Black History Month, filled with numerous celebrations about Black contributions to America, just ended. Decades ago, I asked some celebrants whether they had kept in focus what Dr. Woodson INTENDED for Black people and America when he fostered Black History Week in 1926. Responses ranged from dismay to hostility.
An intention clarifies the purpose for which something is done. To be effective for an oppressed people’s development, intentions must also encompass Plans, Execution, Perseverance, Assessments of Outcomes, and Actions based on Assessments of Outcomes – e.g., modifications, continuation, or stoppage.
Dr. Woodson, a consummate educator, understood the intractable relationship between Education and Democracy:
“The so-called modern education, with all its defects does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples.”
Woodson did not intend for his efforts to be simply for historians, dilettantes, annual celebrations, or bromides for T-shirts; but, rather, to be converted into perseverant action steps as necessary for Black people to acquire the equality the founders asserted as “self-evident truths” for “ALL” Americans.
“Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of our true history. The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worthwhile depresses and crushes the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples.” Woodson
Breaches between Intentions and Outcomes are most glaring when we attend to the condition of the descendants of slaves as compared with the primary purpose of America’s government.
Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a DEMOCRACY OF OPPORTUNITY. –Jefferson
For Democracy to exist and endure, education must diffuse high quality knowledge of both physical and social sciences, as well as the principles of virtue, liberty and justice, which will inspire youth with an inviolable attachment to their own country. (From Noah Webster)
Long ago, statistics from the Census Bureau confirmed that African Americans with a four-year college degree achieved a median income nearly equal to the median income of similarly educated whites. In fact, Blacks with doctorates had higher incomes than similarly educated whites.
These extraordinary achievements have been consistently overlooked by most commentators. Thus, both the promisers of intentions and the promised need to be reminded frequently of both Intentions and Outcomes.
As Lessing tells us, great harm ensues when current circumstances cause us to forget what we set out to accomplish. American history is rife with examples of the great detriment that occurs when citizens forget to watch both ends of Intentions process.
Americans were deluded into believing that high school diplomas and college admissions were synonymous with inculcation of high quality/high quantity education – disastrous for lower echelon children.
In 2018, a study by the Economic Policy Institute found that there had been “no progress” for African Americans on homeownership, unemployment, criminal justice and poverty in 50 years. I add “EDUCATION.”
In 2021, only 6% of Black ACT test takers were rated ready for college-level courses. (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 2022)
Most Black Middle Class Kids Are Downwardly Mobile (Brookings, Rand, US Census). Even the Black Americans who make it to the middle class are likely to see their kids fall down the ladder.
However, if hard work and excellence in academic achievement did not matter, there would not be that huge difference between Black Americans with college degrees and those without.
In addition to Woodson’s Black History intentions, what outcomes were intended with:
The Brown decision; the Adams case; MLK’s Be the Best and I have a Dream speeches; the Civil Rights Acts of the mid-sixties; and Goals 2000?
After Brown, numerous schools adopted educational policies that were based on the racist notion, exacerbated by implicit bias, that Black students were genetically incapable of educational excellence and high scores on standardized tests no matter how hard they work in high quality courses. In Florida, for example, to meet educational mastery, Black students had to achieve only 75% of the white students’ standard. Unfortunately, far too many Black people, including children, have been deceived about this “genetic defect” matter.
Woodson, John Hope Franklin, Kenneth Clark and Martin Luther King expressed great disappointment at what had been achieved in their lifetimes despite their efforts.
Over the years, effectively deceived members of oppressed groups too often attacked the very stalwarts who offered Truth and Enlightenment, and, to their own people’s detriment, continued to ritually endorse panderers, hypocrites and exploiters who proffered easy solutions, of which, obviously, there were none.
