50 Years after Brown vs. Board of Education: Not Yet Equal!
De facto segregation still exists in America. But has sitting next to a white child helped black students learn?
(PRWEB) May 20, 2004 -- 50 years after Brown vs. Board legally opened the
doors for blacks to attend white schools, blacks and whites live separate lives
today more than ever. Should the de facto segregation of America be addressed
legally?
"We have forgotten that integration was not the ends but the
means,” asserts Joseph Jett, author of the new book Broken Bonds. “If economic
and intellectual competitiveness was the goal of Brown, it has failed miserably.
The integrated classroom shunts nearly 30% of minority students into special
education, while the “gifted” minority student is largely dependent on
affirmative action to enter college. A cold hard look in the mirror would show
the legal system is no longer the main problem. This is a failure of Black
leadership. It is a failure on our part to promote intellectual competitiveness
to our children. Until the hours our children spend on their homework greatly
exceeds that spent on a basketball court, the failure of black education rests
squarely on our shoulders. It is a matter of discipline. It is a matter of
pride.”
In Broken Bonds, two-time MIT graduate and Harvard MBA Jett
contends that the bonds of slavery have yet to be broken. “We remain a dependent
people because we have never come to grips with the underlying culture of
slavery that poisons so many aspects of African-American life. Our leadership,
this hegemony of Negro priest-kings that the media says speaks for all
African-Americans, has failed us. We must recall that the priesthood is
parasitical by its nature. They value being given, rather than to earn. They
have promoted policies such as welfare and affirmative action as gifts that they
won from the white man. In truth, there has never been a more effective Trojan
Horse than the twin gifts of welfare and affirmative action. Welfare destroyed
the Black family; affirmative action destroys Black intellectual pride. The
bonds of slavery, the bonds of Black dependency on handouts must be broken if
the promise of Brown is ever to be realized.”
In colleges, Blacks are
virtually absent from science, math and engineering classes to which other
minorities flock to avoid the discrimination of subjective grading. In addition,
Jett contends the jobs of the future will belong to the tech savvy. “And we
aren’t even in the classroom,” says Jett. “Why not require affirmative action
entrants to major in engineering or a hard science? This would a far more
intelligent approach than Rev. Jesse Jackson’s proposal that high-tech companies
hire minorities having no technical skills.”
Broken Bonds is a no-holds
barred look at the failure of Black leadership and in it a new voice for Black
progress emerges. Shattering the old paradigms, Jett picks up the fallen
standard of Black pride and holds it aloft as both a beacon and a challenge to
African-Americans.
Broken Bonds can be order online at http://www.brokenbonds.com
and at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/097081013X/. Or
write to Cambridge Matrix Publications, 61 Fourth Avenue, Suite 299, New York,
NY 10003. The price is $34.95 plus $3.85 shipping/handling. A nationwide author
tour is scheduled to begin in early June 2004. The title has been allocated a
generous advertising budget.
Hollywood producing luminaries Wendy
Finerman (Forrest Gump, Stepmom, The Fan), Spike Lee (Malcolm X, Do the Right
Thing, She's Gotta Have It), and Patrick McCormick (Peter Pan, Boys on the Side,
Donnie Brasco) have all expressed interest in Jett's story.
About the
Author: Joseph Jett is no stranger to fame. He is named in over 667 books. His
early career at General Electric’s Kidder Peabody investment bank is the subject
of over 113 case studies taught across the globe in the world’s top business
schools. A hedge fund manager and speaker, Jett is a frequent television
commentator on the financial markets and issues of African-American culture. He
has appeared on Sixty Minutes, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Your World
w/ Neil Cavuto, MoneyLine w/ Lou Dobbs, A&E’s Biography, and At Large
w/Geraldo Rivera to mention just a few. He has debated such notables as Rev. Al
Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson and has aided the start-up of over 200
minority-owned businesses. Jett starred in the BBC production, Blood on the
Carpet, and was portrayed by actor Courtney Vance in the Law and Order episode,
“Rage”. The Financial Times said of him: But above all he appears to have
remarkable strength of will. It is not that a lesser man would have been crushed
by his experience; most normal people probably would not have survived at all.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/5/prweb127700.htm