African Americans' Problem

 

 

Synonyms

I moved to the United States from Egypt where the race and skin color are just inborn genetic issue, and do not carry any cultural dimension or behavioral profiling. I believe the United States still have a racial differences problem because it is still a new state, and time will eliminate this problem gradually.

I am an Islamic spiritual guide in a federal prison. Most of my students (inmates) are African American. Although African Americans are the highest population in the prisons, I refuse the stereotype "They are criminals". Before I work at the prison, I was a teacher at a high school. My students were African Americans and African immigrants. By look, they have no difference, because they are the same race. But it is easy to distinguish them by their behaviors. In general, African American students had more behavioral problems. But not because of their race. I think it is because of their history that shaped their community. If I learned one thing from my work in the prison, it will be that "our life is not always black and white. So, hate the crime, not the criminal", because the best man can have the worst choice if he has no option.”

 

Causes

I consider it is my responsibility to explore and discover their cultural ways of knowing, cultural learning preferences, relational styles for learning, and cultural motivation styles. Based on my own research on African Americans history, I can say that slavery is not the worst thing that happened to them. Of course, slavery is a very bad experience. But African Americans are not the first group who experienced slavery in history. Hebrews were slaves in Egypt for four hundred years, but they were able to maintain their culture, language, and religion. So, the slavery was a long period of time in their history, but they were able to pass it. But for African Americans, their connections with their roots were cut, the deep structure of their culture was completely destroyed on purpose, and they should start from nothing. I think that was worse than slavery itself. Culture is like a belt to tie and protect the members of one community. Because this belt is very weak in African Americans communities passed the slavery without wealth, education or skill, so many of their members fall in criminal life.

By Americanization, they were forced to learn to think, believe, and behave according to the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant ways while divesting them of cultural practices that differed from the mainstream. When they hated this type of schooling, and fail in it, they were classified by the stereotype of cultural deprivation, which means “the belief that families who were culturally different or poor were generally unable to provide their children with adequate language, perceptual, and other cognitive experiences to succeed in school and in modern society.” (Pai, Adler, & Shadiow, 2006. p. 238)

 

Solution

Most conservatives refuse special government aid to a specific group, not because they are racists, but because they think about the society as individuals not as collective.

They have four arguments. First, as Capitalist society, we have equal opportunities, and equal outcomes are Socialism. However, even equal opportunities are not available for African Americans. For example, it is not easy for African Americans to get loans compared to other groups. Also, in prison you can find two inmates who had the crime but the African American is sentenced by the maximum penalty while the Caucasian is sentenced by the minimum penalty.

Second, there are many successful African Americans. It is true, but they successful as individuals and their percentage in their community is much lower than the percentage of successful individuals in Caucasian community.

Third, some African Americans use the government aid to buy illegal drugs. It is true but not only in African American community.

Fourth, there are many academic scholarships for African Americans but they do not use them. That is also true, but why? The theory of Maslow's hierarchy of needs explains that humans' needs are not just physical needs. First, we need to secure our survival by providing what is basic and necessary, such as air, food, water and shelter…etc. Without survival secure, we cannot look for the Self-actualization.

We need to think about society in a theoretical way, stepping back from our own society and considering the rights and values that a society ought to uphold, to answer these questions "What makes for a good society?" and “Can a society function while it has inoperative group?”

I think compensatory education can be a part of a solution of African Americans problems. Pai, Adler, and Shadiow defined compensatory education as “a means of helping educationally disadvantaged children of poor and ethnic minorities to acquire the necessary cognitive skills to enable them to find and keep better-paying jobs and thereby eventually lift them out of their low socioeconomic status.” (Pai, Adler, & Shadiow, 2006. p. 238)

I think it is a social problem not a racial problem now. I really believe that African American and Native American students need more support from their schools, maybe more scholarships. I can consider this type of support as the society pay back for its mistakes that it made in the past history.

Although of many examples of discrimination (based on gender, skin color, ethnic group membership, level of education, social class, sexual preference, and even choice of religion) the social class system of a landed and hereditary aristocracy did not develop in the United States.

Samovar, Porter & McDaniel (2012) stated: "Cultural patterns are dynamic … cultures change and therefore so do their values" (Samovar, Porter, & McDaniel, 2012, p.198). The communication revolution is one of the most important factors of cultural change in the world now. It has prepared the world for globalization. So, the world is heading towards becoming a global village interconnected and interdependent. In addition, diminishing natural resources, rising prices, economic crisis, the acceleration of the rhythm of our contemporary life, and the increasing rates of intermarriage, migration, and asylum led societies to abandon many of their customs and traditions.

For all these reasons, I think the ethnic cultural differences will disappear gradually in the future, while the economic cultural differences will deepen, where the rich will be richer and the poor will be poorer. Also, there are evidences, from current events and news, indicate the possibility that our world may be on the verge of religious wars, such as that in the Middle Ages.

So, I believe it is transferable to our future behaviors as professional educators, counselors, or leaders in the 21st Century, to focus more on economic and religious subcultures.