Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Blog

The Opportunity Gap: Racism in Education

By Julie Landsman

Instead of looking at the difference in test scores between white students and African-American and Latino students as part of an achievement gap, how about thinking about it as a reflection of an opportunity gap. It seems to me that all students are entitled to an opportunity to have an education that reflects their lives and cultures, their literature and history. Everyone has a story. Everyone has their own rituals, their own world-view. If students do not feel visible, if they are not reflected in the curriculum, on the walls, in the media centers, in the visitors who come to speak to them, then they are not receiving the same opportunity to learn as white students, who still find their lives visible in the texts and lessons taught by an overwhelmingly white teaching force.

Combining the unwelcoming, and discouraging effect of a classroom that excludes them, with the lack of resources many students of color possess given our history of racism and its connection to present day poverty, there must be no question that many students of color today are working without the same opportunities as many white students. To compare test scores of a young man with a family computer at home, a college education provided for by his parents, a school with a full science lab and many AP courses, a building that is clean and safe and with teachers who look like him, to those of a young man who goes to school in a building with no computer lab, few books in the media center, (if there is a media center) and class sizes of over 40 students per hour, is a false comparison. Combining racism and poverty, it seems self-evident, that the problem is not in the child, but rather in the system that perpetuates the lack of opportunity many urban students of color experience.

I believe every student must have the opportunity to attend a school where she sees herself everywhere in the building and in the readings and in the high expectations of demanding classes and firm teachers. In order to close the gap white teachers need to begin by thinking of each of these children as their own child, not as someone else’s child, and thus seeing each of their students as someone who has the same brilliant potential to achieve as their own.

In order to close the real gap, gifted programs. AP and IB classes must reflect the population of each school system and not continue to be white enclaves. Such a move would go long way to eliminating the re-segregation of students once they are enter the school room door. Each student, white, black, poor, rich, middle class, must have the opportunity for small class sizes, resources, textbooks, science equipment, in order to provide comparable opportunities for all students. When we can put the onus of the problem on the system that continues to disenfranchise students of color through institutional racism and economic disparity instead of on the low test scores of the children, then we will be one step closer to closing the real gap in education—the opportunity gap.

Julie Landsman is a retired public school teacher and consultant on multicultural education and building inclusive classrooms and is the author Growing Up White: A Veteran Teacher Reflects on Racism.

The Greatest (Black) Generation

By Maggi M. Morehouse

The black “Citizen Soldiers” who participated in the “Good War" also form part of the “Greatest Generation," yet they continue to be invisible in the general histories of World War II. Why have representations of World War II—books and films—overlooked the multitude of black experiences and voices? How can we “save the black privates” from obscurity? If we can agree that World War II was a watershed event that affected all Americans, then we must add in the narratives of the black Americans who served in the armed forces. I suspect one of the main reasons we overlook the history of black Americans during the war years is because the story is a complicated one—one filled with moments of glory as well as moments of shame—and many more moments of simple everyday life. It is a difficult job to include the story of a group of people who were excluded from American life. Still, World War II affected black Americans as deeply—perhaps more deeply—than white Americans. We need to complicate the narrative of World War II to include, not occlude, the black experience.

The black Americans who served in one of the two segregated infantry divisions during World War II were changed by their experiences in the war. The changes individual men experienced were not uniform, but each man's life was altered as a consequence of serving in the segregated Army. Black infantry combat soldiers from the 93rd Infantry Division fought the Japanese enemy on the island jungles of the southwest Pacific. The 92nd “Buffalo Soldier” Division routed the German enemy from the shores of the Italian Mediterranean to the peaks of the Italian Apennines, and finally they liberated the country village-by-village. On American shores black combat soldiers also fought an enemy, an old, intractable enemy—racism. All three theaters of war had long lasting effects on the participants.

We need to engage in a new conceptual framework when undertaking studies of World War II. It is inadequate, and to me boring, to continue with this trend of battle stories and hagiographies without adding in the narratives of all Americans. I am encouraged by the outpouring of recent publications that give voice to the legion of women, blacks, Native Americans, Japanese Americans, and Latinos who participated in the war effort. These new multicultural accounts—in the words of Navajo “code talkers,” black women WACs, black veterans and wives, “Rosita the Riveters,” interned Japanese families, and Puerto Rican combat soldiers—illustrate the multitude of stories and voices that have been largely overlooked. This new multicultural picture of World War II is the most realistic portrait of the American people; not that insipid, white warrior with his vapid homemaker wife image that has been constantly replicated within popular culture ad nauseam. These new texts demonstrate why these stories should not be ignored—the participants are all part of the American mosaic. These monographs complicate the narrative of World War II by addressing the pervasive and persistent “whitewashing.”

Maggi M. Morehouse is the author of Fighting in the Jim Crow Army: Black Men and Women Remember World War II and assistant professor of history and director of the honors program at the University of South Carolina, Aiken. 

Freedom’s Journal receives Honorable Mention

              Freedom’s Journal: The First African-American Newspaper, by Jacqueline Bacon, received an Honorable Mention from the 2007 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. This award commends works published in a given year which extend our understanding of the root causes of bigotry and the range of options we as humans have in constructing alternative ways to share power. For more information about Freedom's Journal, please visit our website http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com/ISBN/0739118935.

More Q & A with Jacqueline Bacon on Freedom’s Journal: The First African American Newspaper

Q: How did the newspaper cover slavery? 

A: Freedom’s Journal exposed the cruelties of slavery and the ways that enslaved people fought their oppression. Articles by the editors and contributors countered common proslavery arguments and the assumptions—scriptural, economic, and political—on which they were based. A significant number of articles explored judicial decisions that considered slavery’s reach onto “free” soil when slaves accompanying traveling masters to non-slave states sued for their freedom, from the 1772 British Somerset case to cases from various regions of the United States that explored the power of slavery throughout the nation and set the stage for more well later known decisions such as the Dred Scott case. 

Q: Did the newspaper help free slaves?

A: For obvious reasons, Freedom’s Journal did not publicize specifics about the underground channels for assisting fugitives. However, Russwurm offered help in the newspaper to runaways by notifying them about locations where they would be unsafe because of slave hunters, the devious methods used by those who would capture them, and the names of captors and their accomplices. Freedom’s Journal also publicized efforts by individuals and organizations who aided free African Americans who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery or whose loved ones had suffered this fate, allowing African Americans and white allies to seek assistance in specific cases and free particular victims. Slaves could also be freed through the controversial (but sometimes effective) method of purchasing their freedom, and such initiatives were publicized in the newspaper, such as the campaign to free the children of Reverend George Erskine, a Presbyterian minister and former slave who had been manumitted in 1815, and the poet George Moses Horton. (Although at least some of Erskine’s children obtained freedom, the effort to buy the liberty of Horton failed.)

Q: How did Freedom’s Journal influence American abolition and the history of American journalism? 

A: Freedom’s Journal established connections among African-American leaders in different cities; created a force of writers and activists whose impact on American abolition was crucial, such as David Walker and Samuel Cornish, who went on to edit other newspapers and served on both the Board of Managers and the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society; and publicized the arguments against colonization and slavery and for black freedom and civil rights that convinced white reformers such as William Lloyd Garrison to support abolition. Because one of the goals of <I>Freedom’s Journal<I> was to encourage debate on important subjects, we discover in the pages of <I>Freedom’s Journal<I> discussions of issues that white abolitionists did not take up until subsequent decades, such the role of women role in reform and in the public sphere, the use of physical resistance and extralegal action, and the reliance on or rejection of political institutions. 

Q: What is the significance of Freedom’s Journal for African-American newspapers of today?

A: Freedom’s Journal established the power of the black press as a tool in building community and fighting oppression. Numerous newspapers can be considered the legacy of Freedom’s Journal, from Frederick Douglass’s North Star, which began publication in 1847, to the Chicago Defender, which from 1905 to today has played a key role as a source of information and a forum for discussions of issues relating to people of color. As various historians and journalists have noted, the issues raised in Freedom’s Journal have been discussed in the African-American press in various forms since its publication, and the principles upon which it was founded remain relevant. As did Freedom’s Journal, African-American newspapers continue to report stories that are ignored in the mainstream white-dominated media, to interpret news in ways that make it relevant to people of color, to educate and empower, and to critique the nation and challenge it to live up to its ideals.

Q & A with Jacqueline Bacon on Freedom’s Journal: The First African American Newspaper

Q: When, how, where, and why was Freedom’s Journal founded?

A: In 1827, at a gathering of African-American leaders in New York, the idea for Freedom’s Journal was created, and two men were chosen as its editors: Samuel E. Cornish, a Presbyterian pastor; and John B. Russwurm, born in Jamaica to a black woman and a white plantation owner, who was the third black college graduate in the United States. (After six months, Cornish resigned and Russwurm became the newspaper’s sole editor.) Although some historians have argued that the impetus for the newspaper was the white oppression of the 1820s, particularly vile attacks on African Americans in white newspapers, it is reductive and inaccurate to cast Freedom’s Journal as simply a response to white society. The newspaper was a self-directed effort of African Americans themselves and grew out of the organizational structures already in place in free black communities—churches, mutual aid and literary societies—and the awareness in the late 1820s among African Americans of the crucial power of writing as a tool of freedom. 

Q: Who financed the paper and who promoted it?

A: Both African Americans and whites provided financial support, and the paper had black and white subscribers and readers. Freedom’s Journal was promoted in various cities by agents, including many prominent figures, such as Bostonian David Walker, author of the 1829 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (a forceful, uncompromising condemnation of slavery and colonization) and John Remond, a successful hairdresser and community leader in Salem, Massachusetts, whose children, Charles Lenox Remond and Sarah Parker Remond, became lecturers with the American Anti-Slavery Society. 

Q: Who were the readers of Freedom’s Journal?

A: The newspaper’s readers included African Americans throughout the north and south, including slaves as well as white reformers such as Gerrit Smith and, likely, William Lloyd Garrison. Those who could not read often had Freedom’s Journal read to them. It is estimated that the number of subscribers was at least 800, which would make its circulation close to that of other weekly papers of the time. However, because copies were often shared at this time, the audience was greater than this figure indicates.

Q: What subjects were covered in Freedom’s Journal, and what types of material appeared in its columns.

A: Cornish and Russwurm described the newspaper's content broadly: In short, whatever concerns us as a people, will ever find a ready admission into the Freedom's Journal. True to their word, they published articles about a variety of issues of concern to African Americans such as colonization, slavery, education, self-improvement, women's and men's ideal roles in the home and in society, law, religion, and history. The paper contained domestci and foreign news, frequently reprinted from other newspapers; correspondence and essays by both well-known leaders such as Philadelphian Richard Allen, on of the founders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and unknown and even annamed African Americans who contributed letters and essays; transcriptions of speeches given on various occasions; literary and historical excerpts from published works; editorials and essays offering diverse opinions on differenct topics; poems and short stories; announcements; and advertisements.