Twice As Good To Get Half of What They Have

The cheating scandal involving Yale University, Stanford University and the University of Southern California, etc. has confirmed what people of color in this country have known for years: being wealthy and White stacks the odds in your favor.

Many people believe that being a hard worker, dedicated and honest will make any goal attainable. Sadly, that’s never been the case.

Federal prosecutors charged 50 individuals—including actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman—for bribery. They bribed college officials by paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their children’s standardized test results manipulated, fabricating their kids’ athletic credentials and having their children falsely diagnosed with learning disabilities for extra testing time, which was used to cheat.

The irony of this situation is not lost on me. This behavior is the exact type of “scamming the system” that people of color are often accused of. High school senior Kamilah Campbell from Florida had her SAT results flagged after retaking the test and going from a 900 to a 1230. Her results were deemed invalid and Campbell “felt like she was being accused of cheating.” After being unsatisfied with her original score, she received a tutor, utilized the Princeton Review Prep Book, and took online classes. Black people are often lectured, told not to expect handouts and to simply work harder if we want any semblance of success. Kamilah put in the extra work and was still punished for it. Whenever we make any type of strides, the goal post is moved once again.

I realized that parents involved in the scandal likely did what they thought was best for their children. This led me to remember the story in which a Black single mother was jailed for attempting to do the best for her kids. Kelley Williams-Bolar, a mother living in Ohio, was prosecuted on felony charges after using her father’s address to have her children enrolled in another school district. All Kelley wanted was to keep her children safe and give them access to a better education. She spent nine days in prison, was placed on probation for three years and given 80 hours of community service. Similarly, Tanya McDowell, a mother from Bridgeport Connecticut sent her son to a school in a different district and was convicted of first-degree larceny. Unlike Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, these women don’t benefit from the privileges of being White and wealthy.

The education system is not equal and children of color often get the short end of the stick when it comes to the quality of their education. Kelley and Tanya did what they deemed necessary to give their children better opportunities; however, Loughlin and Huffman had no reason to do what they did. Their privilege gave their kids access to the best tutors, internships, extracurricular activities, and connections that would have allowed their kids to succeed whether they were capable or not. These women should be prosecuted and be punished the way that the system punished Kelley and Tanya. In fact, these women should be punished to a much higher extent.

The most painful part of this story is knowing that money allowed unqualified students to be given spots at the country’s best universities; meanwhile qualified students who did the work necessary to excel legitimately were denied. I’ve witnessed firsthand the work that lower-income students put in so that they can fund their college education: spending hours applying for scholarships, working tirelessly to excel athletically/academically to receive full rides, going into debt from taking out student loans, and posting GoFundMe’s to receive the money to continue their schooling. This scandal comes as no surprise because the playing field is not, and has never been equal. Laughlin’s daughter, Olivia Jade, stated that she did not care about school, and simply wanted to attend for the “experience.” For many people of color, attending college is more than an experience. For many of us, college is a lifeline. It’s a chance for us to improve our circumstances and create the life that we dream of living. Olivia Jade reducing university to nothing more than a chance to attend games and party is a testament to how rich people live in completely different worlds than everyone else. This scam is a testament as to how even if lower-income people of color work twice as hard, the wealthy can rely on money to cut to the front of the line. 

Similar Read: Segregated Rosters

The Invisible Numbers of a Teacher’s Salary

Very few subjects are dreaded more than high-end mathematics. I for one hated high-end mathematics with a passion. One subject in Algebra that really burned my bridges was invisible numbers. Yes, there’s a subject in Algebra in which you learn about invisible numbers. Essentially, an imaginary number is the square root of a negative number and does not have a tangible value. Did you get that, no tangible value! In high school, I asked my math teacher with true sincerity what was the point and purpose of learning about invisible numbers. What are they used for? What’s the history of invisible numbers? And once again the numbers are invisible! We’re talking about invisible numbers, man, channeling my Allen Iverson practice interview, I stated “invisible” a dozen times. He responded with how most teachers respond to questions they would rather not nor can answer, “It’s in the curriculum and I have to teach it and you have to know it.”

Fast forward to today and invisible numbers came into my mind once more. This time in relation to the recent news of teachers in Oklahoma on the verge of demanding higher pay. They should demand to get out of Oklahoma, hook ’em nation forever! But that’s for the college football season. The Oklahoma teachers storyline isn’t new, its a sad reoccurring storyline of “teachers demanding more pay.”

The general public always has their opinion on this issue. They vary from the usual “we should pay teachers like we pay athletes” to “maybe teachers do make enough, maybe they spend outside their means.”

Most tend to side with teachers don’t make enough, which they DO NOT. However, they will never get Lebron James’s salary for his money comes from entertainment. And teachers money, of course, comes from their respective state or municipality.

That leads me to the main purpose of this article. The focus is only on teachers’ salaries, yet ignore the reason for teachers demanding higher salaries. The reason is cost of living in relation to salary.

Simply put, the rent is too high and teachers’ salaries don’t equal the growing cost to simply live. Not live in luxury, but simply to keep the lights on, put gas in the car, and an occasional bite to eat.

For example… Teachers in New York are the highest paid in the nation, with an average salary of a little less than $77,000 a year. However, when you factor in what they pay for living expenses and taxes they fall to 22nd place with an adjusted salary of $50,022, which is good for Alabama, not Astoria.

The invisible numbers of the cost of living and separating the objective from the subjective means that definition will forever have economists employed. What is needed to respectfully live and not be forced to work ancillary work or do things that may in comparison to one’s career or morals never be truly defined? There are basics that must be accounted for, especially for the most important profession outside health, which in my opinion is education.

So what’s the solution?

On the forefront, educational spending would have to go into one bucket and not be solely based on local property tax revenue, which is the main reason the Philadelphia school district pays its teachers far less than the affluent Montgomery County pays its teachers, which is just the north. Additionally, a review of teachers’ salary in comparison to that school district’s area salaries with the same credentials and standards for employment should be required. Standards like a college degree, background check, working hour amount, etc.

The invisible numbers surrounding teachers salaries are the same invisible working measures they encounter daily – such as driving a kid home because their parent is stuck in traffic or paying for a student’s field trip because his parents can’t afford it. And the most common, buying supplies for their class. The numbers simply aren’t enough to truly calculate a fair and accurate measure to ensure teachers take home the pay they deserve.

The Framing of TUAlerts

Over the course of the 2017-2018 school year, Temple University has experienced it’s fair share of tragedy. Add to that the general unease on university campuses world wide with the rise in gun violence and the stress on safety has never been more prevalent. On more than one occasion the topic of Temple Universities alert system was addressed in the classroom and at my place of work. I was surprised to hear multitudes of my peers reporting instances of bomb threats and evacuations on Temple’s campus that I had never heard about. Why was this information not being reported through the Temple University Alert system? Then a coworker of mine, who is also a Temple Student, brought up the fact that Temple tends to pick and choose what they believe to be important information, as far as student safety goes.

When I first came to Temple, almost four years ago, I remember hearing that there was a sort of “cutoff” where you left what I would call the “safe zone” and entered a “danger zone”. After years of living here I realized that this divide was yet another somewhat masked form of racism and classism exacerbated by the massive gentrification Temple reeked on North Philadelphia thus far. Interestingly enough when I went through the most recent TUAlerts I have received very few of the incidents reported happened on campus. On the contrary there are issues heavily reported just outside the bounds of campus.

Of course it is important to keep students aware of potential dangers around campus. However, it is manipulative and counter productive to pick and choose what is dangerous and what is not. A bomb threat on campus has the same potential danger (if not more so) than an armed robbery or shooting off campus. Not to mention that a slew of the incidents that Temple reports have nothing to do with Temple students. Temple is sneakily framing the greater Philadelphia areas it has not yet built on as the problem so to speak while any place Temple owned is safe and sound. The withholding of information in this case is what gives us incite into how Temple markets itself in conjunction to it’s North Philly neighbors.

Racist Law Professor, Free Speech Issue?

In the recent weeks, University of Pennsylvania Law school tenured professor, Amy Wax, has come under criticism for remarks she made last year in a video lecture titled, “The Downside of Social Uplift” and in an op-ed she wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In the video, Wax goes on to say, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the [Penn Law School] class and rarely, rarely in the top half… I can think of one or two students who’ve graduated in the top half of my required first-year course.” At the surface, it seems inappropriate; but with accuracy, such a claim could easily be proven by releasing the grades or ranking of students. One part of this very problematic situation is, that grades and rankings are confidential at UPenn Law and for a professor to make such a statement about an issue she has no authority to prove or disprove, is inappropriate at the very least.

In addition to these comments, Wax co-authored an op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer in which she stated, “All cultures are not equal,” and called for the reinstatement of bourgeois cultural ideals in today’s society. Her Philadelphia Inquirer piece in addition to her claims of the inadequacy and underachievement of black students in her course, suggest a potential racial bias against black students that she has then used to support her claims of broad racial insufficiency.

The answer is not “show the grades!” The university’s policy maintains the privacy of the students by keeping their grades and rankings confidential – and Wax should have done the same. Black students not doing well in her course is a claim that should be investigated by the university given the other racially disparaging statements made, and the university’s revocation of her mandatory first-year course is the very least they should do in response to her comments. Free speech is a right, but citizens are beholden to the policies of the private companies and institutions they represent.

Education Inevitably Judges Everyone

There should be no doubt in any rational thinking mind that education is how we separate class. In America, education creates a hierarchy. In India, one is born into that class. Here in America, supposedly, you can be born in public housing and go to a low achieving school and still become a millionaire. All you have to do is work hard and pull yourself up by the bootstraps? Um, let’s be honest… that sounds delusional in 2017.

Education is like a rubric, it will be used to judge you. Here in America education is used by society to create a narrative for one to follow. Being that one’s future is scaled based on acquired skills learned in school, it is imperative we understand that schools are not dumping grounds. Therefore, it is very important that Washington and their delegates revolutionize every demographic area, from inner cities to rural America. We should supply all children with the necessary tools needed to hone their skills in every subject area. Our main goal should be social and academic success, regardless of their family’s income or the location of their school district. However, schools continue to heavily weigh math and reading ability, which doesn’t present an accurate picture regarding a child’s potential. Rating these schools ineffective for not reaching “standards” is unacceptable, and it denies them proper resources and/or more incentives to help give children some form of extrinsic motivation to go to school and do well. Some of these schools are truly ineffective; yet, we see students that require special needs education and students who have poor attendance be the primary focal point for determining what nominal funds will be allocated to their school. Why? Well, you have to make excuses to cut money somewhere to spend it elsewhere.

For example… There are three schools in America within a few miles of each other. One school is failing and ineffective and doing much worse than the other two schools. That failing school is going to be phased out and their students will get dumped into the second school, which performs slightly better than the failing school. Now all of a sudden there are two schools in one building forced to share and use the resources meant for one, which over-populates that school and makes each class size larger, subsequently reducing the teacher’s ability to reach each student. This is exactly how students fall behind. Oh, and the third school performs the best so they’re going to get the necessary funding. Now consider this new two-in-one school and the other school that received their funding; which school is going to perform the best moving forward? Why does performance matter? Well, whichever school performs the best is going to get the Mac computers, smart boards, grants for art programming to pay teachers, and so on. It doesn’t take an advanced degree to figure out that the third school is going to continue to perform the best, and the new two-in-one school will probably do worse if you just consider the larger classroom sizes. But why wouldn’t the new two-in-one school with larger class sizes receive the funding? Surely, they need more resources, right? It’s evident that certain kids are left behind regarding the tools and resources needed to academically thrive and keep pace with their generation. Technology is taking over and experimental learning is the way to go. Standard based testing does nothing but perpetuate a bias system, which allows the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.

The federal government allows states to control the majority of educational funding in an attempt to escape the blame for dismal school systems. So who do we blame… the states, Washington, or both? Bottom line, our school systems are failing many of our children while others prosper and prepare for a competitive job market in an ever-changing economy. Educational segregation is what you call it, and when resources are withheld from groups of people that clearly need them the most we should question leadership and inefficiencies on every level. If education inevitably judges everyone, which seems to the case in our capitalist society, how about we give everyone a fair and equal opportunity to reach their full potential?