What does it mean to be educated? Webster’s dictionary defines education as “knowledge, skill and development gained from study or training.” To be educated is to grow from within; it’s to stimulate your brain and develop your God-given abilities to help better the world. To be Black and educated, however, carries even more significance.
To be Black and educated is to elevate yourself first. We all revere Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but long before he ever had a dream on the steps of the Washington Monument he was an excellent student who starred on his high school’s debate team and won first prize at an oratorical contest. We read about the Black Panthers parading through the streets of California with rifles, but before the party’s formation co-founder Huey Newton studied at the University of San Francisco Law School where he learned the law down to its nuances, and he encouraged other Panther members to learn it, specifically the legalities of self-defense.
King and Newton certainly differed in the way they went about working to bring change but they both realized that reaching the minds of the masses first required self-enlightenment. As Black men and women, if we take the time to improve our knowledge as individuals, only then can we enlighten our people.
Rapper Tupac Shakur explained it best when he said, “I’m not saying I’m going to change the world but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that changes the world.” Sharing our knowledge with our Black brothers and sisters, and specifically our Black children, shouldn’t be done with the expectation that they’ll be as good as us; it’s expecting that they’ll be better than us and leave their mark in this world in a way we never could imagine.
Huey Newton admitted he was heavily influenced by the teachings of Malcolm X. Malcolm didn’t live to see the group’s rise to prominence, but in his wildest dreams he probably wouldn’t have dreamed of starting a movement of that magnitude. Could we imagine what kind of mark today’s generation could leave in the age of technology if we could reach just one person in the way that Malcolm reached Newton?
It’s possibilities like this that we must take into consideration, and for that reason we as a people must take pride in going to school and getting education. However, it starts at the grade school levels, and we cannot take our education seriously and preach the importance of going to school without mentioning the importance of properly funding them.
How can we expect our young Black children to excel when there’s a constantly-declining number of competent teachers, a lack of basic resources like textbooks and a lack of sufficient funding for after-school programs (JV/varsity sports, science clubs, writing programs, etc.) to help guide them at the grade school level? More importantly, how do we expect to properly educate our Black children if they’re rarely in school due to excessive suspensions and police escorts from class (even over non-violent offenses like class disruptions), policies that disproportionately affect students of color?
To deprive a Black child of their education is to take away their happiness, destroy their creativity and individuality and withhold them from gaining an opportunity to uplift their race, and these are the biggest crimes one could commit against humanity.
Putting money back into the school systems has to be a top priority. We have to bring back after-school programs that help keep kids active and, more importantly, out of the streets. We should prioritize hiring teachers who put the needs of our kids before their paychecks. We should collectively lift up students that struggle with their studies and make it our responsibility both at school and at home to do all within our power not to let them fail rather than brushing them aside. Education has to be looked at as a basic human right, rather than a privilege, and we should remove people within the system whose actions speak otherwise. Properly nurturing our young people must become priority once again, because if we let improper nurturing slide it’s not just to their disadvantage but the disadvantage of their children, their grandchildren and generations to come.
Black education has always been something our people have leaned on to get them through the obstacles the world hurdles at them. It has always been a light that our people can follow in times of darkness. But today, more than ever, it represents those and more.
It represents our ticket to freedom.
