The poison of black defeatism

Constantly inculcated by Leftist paternalism that says you cannot succeed without our help  

As quiet as it’s kept, many in the black race have suffered some time or another from the Inferiority Complex. The Inferiority Complex makes a person immediately excuse their shortcomings as being due to their race, socioeconomic status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, or social class. Being inferior is always attached to subconscious emotions that make a person feel less than good, although they are more than what they realize.

A few years ago I was chaperoning high-school students on a college tour. I spoke to a young man waiting for his inner-city school doors to open. He looked like excellence. His uniform was neatly maintained and his demeanor was that of a scholar. While his peers were cursing, talking loudly, and air boxing he was calm and mild tempered. I went over and struck up a conversation with him about attending the college tours that day. He said, “No, sir, I won’t be attending. I’ve already been to Tuskegee and Alabama A&M to visit. My mom actually went to A&M.” He was only a high-school sophomore.

Since his attitude stood out, I surmised the only reason he was attending this school was his zip code. I asked, “So why this school?” What he was about to say may shock you, but I didn’t flinch because I know so well the mindset of the typical black experience.

He shared with me that he had an opportunity to attend a local private school that is tops in the nation. He said, “I had a full academic scholarship, but I turned it down.” I pretended to be shocked to make him feel the magnitude of his ill-advised decision. “Wait, what? You’ve got five seconds to give me five reasons why you decided to turn down that private school education!” I counted as he spoke. #1 He said, “To [prove] a black person can come out of this school and make it” #2 He said, “To [prove] these [white folk] wrong about [us] not making it” #3 He went blank and I desperately told him to stop.

I asked him where he got the notion that white people didn’t want him to succeed. He exclaimed, “My first-grade teacher told me I wasn’t going to make it out of high school! She was Caucasian. I looked at him and said "Your teacher didn’t just walk up to you and say that. Did she?” He was staring at me as still as a mannequin as if he knew what was coming. He was quiet and I went on to say, “This is what your teacher said: If you keep cutting up in my class in first grade, then you won’t make it out of high school!” He shamefully dropped his head and looked up at me and nodded “Yes.”

He was ashamed because he knew he lied about her and was living as a victim of the Inferiority Complex. I felt sorry for him because up to this point, no black man had challenged his thinking of how he viewed himself and those who looked different around him. I reached out with both my hands and placed them on both of his shoulders. I looked right in his eyes and said convincingly, “Young man, [white folk] don’t care about what you’re trying to prove. First of all, it’s not even about them, it’s about you!” He looked at me as if he had seen a ghost. It was like tons of weight had been lifted from his shoulders to prove something. I told him he wasn’t being challenged there as he would be at that private school. He just grinned and nodded yes again. He thanked me for having a bold conversation with him and promised to see things differently going forward. Today, he’s excelling with a 4.0 in college.

This young, black scholar had embraced years of victimhood since the first grade not realizing that teacher saw something special in him that was going to waste. By accepting victimhood, he had simultaneously taken on inferiority and his “victimizer” in some way became superior to him and those who looked like him. The moral to the story is this: If black people think white people control them, then they must also believe whites are superior to them. Having a preoccupation with your importance or having an under appreciation for others is summed up in one word: Pride. Pride comes before the fall. It doesn’t matter if you’re white or black.

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Parents Call Out School Board’s Transgender Policy Proposal

ARLINGTON, Va.—A group of concerned parents held a press conference just ahead of a scheduled Arlington County School Board meeting Tuesday evening about the adoption of a policy concerning transgender student protections in the school district.

“[Arlington Public Schools] has far overreached its authority in this matter, and needs to be reminded by concerned parents and community members that political and cultural pressures should never outweigh the school’s responsibility to make safe and healthy educational policy,” said Maria Keffler, spokeswoman for the Arlington Parent Coalition.

The press conference’s purpose was to publicly air that parents of children in Arlington Public Schools have felt unable to voice their concerns for child safety regarding the proposed policy implementation procedure, or PIP.

The coalition’s website says it promotes the district’s policies, “which respect parents’ constitutional right to maintain responsibility and authority over their children and their children’s education, and to raise children according to the family’s values.”

“[The proposed policy] is an accommodation procedure, wherein transgender students are given preferences and privileges that deny other students their rights, such as Title IX protections for girls, and privacy rights for both boys and girls,” added Keffler.

Keffler said the school district has been working on the policy “exclusively” with Arlington Gender Identity Allies, a group made up of “parents [and] community members working to make Arlington Public Schools a welcoming place for transgender, nonbinary, [and] gender expansive youth/staff.”

She also complained that specific information on the policy proposal could only be received through Freedom of Information Act requests.

The policy being considered outlines a number of new rules for the treatment of transgender students.

Under the policy, the definitions for “gender identity” and “transgender” that are deemed acceptable by the school board are clearly spelled out.

Access would be granted to bathrooms and locker rooms that “correspond to a student’s gender identity,” and students would have the ability to participate in any “‘co-curricular or extra-curricular activity consistent with their gender identity,’ as regulated by the Virginia High School League.”

Overnight school events would allow students to sleep in a quarters consistent with the student’s gender identity.

Students would be allowed to use names and gender pronouns of their choosing that match their gender identity, with school staff making updates as needed to classroom records.

It is also stated that disclosing a student’s “transgender status, legal name, or gender assigned at birth” may be a violation of privacy laws.

If the policy is adopted, teachers would have to undergo periodic training to to keep up with transgender issues.

The policy proposal came after what Superintendent Patrick Murphy said is needed to ensure compliance with the school board policy known as J-2 Student Equal Educational Opportunities/Nondiscrimination.

“It is the responsibility of each Arlington Public Schools staff member to ensure all students, including transgender students, have safe, supportive, and inclusive school environments,” reads the policy document, which would serve as a supplement to the existing J-2 policy.

After the press conference, 39 community members showed up to voice their thoughts on the proposed policy at the public school board meeting.

Of those, 21 were parents of students in support of implementation and five were against it. Four Arlington Public Schools teachers and five current students also showed their support of the policy.

One student told the story of a friend, a 9-year-old fourth-grader who goes by “Griffin.” Griffin, who identifies as a transgender girl, wrote to the school board: “Thank you for supporting me and others. I will feel safe and more comfortable at school next year.”

The Daily Signal spoke with Sarah Priestman, an Arlington Public Schools teacher, about the policy at the school board meeting.

“I’m here because I support all the work these parents have done, and my own son is transgender and so years ago we did some work to create a more opening and supportive environment in the schools,” she said.

Now he’s in college so I’ve been sort of observing the work the parents are doing whose kids are in [Arlington Public Schools] now, and it’s amazing work and I want to support what they’re doing.

The most common complaint of parents at the meeting who oppose the policy echoed those from the Arlington Parent Coalition.

“The whole community should have been a part of it from the start,” one parent said to the school board. “The questionnaire didn’t even ask if people were residents of Arlington, yet that was the way for us to have an input.”

Another parent, who works as a psychiatrist, told the school board that “research on this topic (transgenderism in young children) isn’t clear yet.”

He wanted the school board to consider a “broader survey of research,” and wanted to “pause” action taken on the policy implementation program until those things could be completed.

Another parent expressed concern for students like her daughter who struggle with a mental disability. She also said she was frustrated with the school board’s lack of transparency concerning the policy, saying that “everything had to be requested by FOIA.”

During the school board meeting, Murphy, the superintendent, said a few major concerns surfaced in his morning meeting with citizens.

“We need additional time to come to a consensus, additional engagement for greater understanding, and that we need to establish consistency with guidelines for the upcoming year,” Murphy said.

However, when asked by school board member Barbara Kanninen if there would be any delay in implementing the policy implementation procedure, Murphy replied, “No, we will continue to move forward and place this by the start of the school year.”

The school board first considered the transgender youth policy last September. It sought suggestions from the Arlington Gender Identity Allies, and the school board “staff team” produced a draft of the policy in March.

A community questionnaire was released in June for Arlington residents to voice their opinions; however, the results of the questionnaire were not released by the school board.

The policy proposal will go through a two-week “office process” before any further development action is announced. The next scheduled meeting will be Monday, June 24, at 2 p.m. to host the School Board Policy Subcommittee on general policies.

It is not specified whether this meeting is open to the public.

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Australia: Nothing but downsides in demand-driven education

I have never been a fan of demand-driven university enrolment, a system that involves “qualified” students being guaranteed a subsidised place in higher education.

For years the universities called for its introduction — and why wouldn’t they? — while making reference to dodgy estimates of “unmet demand”, defined as those “qualified” students who were unable to secure a place at university.

You might ask why I put qualified in inverted commas. The reason is that what constitutes qualification for entry to univer­sity is a movable feast.

Some may think a very decent Year 12 score is the least that should be expected. But, these days, passing the final year as measured by an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of over 50 is optional when it comes to getting into uni.

In my view, it is entirely appropriate for taxpayers to place limits on the amount of money that should be allocated to subsidise undergraduate students. In other words, the spending should be capped and adjusted only to accommodate predetermined factors such as population growth.

Obviously there are opportunity costs associated with spending more on higher education tuition subsidies (and, of course, all types of government spending).

The additional spending could be directed to other activities that yield higher social benefits or it could be returned to put-upon taxpayers.

In this context, higher education advocates will point to the evidence, which is not beyond dispute, that spending on universities generates high rates of return, with some estimates above $10 for every $1 spent.

But here’s the point: these estimates are for average returns, and what we are interested in, in the context of this discussion, are marginal returns — the additional benefits that flow from spending more money on undergraduate tuition subsidies.

It’s worth looking at the figures here. Between 2009 and 2017, the period during which demand-driven enrolment operated, the number of domestic bachelor degree students rose by about one-third. Government spending increased, in real terms, from $6.4 billion in 2009 to $9.3bn in 2017, an increase of 45 per cent.

The Productivity Commission recently has assessed the demand-driven system and has issued a mixed report card.

But reading through the analysis, it’s actually hard to see very many upsides, only downsides, particularly in the context of the amount of spending involved and the outcomes for the students themselves.

Some of the most important findings include the fact universities have accepted much less qualified students as a result of the new funding system.

The additional students who were accepted into the system had much lower levels of literacy and numeracy than the cohort as a whole and most of them had ATARs below 70. (And, as noted, some had ATARs below 50 and were accepted into teacher education courses!)

And here’s a very depressing but unsurprising finding: the additional students had much higher dropout rates than other students. According to the Productivity Commission, “by age 23 years, 21 per cent of the additional students had left university without receiving a qualification compared with 12 per cent of other students”.

Surely the appropriate response is “what a waste” and note that many of these young people will have collected some Higher Education Loan Program (the old HECS) debt in the meantime, to be paid off during their working lives or written off.

To be sure, there was some increase in the participation of “first in family” students whom the Productivity Commission deemed to be disadvantaged. But for young people living in rural and regional areas and young indigenous people, there was no change in their participation.

It’s worth considering what has been happening in the graduate ­labour market in response to the expansion in the number of ­subsidised undergraduate places.

In short, there has been a ­collapse in graduate salaries as well as a marked deterioration in the employment prospects of graduates.

Consider median graduate starting salaries. Before the introduction of the demand-driven enrolment, these salaries were about 80 per cent to 82 per cent of male average weekly earnings. They are now closer to 75 per cent.

And when we look at employment outcomes, we observe a sharp fall in the proportion of graduates securing full-time work — from about 85 per cent to 70 to 75 per cent. Note also that a higher proportion of graduates report that their degrees are largely irrelevant to their work.

It is also worth noting that the HELP loan book is valued at $46bn and is expected to grow to $53.2bn by 2022, an increase of more than 15 per cent. There is little doubt that a reasonable proportion of this debt — perhaps up to 20 per cent — eventually will be written off.

That the Coalition government decided to pull the plug on demand-driven enrolment was not entirely surprising, although the reasons for this, as well as the replacement arrangements, do not exude much confidence in terms of rational decision-making.

The refusal by the Senate to pass measures to reduce certain spending on higher education forced the government to use non-legislated means of achieving the same outcome while putting in place a complex deal for universities, pending a review in a few years.

The clear message that the Education Minister should be giving university administrators is that there will be no return to the open-ended and wasteful demand-driven enrolment.

The Productivity Commission concludes that “while universities will be the best option for many, ­viable alternatives in employment and vocational education and training will ensure more young people succeed”. This point was always obvious, notwithstanding the universities’ spiel about the need for problem-solving, cognitive skills in the future.

Given the content of the cour­ses into which many of these additional students were accepted and the dismal record on economy-wide productivity during the period in which the number of graduates has swelled, the jig is surely up on this line of argument.

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