{"id":2035,"date":"2005-12-28T00:08:19","date_gmt":"2005-12-28T07:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/12\/28\/race-class-and-second-chances\/"},"modified":"2005-12-28T00:08:19","modified_gmt":"2005-12-28T07:08:19","slug":"race-class-and-second-chances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2035","title":{"rendered":"Race, Class and Second Chances"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Blackprof<\/a>, Dorothy Roberts is discussing drugs and the achievement gap between black and white kids:<\/p>\n

Last night I heard a program on NPR’s All Things Considered, “Teen Abuse of Painkiller OxyContin on the Rise,”\u009d reporting a new survey showing that 1 in 20 high school seniors acknowledges taking the highly additive prescription painkiller OxyContin. The program featured interviews with a group of white, middle- and upper-class teenagers enrolled in a drug-treatment clinic at Children’s Hospital in Boston and their parents. The teens told about their addictions to OxyContin, which sometimes led to heroin, and the crime sprees they went on to support their habits. […]<\/p>\n

What struck me most about the NPR program was its totally sympathetic stance toward the plight of these teens and their parents. The interviewer never asked the teens if they had a problem with acting “white”\u009d or their parents why they didn’t motivate and supervise their children like “Asian parents.”\u009d There was not even a hint of blame for anyone: as one mother said, these children just “got grabbed by something that was greater than [them].” Nor was there any indication that any of the teens had been in trouble with the law for their crimes or placed in foster care for their parents’ neglect. Most will probably complete the drug treatment program, graduate from their highly-ranked suburban high schools, and go on to college, their brush with drug addiction and crime a forgiven momentary lapse in their privileged path to success.<\/p>\n

Can you imagine a similarly sympathetic discussion of addiction, drug dealing, and theft with a group of black teenagers and their parents?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the major ways that kids are treated differently in the US – by race and by class – is how many chances the kids get. A white, upper-class kid can mess up his life countless times and still pretty much count on being rescued and given another chance. If he does poorly in school, he gets specialized tutoring, rather than being written off and permanently slow-tracked. If she gets caught shoplifting or drugging or stealing, she’ll get a slap on the wrist or maybe some community service – if her case is ever brought to court at all. Rescue efforts are organized to get the kid back on the “right” track. Much of the time, well-off white kids simply aren’t allowed <\/em>to fail.<\/p>\n

How much does it take to get a kid written off as a hopeless case? Much, much less if the kid is poor, and less still if the kid is poor and Black. How much better would Black kids be if they were allowed to fail and be rescued as often as White kids are? I’d like to find out.<\/p>\n

(By the way, the comments discussion at Blackprof <\/a>is pretty interesting, too).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Blackprof, Dorothy Roberts is discussing drugs and the achievement gap between black and white kids: Last night I heard a program on NPR’s All Things Considered, “Teen Abuse of Painkiller OxyContin on the Rise,”\u009d reporting a new survey … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}