School choice will lift up black community

I was in high school when Brown v. Board of Education was decided 63 years ago.

That makes me an old man, one who was at the forefront of the civil rights movement during its most tumultuous days.

I took the fight for equality to South Florida, joining the Miami Urban League in 1963 and becoming its CEO at the age of 24. There I met Martin Luther King, Jr., and from that inspiration took on a power structure that through practice, if not written policy, dictated what black people were and were not allowed to do.

We succeeded in overcoming that by developing young black leaders, by refusing to accept subservience, by rejecting incremental gains and, instead, demanding full inclusion. This is the same formula that brought change to communities across this nation.

Those were historic times. Back then, if I were to have looked forward, I would have envisioned a much different 2017 than the one that currently exists — a 2017 in which Dr. King’s hopes for our nation had been achieved.

Yet divides remain wide, and at times, they seem to be growing rather than narrowing. We can codify equality in statutes and regulations. We can have corporations and society in general commit to diversity.

But what we cannot overcome is a lack of opportunity, and therein lies our greatest challenge. If young black children are not equipped with the knowledge to succeed, we cannot make up for that with public and private policies after the fact.

And that takes me back to Brown v. Board of Education. It was a landmark decision for civil rights. But 63 years later, it remains a great disappointment in addressing the specific ill it was intended to correct — education inequality.

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We know that far too many black children are sitting in classrooms where they are not learning. We know their schools have fewer resources. We know their teachers, on average, are less qualified. We know expectations for these children are set lower than the expectations for students in more affluent suburban schools.

For decades, these are issues the public education system has failed to fix. Blame has been spread far and wide, but the reasons for the failures are of little consequence to the families impacted by them. And the fact they still exist 63 years after Brown v. Board of Education offers little hope they will be resolved anytime soon.

This reality is what led me, along with other civil rights leaders, to go in a different direction — to advocate for giving parents the power to pursue better options for their children. I saw the devastating impact that powerlessness had on the black community in the 1950s and 60s. And I see that same dynamic at play for black parents today.

Once we were told where we could live and work, play and pray, eat and gather. I find it no more acceptable that today we are told where our children can go to school.

Nobody cared when, for decade after decade, black kids were assigned to failure factories that set them up for a life of poverty and dependency. But give the parents of these children a choice to select alternatives, and suddenly the people who care about where these students go to school come crawling out of the woodwork.

I find it disturbing when a teachers' union leader in Tennessee sits in front of a camera and says that “some parents are not capable of determining” where their children should go to school. That he is an African American makes the statement no more palatable now than when white bigots in Tennessee expressed similar sentiments about the capabilities of blacks in the 1960s.

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I find it disturbing that the NAACP calls for a moratorium on charter schools when the data is overwhelming that on average these schools produce much stronger academic gains for disadvantaged black children.  I ask my brothers and sisters at the NAACP, who when they met in Orlando called on the audience to stand and applaud a leader from the teachers' union: Exactly whose side are you on?

At my age, I become skeptical of promises that are not kept. I no longer trust unions and politicians and bureaucracies, and their never-ending promises and reforms, to bring opportunity to the communities I serve.

All I have left to trust are the parents who understand all too well the impact more decades of failure will have on their children.

Give them the power, and give them options from every sector of education — be it public or private. Unlike the union boss in Tennessee, I do believe they have the capability to decide. Unlike the NAACP, I believe they have the right to decide.

That is the unfinished business from 63 years ago.

T. Willard Fair is president and chief executive officer of the Urban League of Greater Miami, Inc. A powerful voice in the effort to improve his community, he has worked for the Urban League since September, 1963.

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