Educational Success of African Americans in a Capitalist society
“Of all the civil rights for which the world has struggled and fought for 5,000 years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental” –W.E.B Dubois (Pohlman 283) In our capitalistic society, we are taught that to succeed in the world you have to work hard to achieve it. American societal views and ideals tell us that those who are poor deserve it because they had given up or they did not work hard enough. In America, everything is fair and equal. How could this be true if many Americans do not and cannot have those tools needed to work hard? This is representative of the African American struggle that exists in our country. The problem today is that racism is still evident today in our country and it can be found deeply embedded within how our educational system works. For most African Americans, it is hard to make strides in improving their lives in the U.S.’s capitalistic society. Though much has been achieved through educational policy to reach that ideal.
A book titled, “Freedom Bound: A History of America’s Civil Rights Movement” by Robert Weisbrot, gives a very detailed history of the civil rights movement. Weisbrot starts from the Brown v. Board of education decision all the way up to the shifting politics of race. According to Weisbrot, the civil rights movement started with the Brown v. the Board of education in Topeka, Arkansas (Weisbrot 12). Weisbrot states that the Brown v. Board of education case “…provided a yardstick of color-blind justice against which Americans could measure their progress toward the ideal of equal opportunity” (Weisbrot 13). Found on the brown v. board of education organization website, Brown v. board of education was not the first case to address the problems of segregation, but it was the most significant ("Brownvboard.org"). The court found that segregation, “Violates the fourteenth amendment to the U.S. constitution, which guarantees...