Waiting on Superman

 

Waiting for Superman

            In viewing the film Waiting for “Superman”, an age old question has arisen; why are African Americans faring so poorly in the public educational system that are in place throughout the United States? The statistics throughout the history of the public school system are staggering and almost unbelievable in the direct correlation to African American dropout rate and prison rates. Undoubtedly, there are success stories everywhere of Black students achieving scholastic greatness, but that is the problem; when an African American achieves in the classroom, it shouldn’t be a success story, it should be the status quo, it should be normal. When a Caucasian student is going through school, it is expected that they graduate and continue on to a post-secondary form of education. Why is it different within the African American community? There is a discrepancy from the time Blacks enter the public school system to the time that they leave, whether they graduate or not.

            There is a direct correlation between underachieving African Americans in the public school systems and their background. Most troublemaking and underachieving students have backgrounds in impoverished neighborhoods with dysfunctional families. This has been an issue from the abolition of slavery up through the Civil Rights Era, even up to the present day. “The American power structure and the history of oppression that it has created for African Americans have had a devastating effect on the African American family unit. Whether forcibly during slavery or as a voluntary reaction to life pressures, disruption to the immediate family unit is not new to Black families…” (Jenkins). In the African American society, the average child may not have the necessity, which is now looked upon as a luxury, of a two parent household for whatever reason: incarceration, death, drug addiction, etc. “With parents suffering a sense of defeatism, many Black children are then left to navigate the psychological and social oppressions

that began for them at a very early age” (Jenkins).

            These children also confront the brutal reality of poverty face to face each and every day before they walk into school and again when they leave school.

            “‘Children have an enormous capacity to adapt to insanity.’ To look upon Black children who live in poverty, whose families have been shut out of employment and the economic infrastructure of America, who have been socially outcast from society, and who constantly confront death whether it be immediately in their own violent neighborhood or slowly via inadequate healthcare, nutrition, and stress, all caused by society’s power structure, and ask why they are acting out suggests that maybe it is society that does not fully understand the situation” (Jenkins).

            These students from disenfranchised situations at home bring those same burdens with them into the schoolhouse, causing them to create more trouble in the classroom. This inadvertently leads to more suspensions and expulsions from school, causing them to miss valuable instruction. As an effect to their antics, black children are also stigmatized as troublemakers and receive harsher and longer punishments from school authorities.

 “Black female and male students have experienced higher levels of exclusionary discipline since 1991 than any other group of students…Black females and males represent 17 percent of the youth population ages 10 to 17, but are 58 percent of all juveniles sent to adult prison…Black students are more likely to be suspended or expelled for “disrespect, excessive noise, threat, and loitering…At 28.3 percent of suspensions, Black boys have experienced the greatest risk of suspension among middle school students, with the number of suspensions increasing annually from 2002 to 2006. In fact, a number of studies have found Black males experience the highest rates of exclusionary discipline” (Morris).

“Black and Hispanic students represent more than 70 percent of those involved in school-related arrests or referrals to law enforcement. Currently, African Americans make up two-fifths and Hispanics one-fifth of confined youth today” (Kerby).

            With these two factors, coupled with a curriculum that shows no notable figures that Black children can relate to, as well as absorbing years’ worth of subliminal conditioning through various media outlets, Black children began to feel a subconscious sense of inferiority and self-hatred. In this sense, they lash out against superiors and think less of those of their own kind; all the while subconsciously wondering why they can’t be apart of the alleged “superior” race.

“One of the many factors influencing the current social status of Black people, and more particularly Black males, is psychological in nature: the persisting internalization of self-hatred, resulting in low self-concept…as laws forced society to discontinue direct forms of racial prejudice, television became the new medium to disseminate stereotypical perspectives. And it proved even more successful than the first, as it reached an even greater audience and attacked Blacks even in the privacy of their own homes. Detrimental in those years of dual mediums (radio and TV), the effect is now almost devastating in the multimedia world of today. Now more than ever, young Black males are confronted with and unable to escape negative societal imaging…Society and the level at which one interacts within society has a strong influence on one’s psychological development, and more specifically one’s development of self-concept” (Jenkins).

            By the time these Black students reach high school, if they haven’t already dropped out due to extraneous circumstances, or incarcerated, they have already been conditioned into the “permanent outsiders” of society. They have witnessed enough discrimination and prejudice in real-life situations to understand that they are not a part of the group of people who have the fast track to success. They come to either two conclusions: To try and break the trend and make something of themselves regardless of the situation at hand, or to concede defeat to the system on the grounds that there is no way that their situation can change. Undoubtedly, more and more of Blacks turn to the latter of the two. Simply put, Black students give up hope; either they don’t care about overachieving in a system that cares nothing about them, or they do absolutely nothing and perpetuate the very stereotypes that they were stigmatized with from the start as an act of defiance. This is why graduation rates are as low as they are.