The pandemic of racism has plagued African Americans for over four hundred years, increasing in intensity and mutating into different forms throughout this time; therefore, racism did not magically invent itself when an African American father was killed, so it appalls me when Americans say that now, today, made them aware of African American’s plight with racism. Excuse me, racism never left. George Floyd’s suffocation evolved from generations of systemic racism towards blacks in every facet of life from access to food, healthcare, and even education, so as we begin the process towards police reform, let us not forget this pandemic’s other extensions. I definitely haven’t and will not, so I bring Gwinnett County Public Schools to the stand. I charge you with the disease of the “Tale of Two Cities”; you have created a two-world system that empowers and fails groups of students on the line of racism and socioeconomic status. You don’t think so? Let’s check the data.
Upon examining the latest federal disciplinary data measuring the percentage of students who received at least one in-school suspension (ISS) within Grayson High School, Brookwood High School, South Gwinnett, and Shiloh High School, the median ISS rate for males of all races sits at 19.8% and skyrockets to 26.9% for African American malesi.
Disciplinary consequences biasly impact African Americans which “ironically” coincides with Gwinnett’s educational system. If you examine the enrollment of Black students within Gifted and Talented Enrollment for Grayson High School, the percentage resides at 23%.ii which sparks conversation because Grayson has a 49% AP participation rate.iii For both the US News Report and the Civil Rights Data Collection, AP participation rate and Gifted and Talented Enrollment help determine a school’s placement on the metric of College Readinessiv; black students within both categories for one of the better schools in Gwinnett are miniscule. Gwinnett is not adequately preparing black students, and it’s no assumption on my part but a solid fact because 57.4%v of the students at Grayson High School, who are retained, are African American, and this statistic is only exasperated for the lesser schools within the county which for Grayson are only a few miles away. I do not believe a human being, whether black, white, or pink, is naturally more incompetent, troublesome, or incapable than other students; however, it is something that can be taught and consequently ingrained. It seems that whether one lives in the hood or the suburbs a black man is the victim of his environment.
From 1957, Brown vs Board, to now, African Americans have progressed from absolute exclusion to a limited bubble of opportunity. I, an African American, tasted this bubble within my high school career; I never received any type of suspension or referral, but I endured the suspension of my people; I only had two African American male friends throughout high school not because I was closed off but because they were the only other ones in my education track. A “System of World-Class Schools”vi, they say. I see nothing but a “Privileged Class”system that favors anybody and everybody that isn’t a student of color.
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i, U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. School/District/State Comparison Report SY2015-16. Civil Rights Data Collection. Retrieved June 26, 2020, from https://ocrdata.ed.gov/DataAnalysisTools/DataSetBuilder?Report=1
ii ibid
iii U.S. News. Find the Best Public High Schools SY2017-18. Retrieved June 26, 2020, from https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/georgia/districts/gwinnett-county/grayson-high-school-5952
iv U.S. News. Find the Best Public High Schools SY2017-18. Retrieved June 26, 2020, from https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/georgia/districts/gwinnett-county/
v U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, School/District/State Comparison Report SY2015-16.
vi Gwinnett County Public Schools. About GCPS. Retrieved July 1, 2020, from https://publish.gwinnett.k12.ga.us/gcps/home/public/about