combat boot on the way out. He looked hard. His dreads flew. Then he cried.

*Quoted from the original “Shaft”