Saving the African American Child Part I

Setting the context for “Saving the African American Child”

A National Black Education Agenda Working Summit

By Daphne Muse

Purpose--This WORKING SUMMIT will be the historic opportunity for Black parents, students, educators and other rights-holders to come together to establish the organizational structure and strategic platforms needed to ensure academic and cultural excellence in education and create equity and power for our children and their families to achieve these outcomes.  We affirm the imperative of providing a global, ethical, transformative and culturally grounded education for all children of African ancestry in the United States, and by extension, throughout the African Diaspora.

What if the cure for cancer is trapped inside the mind of someone who is can't afford an education or is already miles into the school to prison pipeline?  

The United States of America can’t continue to be a viable participant in the global village, if it selectively educates a few and continues to discard growing numbers of African American children.  If we are indeed going to stand up for our children then the rampant inequalities must cease.  Like the presenters at this summit, the movement away from miseducating African American children through deficit models is critical.  The framework to educate them through asset and skill-driven pedagogy has existed for more than a century.  What these scholars, public intellectuals, educators and parents bring to the table is work driven by passion, research and empirical data.

Presenters including Wade Nobles, Joyce King and Sam Anderson are clear that it is impossible to grow up locked down and out.  Some of their work is situated on foundations laid by early proponents of black education including Edward Wilmont Blyden, Mary McLeod Bethune, Arthur Schomburg and Carter G.  Woodson.  Their work also takes the well documented, intellectual breadth and technological advances of many pre-colonial African countries into account.  Some of the world’s earliest seats of learning were founded in the African countries of Morocco and Mali.  The University of Al-Karaouine in Fes Morocco began as a mosque founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, a woman and it developed into one of the leading universities for the natural sciences.   During the 12th century, the University of Timbuktu had an attendance of 25,000 students from across the Continent. 

Anderson notes in his work that the ongoing genocide in education is killing the intellect, souls and futures (individual and societal) of African American children at an astounding rate.  It is also seriously diminishing the greater potential for the country to bring bold new ideas, technology and solutions to the global table.  Educator, activist and public intellectual Bob Moses is making a similar case through his work focusing on "Quality Education as a Constitutional Right: Creating a Grassroots Movement to Transform Public Schools."