Black Kids

MANY SCHOOL systems across the country have finally caught on, celebrating February as Black History Month and using it as a chance to teach many aspects of African-American culture.The benefits for black children are obvious: Their self-esteem grows in proportion to their sense of ethnic pride.But what about white students? My old college roommate teaches at a high school in one of the poorer counties of West Virginia. There are no black students, and little effort is made to include books about blacks in the curriculum.

The player who scored the biggest basket in Baltimore Bullets history turned 68 Thursday. Happy Birthday, Mad Dog. "I can still shoot," Fred Carter, the man with the feral nickname, said from his home in Norristown, Pa. "I can't make the 20-footer, but I'm good from 12 to 15. The range isn't there, but the jump shot is. " The shot was there 42 years ago, too, in the seventh and deciding game of the 1971 NBA Eastern Conference finals....

If you love baseball and care about the future of the game, you have to root for the Baltimore Black Sox. The Black Sox are a youth team in the 16-year-old division of the Mid-Atlantic Baseball Association. All but two of their players are African-American. Their coaches are African-American. And if you don't think this is remarkable, you haven't paid attention to what's going on with baseball in this country. The bottom line is this: The game has become an afterthought for many African-Americans.

Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Baltimore-born Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights lawyer and first black Supreme Court justice who was instrumental in ending Jim Crow segregation. His representation of schoolgirl Linda Brown resulted in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education, which ended separation practiced in a wide variety of public facilities and institutions. Yet Marshall sought more than just desegregation. Explaining his vision, Marshall proclaimed that "a child born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi … has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States.

GASTON, N.C. -- Who you is?" That's how a student greeted me years ago in a Miami classroom. I waited to see how the teacher would respond to this insult against grammar, but she did the last thing I expected: She answered the question, as if it had been posed in English. So it makes an impression on me, standing in a classroom here, when a student says "ain't" and a teacher promptly and gently corrects him. It is a small difference, but on the basis of many small differences, Gaston College Preparatory and KIPP Pride, a middle and high school side by side in a former peanut field, have carved out one big difference: They work.

The multiracial five-piece band Black Kids, which has an affinity for '80s British rock, is something of a sensation in Europe. There, the band has ascended the charts, packed venues and secured prime TV spots. And in the United States, the critical praise is deafening. Of course, the musicians didn't expect all the buzz. Music bloggers and hipster circles gush over the group's tongue-in-cheek multicultural image and the irreverent neon pop-rock of its debut CD, Partie Traumatic. The album has been out for about a month, and the scruffy band from Jacksonville, Fla., is already tired of hearing about itself.

NEW YORK -- I have been writing for some time about the problems of public education. I also have been highly critical of the elements in popular culture that encourage young people toward illiteracy, brutishness, hatred of women, whorishness and mindless materialism. Now we find that these troubles are combining in yet another way: as obstacles that prevent black kids from doing well in society. It is often difficult to talk about these things, because those who function on the racist circuits of our nation describe poor academic performance by black kids as proof of inherent inferiority, the intellectual quicksand of bad genes.

After watching the recent television movie "Separate But Equal," oneof television's best efforts, some old memories and feelings came back to me.The movie was a docudrama based on the struggles of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, led by then-attorney Thurgood Marshall, portrayed by actor Sidney Poitier, to put an end to segregated schools in the 1950s. The film ended with the landmark 1954 decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found segregated schools to be unconstitutional.

The player who scored the biggest basket in Baltimore Bullets history turned 68 Thursday. Happy Birthday, Mad Dog. "I can still shoot," Fred Carter, the man with the feral nickname, said from his home in Norristown, Pa. "I can't make the 20-footer, but I'm good from 12 to 15. The range isn't there, but the jump shot is. " The shot was there 42 years ago, too, in the seventh and deciding game of the 1971 NBA Eastern Conference finals....

HERE'S ANOTHER study that tells us what we already know. Do you suppose we'll pay attention this time? Not a chance. We'd have to change some bad habits and give up some prejudices that, if not exactly comforting, at least enjoy the cache of familiarity. "And Justice for Some," a study commissioned by the Youth Law Center and conducted by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, has found that at every step in the juvenile justice system, minority kids are treated more harshly than white kids.

President Barack Obama has several stated ambitions for his presidency. He wants it to be "transformative. " He wants to unite Americans of all parties. He wants to build an economy from the middle class out (whatever that means), and he wants to help what you might call the domestic refugees of America's economic transformation. Given the principled disagreements dividing left and right in America, it's hard to see how he can accomplish these goals when it comes to conventional economic policy.

I really had to mull my response to letter writer Ilene O'Connell ("Ashamed of the country that re-elected Obama," Nov. 8). Initially, I was incredulous and dismissive. I realize that won't help here. First, she could have looked up that he was a U.S. Senator first and that he campaigned for 16 months before becoming the nominee. She's had four years to get to know President Barack Obama and see what he accomplished. Liberals have rolled their eyes at the idea that any president controls the price of gas at anyone's pump.

I don't care about George Zimmerman's MySpace page. Granted, it was gratifying to read recently in The Miami Herald about his crude animus toward Mexicans ("soft a-- wannabe thugs") and his reference to a former girlfriend as an "ex-hoe. " Given the way white supremacists and other Zimmerman supporters have exaggerated and manufactured evidence to paint Mr. Zimmerman's unarmed 17-year-old victim, Trayvon Martin, as a thug who somehow deserved shooting, this unflattering portrait offers the same satisfaction one feels any time the goose is basted with sauce that was prepared for the gander.

"Then the lie passed into history and became truth. " — "1984" by George Orwell This will be a futile column. Experience dictates that it will change no minds, inspire no reconsideration among those who disagree. It will sit on the computer screen or the newspaper page taking up space, affecting nothing, until another column replaces it. It will be a useless essay, written for one reason only: to protect the writer's mental health. If the writer did not write it, you see, there is a great danger his head would explode.

If you love baseball and care about the future of the game, you have to root for the Baltimore Black Sox. The Black Sox are a youth team in the 16-year-old division of the Mid-Atlantic Baseball Association. All but two of their players are African-American. Their coaches are African-American. And if you don't think this is remarkable, you haven't paid attention to what's going on with baseball in this country. The bottom line is this: The game has become an afterthought for many African-Americans.

The multiracial five-piece band Black Kids, which has an affinity for '80s British rock, is something of a sensation in Europe. There, the band has ascended the charts, packed venues and secured prime TV spots. And in the United States, the critical praise is deafening. Of course, the musicians didn't expect all the buzz. Music bloggers and hipster circles gush over the group's tongue-in-cheek multicultural image and the irreverent neon pop-rock of its debut CD, Partie Traumatic. The album has been out for about a month, and the scruffy band from Jacksonville, Fla., is already tired of hearing about itself.

Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Baltimore-born Thurgood Marshall, the civil rights lawyer and first black Supreme Court justice who was instrumental in ending Jim Crow segregation. His representation of schoolgirl Linda Brown resulted in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown v. Board of Education, which ended separation practiced in a wide variety of public facilities and institutions. Yet Marshall sought more than just desegregation. Explaining his vision, Marshall proclaimed that "a child born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi … has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States.

TULSA, Okla. -- Jack Nicklaus, whose recent comments to a British Columbia newspaper about the lack of black players in professional golf drew criticism from Sports Illustrated and from blacks in the sport, tried to clarify his remarks yesterday.In a two-paragraph statement released through his publicists, Nicklaus said, "I would like to personally clarify an issue which has unfortunately been misinterpreted by some of you. Despite confusion over my initial comments and the resulting publicity, let me make clear the position and feelings: I have never knowingly or willingly made a statement or action that is racist."

PITTSBURGH -- This is a What Works column. Those of you who are regulars will recognize that as my series spotlighting programs that have proved effective in tackling poverty, miseducation, fatherlessness and other problems that blight the prospects of black kids. In the year and change the series has been under way, it has taken me around the country, from Harlem to Austin to Atlanta. Today, it brings me to this city of bridges and rivers. More specifically, it brings me to the Crossroads Foundation.

GASTON, N.C. -- As I wandered about looking lost, I chanced upon a teacher who volunteered to lead me where I needed to be. When I told her why I was here - a series of columns on "What Works" to change the culture of dysfunction that entraps too many black kids - she told me I had come to the right place: KIPP Gaston College Preparatory and KIPP Pride, two charter schools serving 600 kids here in farm country. She said she believes so much in what KIPP schools are doing - longer school day and year, higher expectations, more teacher freedom - that she came from Iowa to teach here.