As the media continues to lambast the image of Black men, we are increasingly seeing the harm that these damaging stereotypes are imposing on Black boys and girls in the educational system.

Blacks in the media are stereotyped as unintelligent, dysfunctional, and violent. Despite their qualifications—more and more Blacks are getting bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees everyday—public and private primary and secondary schools refuse to hire more Black teachers.

Black teachers are grossly underrepresented in public and private schools in the US. In America, rarely do Black boys have a Black male teacher in grade school. Of all classroom teachers nationwide in America, less than 2 percent are African American males, according to the Department of Education.

With this dearth of Black teachers in American schools, there is not a contingent of armor to protect Black children from racism and discrimination from white students and teachers.

With African American kids having difficulties attending schools where they regularly face racism and stereotyping from white students and teachers, Black people in the United States increasingly have to school their kids at home so that their children can avoid racism from whites in schools.

According to the National Home Education Research Institute, around 220,000 African American children are being homeschooled, making them one of the fastest-growing homeschooling demographics in the United States.

Too often, Black children run into problems with white children who are brought up to disrespect African Americans. School reports indicate that white children commit violence against black children at schools.

When schools repeatedly fail to curb this violence, Black parents have no choice but to protect their defenseless children and remove them from schools with hurtful white children.

For example, at one school’s playground in San Diego, California, a white student poured handfuls of sand filled with ants on a black kindergartner, Marvell Robinson. Marvell was the only black student in his kindergarten and first grade classes, while his San Diego elementary school only had a few black students out of hundreds.

After the incident was reported to teachers and school administration, Marvell’s school did not do its job to protect him against the brutal actions of white kindergartners. Instead of punishing the unruly white kid who tormented Marvell, the school instead labeled Marvell a “troublemaker” and insisted that he must have done something to invite bullying.

This environment where young Black children are blamed for the negativity and violence that erupts from white students is not conducive for students like Marvell, which is why homeschooling is on the rise in Black communities.

Whites in America often homeschool for religions reasons, to co-mingle religious education with the school curriculum. Black families, however, homeschool due to racial antagonism their children face–they are pushed out of public schools because they are trying to avoid school-related racism and discrimination.

Black families become frustrated due to their lack of faith that American school systems, their teachers, and administrators actually want to solve issues of violence against Black children. Especially when Black children are the minority in white schools, they face an inordinate amount of racial bullying from white students.

Black students also experience discrimination from white teachers.

White teachers underrate Black students’ intelligence, having lower expectations for them and favoring white children over them, despite Black children’s excellent performance on classroom assignments.

Both white female and male teachers are especially biased against Black boys, prompting African American parents to opt for a schooling option that will offer their children the optimal conditions for learning and success.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that white schools in America are unable to meet the needs of African American students.

The National Black Home Educator group, the first organization for Black homeschoolers, has grown exponentially due to the rise in Black homeschoolers over the past decade.

The next push will be for these Black homeschoolers to unite and form Black schools in the US. Like Black homeschoolers, Black schools would unite African culture with African American education.

In white schools, white teachers conduct lessons about world history from a Eurocentric perspective and discourage Black Americans from learning about their cultural history by removing all elements of African history from the curriculum.

A heritage-focused African curriculum for Black Americans would start beyond the horrors of transatlantic slavery and instead teach Black Americans about their proud history of the world’s earliest and most advanced civilizations on the African continent.

Ultimately, the formation of Black schools will allow African Americans to learn in an environment free of racism. It will also cultivate a growing appreciation for African culture and life in Black communities in the US.

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I am Amara. I come from a long line of griots (jalis). My grandfather was central in my upbringing. He comes from a tradition of oral history immersed in the vast expanse of time and the pageantry of customs and rituals. But, I have come to learn the reality of the ways of the griot in the 21st Century. I became a Scribe at Grandmother Africa for exactly this reason - to keep a tradition going, in a different medium. If you enjoyed this essay and would like to support more content like this one, please buy me a cup of coffee in support of my next essay, or you can go bold, very bold and delight me. Here's my CashApp: $AMARANEFETITI

5 COMMENTS

  1. This is important and I hope that Blacks in this country translate this into exclusive Black schools and institutions. That is the only way to avoid the violence that white terrorism is.

  2. And where is the Federal Government to protect innocent Black people from white violence? Missing right? Yes, that’s what I thought. And then they drive about in other people’s countries talking about human rights and civil rights! This country is the most racist and most hypocritical country in the world.

  3. This is great, finally African Americans can build their own institutions and stop relying on white American institutions masquerading as American Institutions.

  4. Clearly you either live or have lived in America; it’s clear on this blog. Yet in your criticism of Chimamanda Adichie that you have ‘never left’ Africa and you were quick to dismiss Adichie based on her having lived abroad eve though she was born and mostly raised in Nigeria. If you want to criticise Adichie or any other western born or living African simply because you don’t like their views do it without the lies and delusion that you are somehow more authentically more African than everyone else. There are Africans that have never left either that would disagree with some of your views. You speak here of accepting African Americans but your later posts indicate that you would find it easy to dismiss them based on their wide generation gap from their heritage given you have done so to Africans that have only lived abroad for a couple of years.

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