You know, honestly, the focus on improving the situation for African Americans kind of annoys me.
There are more white people living in poverty in the United States than black people. There are more Latino people living in poverty in the United States than black people. The focus should be on providing more opportunities for people to pull themselves up, regardless of race. When you're on the bottom, you don't give a damn about percentages.
I attended the poorest high school in a poor agricultural county in a poor state. The white/black ratio in my grade was roughly equal. That was before Mexican Americans began flooding the school system en mass. I knew people of each race that were as poor as dirt.
Some of them were terrible human beings. Some of the rich kids whose daddies were "high up" at the local saw mill were terrible people, too. The difference, though, once high school was over, was that those rich kids usually ended up okay because they had more support, more resources available, and they also had higher expectations placed upon them. All of that makes a big impact when you're thinking about what you can do with your life.
Before we get to that point, though, we've got to fix the school system so that it stops focusing on grades and those students who are good at the grading game.
