Education: Same Song, Second Verse

Join Dr. Carol François and Kourtney Square, the aunt and niece duo, for Episode 3 of Why Are they So Angry?, a look at systemic racism in education. Educating the general populace is a cornerstone of American society providing the foundation for an informed and knowledgeable electorate. For over 400 years, however, Black/African Americans have endured poor, inadequate, and substandard education. In this episode, you’ll hear about the heroic battle Dr. George McLaurin waged to integrate Oklahoma University and how that battle ended. You’ll also hear how some of the same inadequacies in public education from the Jim Crow era are still in various forms of existence in education today and how those inadequacies impede upward mobility for Black/African Americans. Partial Citations: “A teenager didn’t do her online schoolwork so a judge sent her to juvenile detention,” by Jodi S. Cohen, Pro Publica Illinois, July 14, 2020. ACLU “Cops and no counselors: how the lack of school mental health is harming students”, https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/school-prison-pipeline/cops-and-no-counselors. Reese, L. (2007, January 19) George W. McLaurin (1887-1968). Retrieved from https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/mclaurin-george-w-1887-1968/. “The education of Black children in the Jim Crow South”, Dr. Russell Brooker, Professor of Political Science America’s Black Holocaust Museum, Alverno College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Education of Blacks in the South: 1830-1938, James D. Anderson, The University of North Carolina Press, 1988. The Education Trust, Jan. 9, 2020, “Inequities in Advanced Coursework”. “School segregation is not a myth skeptics claim that concerns over racially divided schools are false alarms—but they’re missing the full picture,” Will Stancil, The Atlantic, March 2018.