"Waiting for Superman"

I went to see “Waiting for Superman” yesterday. I sat in the theater trying not to burst into tears seeing and hearing the desperation of the parents locked into dismal environments because of neighborhood school systems. The narrator and the prominently featured educators talked about the system, the union and how the interests of adults superseded the needs of students.

There was a sprinkling of sarcastic laughter in the theater to the labored response of a sixth grade student to a simple mental computation that put my teeth on edge and reinforced my belief that people just don't get that it is not the fault of the children or their parents that their academic preparation is so pitiful.

What was foremost in my mind was the question; how can we be so shortsighted that we don't realize the tie between the decline of the American education system and the decline of quality of life in America? With the exception of one white student from a privileged middle class background, the students featured in the movie who are most victimized by this system are black and brown. The educational pundits shared their views about what is wrong with education, but not one had the courage to verbalize that this decline was allowed to happen because of racism and narcisstic self-interest.

A friend shared a James Baldwin piece from 1967, that I've excerpted. It speaks to this feeling and echoes the sentiment of what I felt after watching that film. I've taken out references to the subject because I want you, the reader, to focus on the gravity of a situation that existed 43 years ago when these words written and that still exists TODAY.

Very few Americans... wish to believe that the American Negro situation is as desperate and dangerous as it is. Very few Americans... have the courage to recognize that the America of which they dream and boast is not the America in which the Negro lives. It is a country which the Negro has never seen. And this is not merely a matter of bad faith on the part of Americans. Bad faith, God knows, abounds, but there is something in the American dream sadder and more wistful than that.

What is really at question is the American way of life. What is really at question is whether Americans already have an identity or are still sufficiently flexible to achieve one. This is a painfully complicated question, for what now appears to be the American identity is really a bewildering and sometimes demoralizing blend of nostalgia and opportunism.[Baldwin]

When I read the above words, a day after viewing the film, I realized what had troubled me as I watched the screen and listened to spectator comments. In the movie, the question is posed: "Do we have the moral will and courage to reform this system? " We could parenthetically add to that question, "Do we have the moral will and courage to reform this system that we allowed to be criminally substandard because it wasn't OUR kids?


If you want to explore the Baldwin piece further, it is on "Books", New York Times on the Web, :Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White" - By JAMES BALDWIN April 9, 1967