as the beat goes on

The debate rages on. One argument used regularly to bludgeon the so-called black community over the head pits the success of Chinese or Jewish children against black schoolchildren, and then asks why can’t black kids mimic the same success? Actually, some do but it’s the other half who does not which we all should be concerned about.

Then reasons are legion, but the first problem is in defining the black community because, contrary to many, it is not a single homogenous community. It rarely comes together outside of cultural constraints. In fact, the cultural prejudice among competing groups within the black community rarely finds a common platform or speaks with a single voice on any issue.

Earlier this fall there was a debate before the Trustees of the Toronto district school board on the establishment of one or two black focused schools. This sparked off a debate within the larger Canadian community with editorials from the larger Canadian dailies issuing a flat out large dose of “no” to the return to segregation in education. It was one of those rare times when the black community was actual able to pull itself together and get out a single dominate message to the utter bafflement and total amazement of the larger non-black community.

What the larger non-black community failed to fully comprehend is that a return to black-centric education was asked for by black educators and parents. The ills of black society cannot be fixed from outside the community. It cannot be resolved by sending in legions of well-meaning social workers, community activists or even throwing more money into diversity programs within the larger school system. This is one time when the patient must also be the physician and heal thyself.

Fifty years later and with the debate raging on, the words of Ralph Ellison from the Invisible Man still ring apt.

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!

It is a powerful book which is masterly written with as message as timely and true as it was in 1953. A major theme of the book deals with the empowerment which lies in defining oneself. I am not surprised if you haven’t heard of it as it goes deeply into ‘black’ identity politics but it is the kind of book which would be on a required reading list for black secondary students in a blackcentric school and a book which would almost be impossible to teach in our current public system.