Rev. Dorsey Blake on education crisis: We're wiping out a system that is already pretty bad'

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SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1991 11 Below are major portions of a speech by the Rev. Dorsey Blake. In the 1960s, Blake became the first Black male student to attend the University of Alabama. Today, 'he is the president of the Ecumenical Peace Institute, the director of the Center for Urban Studies, and was an activist in the Emergency Committee to End the War in the Middle East.

This speech was given at a San Francisco Socialist Action forum entitled, "Speak-out Against the Cutbacks," on April 12, 1991. It has been edited for style and space.

When I was a kid, it was said about education in the Black community: "This is the one thing that will assure your becoming a part of the society, of being included. Get your education. Nobody can take that from you."

And now, all of a sudden, young Black kids are getting the signal that education is not important.

So we're wiping out a system that is already pretty bad. I want to spend just a few minutes on how bad it is, because it is really frightening.

I was at a meeting in Los Angeles two days ago with the National Defense and Education Fund of the NAACP. In an article, they said that if you took 100 Black children in California, only 50 of them would graduate from high school. Of the remaining 50, only two, after going through high school, would be qualified to go to the University of California system.

Of the ones who end up in the system, only 60 percent graduate. That's actually better in California than it is nationwide. Nationwide, there's an 80 percent drop-out rate among Blacks in predominantly white institutions. With Black males, sometimes it's as high as 95 percent at places like the University of Toledo and so on. That's what we're facing.

We're facing a shift even in terms of Blacks going into higher education in colleges. Many years ago, the predominant number of Blacks had been to historically Black institutions. Now about 80 percent of Blacks go to predominantly white institutions.

And so, when you're getting 80 percent going to predominantly white institutions and only 20 percent graduating, that's frightening. Black schools now with only 20 percent (some say 15 percent) of Blacks are still producing 50 percent of the graduates.

There has actually been a decrease in the Socialist candidate (continued from previous page)

$216 billion in interest on loans and bonds.

Corporations pay a 6.2 percent tax rate. That's less than one quarter of what I personally pay. In 1972, it was estimated that loopholes for corporations meant $77 billion a year in lost taxes.

And what about the war profits of Chevron, Bechtel, and all the other California corporations that benefited in the war against the Iragi people? At the very least, shouldn't those war profits be taxed 100 percent and used to fund education, health care and other vital social programs?

But the union leadership isn't raising these demands. It's not organizing its membership, independent of the interests of the Democrats and Republicans, to fight for its own interests.

Instead, it's organizing lobbying rallies, like the one that was held in Sacramento on April 3. An estimated 8000 to 10,000 teachers and parents attended the rally, which shows the potential to mobilize people to defend their right to education. It was unfortunate that this rally was held on a weekday, Rev. Dorsey Blake number of Blacks and Hispanics enrolled in higher education in the last few years. Some of the reasons for that have to do with Reagan's budget and Bush's budget, which have really knocked out educational systems. There aren't the same kinds of grants or loans there used to be when I was in college.

This helps us to see why we have so many Blacks and Hispanics in the military. Thirty percent of the forces in the military are Black people. So this is part of a whole movement, I think, to destroy a people.

Only 23 percent of young Black males are now in college. Twenty-five percent are in prison or related to the prison system. It is estimated that by the year 2000, some, 70 percent of all the Black males who are now living will either be dead, incarcerated, or on drugs.

And when [Boston activist] Rev. Ellis Hagler was here, he talked about the incarceration of Blacks in this country being four times that of South Africa. Remember tha statistic-which is absolutely shocking!

"Raise no questions"

Let me give you another little scenario of what happens in the educational system, because I think we have to see it in its full range of negativity.

This comes from experience not only at the University of Alabama, but at Ohio University-some of the things that Black students, and I'm sure Hispanic students, have to endure in the system to get through.

or it might have been much, much larger.

But the speakers who addressed the rally. one Democratic Party state legislator after another-had no solutions for the concerned crowd except, "Trust me." They didn't demand a progressive tax rate on the rich, they didn't demand cuts in the corrections system budget, or any other minimal reforms which you would think the so-called opposition party would raise.

Quality public education is a simple, democratic right. It should be the first priority of society to educate its young people and prepare them for their future. It's much too important of a priority to leave to the Democrats and Republicans.

Strategy for winning

But public education wasn't our birthright. It was a victory won in a struggle to end the oppressive child-labor system that prevailed in the early history of this country. Working people organized themselves in labor unions and independent political parties to fight for the right to put their children in quality public schools, not in workhouses and factories. We fought-and continue to fight-to integrate the schools, and now we're going to have to fight just to keep them open. Because the purpose is, if you get through, you are going to be sanitized individuals who raise no questions about the legitimacy of the system.

Black students have had to deal with such realities in terms of taking tests at Alabama as "who multiplies most rapidly?" And they list among the choices, "rats, rodents, or Negroes. " I'm talking seriously; these questions have been asked on tests.

One of the things that we see has to do with the cover of integration, which prevents us from seeing the continued racism and elitism of the education system.

When I first went to the University of Alabama, it was easier for the Black community in Tuscaloosa to see the racism. There were no Blacks there. Once I came there, once they brought 25 other Black staff and faculty and went from, when I went there, 400 Black students to 1700 Black students by the time I left, people thought they were really integrated.

What they never realized was that the policies were the same. They had, in the words of Ron Daniels, included a few to exclude the many-the masses of people. And we're seeing that time and time again That is part of the reality of our educational system.

One of the things we fought for at my alma mater was to get more Black faculty, more Black staff there. We thought that if we had them there, it would make everything a lot better. And I think it does to an extent, The only way to guarantee quality public education is the same way it was won— through independent, mass action involving labor, parents, teachers, students, and everyone affected by education, which is every working person in this country.

Our strength is our unity and our independence. Instead of relying on Willie Brown and Jesse Jackson, we should be organizing parent and teacher meetings in every school in the state, and bringing these committees into mass action. We should raise demands like, "Suspend bond-interest payments, not Prop. 98," "Education, not incarceration," and "Tax the rich to pay for our schools"

The only way free, quality public education will be guaranteed for our children is under an economic system that puts human needs before profits. But that's impossible under capitalism, which is predicated on greed, individualism, and the priority of short-term profits for the few over the needs of the majority. Reforming the tax system may help alleviate this crisis, but it won't last.

The pressures of capitalism work to increase the disparities between the rich and the working class. When the working class has been strongly united—as it was during the depending on where those Black faculty and staff are in terms of their own consciousness.

But one of the things you face if you are the first Black person, or first woman, or first Hispanic, and you have a lot of students there from the same background, it is natural for the students to call on you for help. One of the reasons you are there is that they identify with you.

Well, the only problem is you're not rewarded for that. I was told at the University of Alabama, for example, to quit spending so much time counseling Black students, and to shut my door and write some books. That was why I was there.

And I said, "Oh, I thought I was here as a teacher. I thought I was supposed to teach." That was my priority. But you were told basically to ignore all those realities.

You're not promoted for counseling, you're promoted for whatever is set up as the criteria for tenure. And tenure is always established by whom? By those who are already there. The ones you are trying to replace and who need to be replaced.

This is part of the entrapment of the educational system. So many Black faculty have said to me in terms of my activities, that they would love to support some of the things that we've been doing but they just could not do it because they needed to get tenure. They said once they got tenure, they would feel freer to engage in political activity.

But, of course, the reality was that they never felt free enough. Because once you enslave yourself, you're going to remain enslaved. There's tenure, there's promotion, all these other kinds of things. Once you've bought the system, it's very difficult to be free.

A dual problem What we need to understand is that educational institutions are political institutions, and they exist primarily not to transform the culture, but to transmit the culture intact, the way it is.

So we have a dual problem when it comes to California. They're predicting that next year 20 other school systems in California alone will go bankrupt. I think there are educational systems in six states that will also go bankrupt next year.

We've got to deal with two realities. One is saving the system, and then, providing a quality education for the students that will help them to question the basic structure of our society.

And we've got to try some alternative methods of educating people so they will understand that education is only part of a total cultural understanding of life. Education must be related to economics, it must be related to the media, and so on.

Education is an extremely important tool. It can be provocative, it can be transforming. But in order for it to be transforming, the people must control it again and make it the kind of system that reflects some of our values. Thank you.

1930s, for example-there has been a more progressive tax structure. But when the working class is demobilized, the capitalist class implements its austerity drive.

What we need is a planned economy. What we ultimately need is a socialist revolution. That's the long-term goal.

In the short run, however, I am running as a socialist candidate for mayor of San Francisco. I hope to get out the message that socialism can work, that we can work together to solve our problems, save our schools, provide housing and health care for everyone, without ruining our environment in the process.

A socialist mayor of San Francisco would end the "welfare for the rich" policies of this city. We would tax the corporations-who pay virtually nothing in city taxes-to pay for vital city services. We would use the resources of the mayor's office to organize and mobilize parents, students, teachers, and workers to keep our schools funded not only at the current level, but at the level necessary to truly prepare our young people for their futures.

I invite you to join me in our campaign to put human needs before profits. Thank you. W

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