Shakir is ten.

I think there are many causal factors for Shakir's non-performance in school; amongst them are Shakir himself and his priorities.

To blame a 10-year old child for "misguided priorities" is beyond the pale.

My friend's class is not a large one; she has five to eight students. She also has a teaching assistant, and between them, the kids receive a lot of personal, one-to-one attention.

I work with public schools in a low-income minority community, and there is NO classroom with "five to eight students" and a teaching assistant. I don't believe it.

It is more likely that "Shakir" goes to a school with 35 students per room,...

Shakir is ten.

I think there are many causal factors for Shakir's non-performance in school; amongst them are Shakir himself and his priorities.

To blame a 10-year old child for "misguided priorities" is beyond the pale.

My friend's class is not a large one; she has five to eight students. She also has a teaching assistant, and between them, the kids receive a lot of personal, one-to-one attention.

I work with public schools in a low-income minority community, and there is NO classroom with "five to eight students" and a teaching assistant. I don't believe it.

It is more likely that "Shakir" goes to a school with 35 students per room, a part-time social worker, and a part-time nurse.

It is more likely that his principal had to choose between her gym teacher and her librarian because the school had to hire math and reading specialists from its own budget for failing to meet No Child Left Behind standards.

It is more likely that the teacher turnover rate in his school is over 50% every year.

It is more likely that his school got closed down at the end of this school year to be reopened as a charter school accepting only grades 1 - 3, and as a 4th grader, his parents don't know where he'll be going next year.

Why does white America continue to pretend that over 300 years of slavery and segregation will heal itself in 40?

Dulios,

I was a bit surprised when I found out not long ago that, in her 2nd career, my sister-in-law works at a public school doing one-on-one remedial tutoring with students who are having problems. From what I've seen, it's a middle to upper middle-class class place, but I'm sure there are certainly many nonwhite students there.

I agree it's hard to believe a regular class could have "five to eight" students, and this should have been explained if the story is true. Maybe it was a speciaI class for kids not keeping up? Or a school losing students (maybe from a declining population?) I only skimmed over the latter part of the article, but it didn't appear the author was going to explain ...

Dulios,

I was a bit surprised when I found out not long ago that, in her 2nd career, my sister-in-law works at a public school doing one-on-one remedial tutoring with students who are having problems. From what I've seen, it's a middle to upper middle-class class place, but I'm sure there are certainly many nonwhite students there.

I agree it's hard to believe a regular class could have "five to eight" students, and this should have been explained if the story is true. Maybe it was a speciaI class for kids not keeping up? Or a school losing students (maybe from a declining population?) I only skimmed over the latter part of the article, but it didn't appear the author was going to explain this.

This article didn't venture into this taboo subject, but what do you think of the fact that IQ studies have found that (European-derived) Jews have average IQs of 111-115, North Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) an average of 103-106, whites overall, 100-103, etc. It's well known that Jews have the highest educational attainment and average incomes in the USA, then Asians (of North Asian extraction), etc.

Personally, I think the success of Jews, for example, is to to be expected given their high average IQs. I'm sure you're aware that there have been those who argued that "Aryans" are just as smart or even smarter than Jews and that the obvious disproportionate success of Jews was not because they were smarter or worked harder but because they "stuck together" and (in modern terms) "discriminated" against "Aryans." Inverting the truth in this case certainly helped promote resentment, hatred and violence against Jews.

Do you think that by telling blacks and Hispanics that they're just as smart as Jews, Asians and whites (while the Afro-centrics actually tell blacks they're even smarter) and that their own problems are caused mostly by the latter groups discriminating against them, that we're promoting resentment, hatred & violence against Jews, Asians & whites?

while the Afro-centrics actually tell blacks they're even smarter

You'll have to provide some evidence for this claim, Charlie. Black pride is not about black supremacy. Supremacy is the white man's game - 300 years of slavery and segregation.

IQ studies

Studies have found there is no correlation between race and intelligence. Any correlation between race and IQ is heavily environmentally influenced.

One of my best friends is a working class black woman who recently got her GED at the age of 28. She probably wouldn't score as high as me (a middle class white woman who attended high school, college and gr...

while the Afro-centrics actually tell blacks they're even smarter

You'll have to provide some evidence for this claim, Charlie. Black pride is not about black supremacy. Supremacy is the white man's game - 300 years of slavery and segregation.

IQ studies

Studies have found there is no correlation between race and intelligence. Any correlation between race and IQ is heavily environmentally influenced.

One of my best friends is a working class black woman who recently got her GED at the age of 28. She probably wouldn't score as high as me (a middle class white woman who attended high school, college and graduate school) on an IQ test because I've quite simply had more and higher quality education.

That doesn't make me more intelligent than her. In fact, I'm sure I'm not.

It does, however, make me luckier. I've been the beneficiary of white privilege my whole life. The town in which I grew up and received an exceptional public primary and secondary education had a city ordinance until 1969 forbidding blacks to be within city limits after sundown. To this day, it is 95% white. It's kind of hard to settle in such a town to take advantage of its public schools if you're not welcome there de jure or de facto.

Dear Dulios,

I'll try to work on finding a reference for that. I shouldn't have implied that all Afro-centrists claim blacks are smarter than whites, but only that a substantial number of them do; I suspect enough do that any literate black interested in matters of race would have been exposed to the idea, though I doubt there have been any studies that could speak to that suspicion.

Until then, I hope you're not embarassed when I say that I enjoy our little discussions. I hope I come across as well as you do (though to to that, I'd have to start providing references, like you so often do), so good-natured, logical, trying genuinely to be fair minded and discover the truth.

There are ma...

Dear Dulios,

I'll try to work on finding a reference for that. I shouldn't have implied that all Afro-centrists claim blacks are smarter than whites, but only that a substantial number of them do; I suspect enough do that any literate black interested in matters of race would have been exposed to the idea, though I doubt there have been any studies that could speak to that suspicion.

Until then, I hope you're not embarassed when I say that I enjoy our little discussions. I hope I come across as well as you do (though to to that, I'd have to start providing references, like you so often do), so good-natured, logical, trying genuinely to be fair minded and discover the truth.

There are many, as I'm sure you know, on all parts of the political spectrum, whose arguments have little or no logical or information value, and probably deserve to have the famous Laura Ingraham "screeching monkey" audio overdub as accompaniment.

I've expounded a bit on that theme in response to the writings of one (or two) ClipMarksters here: http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/EC2C56E5-3340-4040-A0E1-358D0015ACA7/

I tried hard not to get personal, and to speak in theoretical terms as to the need to raise the level of discussion. How'd I do?

Best wishes,

C.