Cultural Failure

"CNN Presents" hooked me tonight with a program on the failure of educational race integration to achieve parity in results. All the data show that education is the #1 factor in terms of socioeconomic outcomes, overriding other factors such as race, parental wealth, etc. Things get sticky, though, when you ask people how the problem of poor education among Black Americans should be addressed.

Unlike "Lou Dobbs Tonight" (yellow journalism at its worst), this CNN program presented multiple sides to the story, and allowed experts more than a soundbite's worth to make their point. The affluent Shaker Heights High School in Ohio was profiled. It's a community consciously on the forefront of racial integration and one of the best school systems in the USA. The interviewers talked to experts, teachers, parents, and students from that school and others, and let each voice their opinions on the roots and solutions to the problem.

To me, the program highlighted a cultural failure. A failure not of Black culture, but of Ph.D. culture. The experts interviewed displayed common sense relating inversely to educational level. Not all but many of the Ph.D.'s interviewed toed the relativist party line: nothing is Black America's fault. A Chinese-background prof at Howard, Dr. Wu, rejected the idea that Blacks' underachievement & Asians' overachievement has cultural roots, saying instead that slavery was to blame. He went on to decry the pressure placed on Asian students (sometimes leading to suicide) because of high expectations. Is it just me, or is that contradictory? Or should we lower expectations across the board, and let everybody shoot for a Gentleman's 'C'?

Anyone who has walked down a street or hung out in an urban neighborhood in America can tell you there are cultural differences between blacks, whites, Asians, and others. The intellectual community is direly needed to do what they do best: study objectively and diagnose problems on a broad level. Does the problem lie with black parents? CNN showed a stat that among college-educated families making $100 grand or more, blacks were 5 times more likely to watch 6 hours of TV a day. Does the problem lie with peer groups? There is a wealth of anecdotal evidence that doing well in school is derided as "going white" in some circles. Does the problem lie with the media? CNN flashed some lewd clips of music videos that may convince black youth that the road to success is in drugs and rap, not banking or biotech. This is a social ill that merits serious research, but the ivory tower is AWOL. Instead of taking a serious look at causes and effects in modern Black America, the majority in this program and elsewhere are unwilling to sacrifice their cultural relativism. Guess what - if all cultures are equal, then all socioeconomic outcomes are equal! If we refuse to repudiate the destructive elements in any culture or subculture, where is our moral authority to say that poverty, lack of education, and low life expectancy are "bad" outcomes? By relativists' logic, aren't those just part of an alternative culture, and therefore above reproach?

The most sensible people in the program were a group of bright black seniors at Shaker Heights High. They had formed a group aimed at creating a high standard for underclassmen. Specifically race-conscious, the goal is to annihilate the stereotypes by confronting them with success; not by arguing them away, favored tack of the intellectuals. The students dress in suits for meetings, and show an image of ambition and success sharply variant from that championed by either the rappers or the Ph.D.'s. They want to be free of unfair stereotypes - and they're willing to work to get there.

Twenty years from now when the Shaker Heights Class of '05 is out in the workforce, to whom will they be more grateful? Dogmatic Ph.D.'s, who let their intellectual objectivity fall prey to a postmodernist ideology? Or a group of men and women, age 17, who decided to wear ties and cufflinks instead of do-rags and expensive sneakers? Certainly, blame for the modern condition of blacks can be attributed at least in part to slavery and discrimination, but that provides scant fuel for a forward struggle. The question is not what put America's blacks where they are; the question is how do they move forward. And the Ph.D. establishment has completely dropped the ball.