Because what is happening on the streets of Harlem to black
boys and girls is also happening on all America's streets to
everybody. It's a terrible delusion to think that any part of this
republic can be safe so long as 20,000,000 members of it are
menaced as they are.
Th reality that I am trying to get at is that the humanity of this
submerged population is equal to the humanity of anyone else,
equal to yours, equal to to that of your child. I know that when
I walk into a Harlem funeral parlor and see a dead boy lying there.
I know, no matter what the social scientists say, or the liberals
say, that it is extremely unlikely that he would be in his grave
so soon if he were not black
-James Baldwin, Words of a Native Son
Playboy December 1964
People vote differently when they have skin in the game.
They MOST certainly vote differently when their children comprise
said "skin".
I had this thought in mind while reading folks rationalize why
it was "expected" for the Obama's to send their children to
private school because they are "lawyers" or the children
of a senator.
I don't have an issue with where the Obama's send their
children to school per se. I have an issue with our whole
hearted acceptance of an individualized approach to education
that clearly does a disservice to our young people (across ethnicities).
Where is our willingness to critique and reform an educational
and economic system that has allows parents, policy makers,
and politicians to focus on "their children" and say "good luck"
to the others.
It takes a village went out with the Jheri Curl, hunh?
Its easy to be angry but then I began to think about what
an alternate future could look like.
How different would our neighborhoods look if the police
officers had to live in the neighborhoods they served?
How would our schools look if teachers had to live in the
neighborhoods they taught in?
What if public servants had to send their children to public schools?
If the children of the well off are only those that receive a
first rate education then isn't that more of a feature of an
Aristocracy rather than a Democracy?
All children, in this country are entitled to a first rate education
regardless as to whether their parents are senators, janitors or addicts.
I don't mean a drill and kill education. But an education that builds
critical thinkers who are content with who they are as human beings
and feel that they have a contribution to make to society.
Baldwin continues in the same essay about how the fate
of all of our children, and I would argue similar to the fate of
our global economy is tied together. He writes,As long as my children face the future they face, and come to ruin
that they come to, your children are in danger too. They are
endangered above all by the moral apthay which pretends it isn't
happening. This does something terrible to us. Anyone who
is trying to be conscious must begin to be conscious of that apathy
and must begin to dismiss the vocabulary which we've use so
long to cover it up, to lie about the way that things are.
-James Baldwin, Words of a Native Son
Playboy December 1964
