Are American Public Schools Inherently Biased?

By Mary Tedrow

I was 13-years-old in 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. Having literally grown up during the Civil Rights Movement, I have always considered myself—52, white, female, public school teacher—enlightened when it comes to issues of race. But an event at my high school concurrent with the Barack Obama-Jeremiah Wright national discussion left me feeling uncomfortably aware that I may not have fairly acknowledged or explored issues of race in America.

At school, a student challenged her English teacher for reading the “N” word aloud in class. They were reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings . It stimulated a discussion in our English department and led me to wonder if the student was expressing a deeper dissatisfaction with schooling in general. Then, a few nights later, I heard Jeremiah Wright talk with Bill Moyers for an hour on The Bill Moyers Journal . He spoke of how his church connected the youth to their strong African background in an attempt to balance the narrative of African-American as victim (which is about all we teach in English classes). It seemed to make sense to me and I wondered if there were other ideas I'd not been exposed to.

In the 40 years since integration, the African-American achievement gap in education stubbornly persists, even though other racial groups have arrived as immigrants, been assimilated, and demonstrated more educational progress. In terms of percentages, African-Americans far outweigh others in their representation in the prison population. Why is it that our fellow citizens continue to figure so largely on the statistical bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder? If education is the way up and out of poverty and social stagnation, why have we continued to fail to bring this...