Viewing page 59 of 132

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

A CONCERNED PARENT                                                KATZ
                                                     
jobs by not educating Black and Puerto Rican children. The union is at the service of the Establishment who does not want educated Black masses. They are closer to the police than they are to the Black community and their children.
  Furthermore, Black parents observe the contempt reserved for Black personnel-teachers and supervisors-by their white colleagues and subordinates. They sense insecurity felt by Black personnel in the educational system although some will deny it. And Black children know it, too. A teaching staff that does not relate to Black children is not likely to relate to a Black colleague. 
  Besides, it is not a wholesome situation to contemplate when over half of more than a million school enrollment is non-white, and of a teaching staff of 60,000 there is a mere token 6,000-6,500 Black teachers, only 200 Black supervisors and one (just appointed) Black high school principal. Black parents are not going to resign or accommodate to such conditions-neither will their children.
  Black parents see now what the Establishment and the educational hierarchy have done to their children. It is unimportant to recognize that at the moment all do not see it clearly. The Establishment has its informers-the "Negroes" who are willing to barter their heritage for a fee. Black teachers had better remember their insecurity, and begin to relate to that Black parent who has nothing to lose but her poverty. The Black professionals are accepted reluctantly as a concession to the dissatisfied Black masses. But once the dissatisfaction is suppressed, the token jobs will vanish-whether they be judges, political appointees, even elected officials, Powell and others, will disappear. It did happen during Reconstruction. It can happen again. 
  You better believe that the Black child who finishes the elementary school today unable to read will remember the struggle for Community Control of the Public Schools as the struggle for his survival. He can and does read Fanon, Malcom X, and knows a lot about the Nazi concentration camps. He sees Establishment in his community pushing dope to enslave him as the English and French pushed opium to enslave the Chinese people for money. The Black youth will survive; without him no one will survive.
  As a fitting close to the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, what greater tribute can we give him then to inspire and motivate the Black child (and white) with the contribution of the freed Black slaves to free public education by the publication of "Founding the Public School, and the Propaganda of History," from his book Black Reconstruction. Let the Black child
                                                                     353

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-12 17:14:26