There is nothing more important to children’s well-being than parents/primary care-givers. No friend, social media or video game should have more influence on children’s development than parents/primary care-givers, who should ensure that children are getting the basic assets necessary for success.
Unfortunately, Educational Attainment, always the most important asset, has become the overriding predictor by far of upward mobility. Access to high-quality/high-quality education and success in such are tied to family income. The disparities in standardized test scores and college completion rates between affluent and low-income students have nearly doubled since the 1960s.
Merit has replaced inherited privilege. But merit is still income-based. Parents with money and education equip their children to excel in the American mainstream.
According to College Board data, by the time students apply to college, children from families making more than $118,000 a year score 265 points higher on the SAT than children from families making less than $56,000. The academic gap between the rich and the poor is larger than the academic gap between White and Black students in the final days of Jim Crow.
Nearly 80% of adults from families in the top income quartile earn at least bachelor’s degrees by the time they turn 24, as compared with only 9% of people from the lowest income bracket.
NOT WELL, however, it is not money per se that controls children’s success but rather the experiences in school and out that money allows. Thus, I reject the assertion that African Americans can do nothing, even now, as we head more rapidly toward fascism to improve success outcomes for children in our lowest socio-economic echelon. Irrespective of who says it, that contention is racist on its face because it implies inherent genetic defects instead of the conduct of America’s institutions, including individuals, families, communities, and schools.
We have obscured the successes in Black America because failures are disproportionately numerous, and chronicling them supports the strategies of White Supremacists who assert Black genetic inferiority. One of the areas that is a good source for comparisons is professional sports because of Black over-representation in the big two — basketball and football — and because of America’s addiction to sports.
The model for Black school athletics participation in the early days was not either athletics, or academics, or decent behavior – It was all three, at once!
America in general, and young Blacks in particular, need to know that there are 12 times more Black lawyers and 15 times more Black doctors than Black athletes.
There are 46,000 Black professors, 46,000 Black lawyers, 24,000 Black civil engineers, and 15,000 Black pharmacists.
There are 227 times more Black AA degree holders; 319 times more Black BA degree holders; 127 times more Black MA degree holders; 15 times more Black professional degree holders; and 17 times more Black doctoral degree holders than the number of Black athletes. And the great majority of these individuals are one or two generations out of poverty.
As a direct consequence of those educational achievements:
In 2022, 22% of Black households earned $100,000 or more; and nearly 9% of US millionaires are African Americans. (PEW Research Center)
In 2023, there were nearly 2 million Black millionaires in the United States. The Black millionaire population rose 35% from 2020 to 2021. (Black Enterprise)
NB: 88% of US millionaires are college graduates. (Sources: Black Enterprise, EarthWeb, Forbes, and Expertbeacon)
If families want to give their children a 98% chance of avoiding poverty altogether and a 72% chance of joining the middle class when they reach adulthood, using all the means available, they must:
1. Ensure that the children understand that their genetic make-up will not inevitably impede their capacity to achieve academic excellence and life success if they work hard in high quality coursework. Black students who complete 22 core courses in high school and earn good grades score as much as 65% higher on the SAT than Black students and White who students take less than 14 courses and do poorly.
2. Beseech them to complete their high school education, in high school. Our greatest resource for success in America remains public school education; and no educational level is as important as the K-8 experience.
3. Demand that they get full time jobs, or several part-time jobs, if necessary, especially after their “launch” into adulthood at the age of maturity; and even if they do not leave the parents’ nest, or boomerang. Self-reliance is a paramount maturation character trait.
4. Insist that they wait until at least age 22, preferably later, to get married – or the contemporary equivalent – living together.
5. Implore them to delay producing children until after age 25, for themselves, but, especially, for the children.
DuBois was right: Our achievements from Emancipation until 1950 should have been America’s model for all Americans, particularly for poor children.
