Chapter 2: Curriculum, Culture, and Power: Reshaping the Education of African Americans

Although the calendar marks a new century, the containment, control and subordination of African Americans remain at the heart of America's public policy. While its middle class has expanded and consolidated, the current socio-political and economic status of Black Americans remain troublesome. Blacks continue to occupy the lower strata of income, literacy, and respect. Urban centers with large Black populations are now “free fire zones” for police who have the green light to shoot at will. More Black males are supervised by the penal system than are enrolled in college. Urban renewal, America's version of ethnic cleansing, finds African Americans being scattered and displaced as the gentry are lured back into onceblighted inner cities. Added to the material realities of Black life, there is substantial evidence that the White racial attitudes of an earlier era are resurfacing, or perhaps never disappeared.