There Goes My Social Life (7 page)

Here's why: less educated men are finding it increasingly difficult to stay employed, with an unemployment rate 15 percent higher than for the highly educated
⁹
; less educated women are significantly more likely to have children outside of marriage than those who are highly educated.
¹⁰
Not getting a good education perpetuates the breakdown of the family and continues the cycle of poverty, which traps so many in our nation today. In
Home Economics
, Nick Schulz connects the dots with this eye-opening statement: “While just 6 percent of children born to college-educated American mothers are born out of wedlock, the percentage for mothers with no more than a high school education is 44 percent.”
¹¹

That's staggering.

5. EDUCATION NEEDS TO BE DE-STIGMATIZED FOR MINORITY COMMUNITIES

We blacks have no shortage of opportunity today, but we have to want to learn. We have to want to improve. We have to want to get an education so we can make something better of ourselves and our families. When Frederick Douglass was asked by whites in 1865 what to do for the freed black man, he responded, “I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! . . . All I ask is, give [the black man] a chance to stand on his own legs!” Freed slave Booker T. Washington, a founder of Tuskegee Institute and one of the most well-respected black leaders in the history of America, once said, “It is important and right that all privileges of the law be granted to blacks, but it is vastly more important that they be prepared for the exercise of these privileges.” Of course, racial discrimination shouldn't be permitted. But that's not the problem facing most blacks when it comes to getting a quality education.

Let me explain with a story.

In the middle of tenth grade my mom moved us back to the east coast, this time to New Jersey, where I went to Paramus High School. This public school had the same culture of violence, and—pretty soon—I was challenged to yet another fight. This time, I had to fight the biggest bully I've ever seen, a big white girl who terrorized the school. Why did she want to fight me?

Because I talked like a white girl.

“You do talk like a white girl,” my mom told me when she heard of the fight.

This is a theme that keeps recurring throughout my whole life. I've been told, time and time again, that “because you're black,” “you have to” do this, “you have to” do that. Now even my own mother was getting in on the act.

“You sent me to the best school,” I said, “Because I took advantage of it, you're criticizing me? How does using correct language have anything to do with the color of anyone's skin?” Members of my own family said I didn't think I was black. They called me Oreo. They said I didn't like black people. Somehow, the fact that I wanted to learn made black people feel I was less black. It was hard to really get an education because I had to worry about who I had to fight at lunchtime. I looked at my mother in disbelief, but she didn't even realize she'd said anything offensive.

“What?” she asked, before flicking her ashes into a tray and blowing her smoke in my face. She didn't get it. There was something about the fact that I loved school that made her question my very ethnicity. My
own mom
.

But apparently, I'm not alone. Fox News commentator Jason L. Riley, editor at the
Wall Street Journal
, identifies a significant problem with this story from his own life:

         
I was visiting my older sister shortly after I had begun working at the
Wall Street Journal
, and I was chatting with her daughter, my niece, who was maybe in the second grade at the time. I was asking her about school, her favorite subjects, that sort of thing, when she stopped me and said, “Uncle Jason, why you talk white?” Then she turned to her little friend who was there and said, “Don't my uncle sound white? Why he tryin' to sound so smart?”. . .

               
I couldn't help thinking: Here were two young black girls, seven or eight years old, already linking speech patterns to race and intelligence. They already had a rather sophisticated awareness that, as blacks, white-sounding speech was not only to be avoided in their own speech but mocked in the speech of others.
¹²

Jason, himself a black man, tells it like it is: “A big part of the problem is a black subculture that rejects attitudes and behaviors that are conducive to academic success. Black kids read half as many books and watch twice as much television as their white counterparts, for example. In other words, a big part of the problem is a culture that produces little black girls and boys who are already worried about acting and sounding white by the time they are in second grade.”
¹³

These are the kids we need to reach. These are the kids who need to learn how to succeed. What good does it do to gain access to a better education if we don't want to use it because we're afraid of sounding “white”? Each of us must determine to make the most of the opportunities before us—no matter what anyone else may say to keep us down. We must stand and fight for the better and brighter future our children deserve. We don't have to settle for the bondage of expectations handed down to us because of the color of our skin, even when the pressure comes from our own family. Just because your family didn't respect the value of an education or dissed it as “sounding white” doesn't mean you have to make the same mistake. In fact, it was my psychology teacher in high school who gave me some of the best advice ever: “You are not your family. You are who you choose to be.” I decided not to follow everything my family and friends told me I should be or do. I made my own choices when it came to learning and improving myself. And so can you.

You may have been ridiculed for refusing to remain stupid and ignorant. You may have attended a failing school. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't fight for better options for your kids—if the Democrats will stop blocking your freedom to do so.

UNLEASHING THE FREEDOM OF CHOICE

Education is the great integrator. If we can empower everyone with a quality education, we can take our country back from the big-government bullies who prey on ignorance. People of all races who are disenfranchised are dependent on these bullies. By freeing them to learn, we can end this cycle of oppression and inequality.

When it comes to educational equality, this nation is behind almost every other industrialized nation.
¹⁴
This mires kids in an endless cycle of failure and poverty, even by fourth grade. By that point, African-American, Hispanic, and low-income students are already two years behind the grade level they're supposed to be at. If they even reach the twelfth grade, they can expect to be four years behind.
¹⁵
Poor-quality education leads to less education; less education dooms many young people to the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Americans with doctoral degrees earn on average $1,623 per week with only a 2.2 percent unemployment rate. Americans who have attained nothing more than a high school diploma, however, earn a median income of $651 per week and suffer an unemployment rate of 7.5 percent.
¹⁶

How can all students get a fair shake? The same way we go about getting the best deal on anything—shop for it. By unleashing the freedom of choice in education, we can emancipate children of every race from failing schools. We love the power of choice in every other part of life, don't we? Don't like your cell coverage? Switch carriers. Don't like the produce selection at your local grocery store? Go to the one next door. Find out your auto mechanic is ripping you off? There are plenty of other options out there. We have nearly unlimited choices everywhere else, so why not in education? Why should a parent be forced to send kids to a failing school when other options are out there—better public schools, charter schools, private schools, and innovative online learning and homeschool options?

Across America, the idea of using vouchers to fund private school is catching on. In 2013, more than a quarter of a million students used school vouchers or tax-credit scholarships, and thirteen states created additional tax credits, scholarships, and vouchers for tuition.
¹⁷
A 2013 report found that “the benefits provided by existing voucher programs are sometimes large, but are usually more modest in size. This is not surprising since the programs themselves are modest—curtailed by strict limits on the students they can serve, the resources they provide, and the freedom to innovate. Only a universal voucher program could deliver the kind of dramatic improvement our public schools so desperately need.”
¹⁸
As more families are given the opportunity to use vouchers, the demand will only grow. And the evidence overwhelmingly supports them. School choice improves student outcomes, improves public schools, saves money for taxpayers, moves students from more segregated schools into less segregated schools, and improves civic values and practices.
¹⁹
One out of every twenty kids in America is enrolled in one of the ever more popular charter schools. While that's encouraging, many charter schools have waiting lists filled with families desperate to get their kids into better learning environments.

Families must be free not only to choose the best schools, but also to demand the best teachers. But students stuck in bad schools—especially those from minority families in low-income areas—have to suffer as the teacher unions fight to protect bad teachers. In Chicago, a big-government mess if ever there was one, “only 28.5 percent of 11th graders met or exceeded expectations on that state's standardized tests. [And yet,]
Newsweek
reported that only 0.1 percent of teachers were dismissed for performance-related reasons between 2005 and 2008.”
²⁰
That's just one tenth of 1 percent of teachers who were replaced in a failing district. Can anyone justify these numbers? Only the teachers unions. They use their members' mandatory dues—billions of dollars—to support political efforts. And 93
percent of those contributions go to—wait for it—the big-government Democrats.
²¹

When we take the freedom to choose from parents, we replace it with big-government control. When money is no longer connected to the parents who care most about a student's progress, we remove financial accountability from the equation. How different would schools be if parents were thought of as customers, and the child's learning as the product? A lot of schools would be out of business, that's for sure. Instead we have a monopoly where no one seems to care what parents think or whether or not kids are actually learning anything. Crazy! It's like we're still back in the 1860s and have to fight for our freedom to learn all over again. But it's not 1865—or 1965 either.

It's time to stop acting like we're still in bondage. It's time for parents to throw off the bureaucratic chains and take back control of their children's education. Proclaim your own emancipation from the big-government, top-down education system defended by Democrats and defined by poor planning, poor administration, poor teachers, poor academics, poor classrooms, and poor grades.

It's time to demand something better.

SEVEN

THE POWER OF FAMILY

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds, they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

I
paced nervously outside the door of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Auditions were at four o'clock, which meant I had three minutes to prepare myself. After Cecil's job required us to move to California, I had found a great ballet studio where I realized I loved dance. When we moved back to the East Coast, I had had to leave my wonderful California studio and start all over again. The Dance Theatre of Harlem was a very competitive school, but my training in California had prepared me well. I tried to calm myself down, but the clock told me it was time to go. Ready or not.

I walked into the studio with my head held high. Ballet was pure. When I leapt, I felt like I was really leaving the earth—where everything seemed broken and hopeless—and I escaped that pain for just a fleeting moment. There was also a certain romance of being on point.

They gave me a number along with what seemed like a hundred other girls. They would tell us the moves to do—show us a combination, then we'd have to replicate it. As the music played, they'd watch us dance, then point at individual girls and say, “You—get out.” Harsh, right? After an hour or so, I realized I was one of the last people standing. At the end of the day, they said, “Congratulations, you made it.”

I couldn't believe it!

“Just have your parent sign this form,” the instructor said, “and we'll see you on Monday!”

When I rushed into my mom's bedroom, she was sleeping.

“I did it!” I told her, handing her the form and gently nudging her awake. “I got into the Harlem Dance School!”

“You're not going,” she mumbled.

“What?” I said.

“There's no way you're gonna go to Harlem every day to dance.”

I couldn't believe that she didn't want me to take advantage of this opportunity. Or, more accurately, that she wouldn't let me. I'd taken an acting class in California, until my mom made me stop. Then, I'd refocused my life into my ballet. But what good was all that hard work? Every opportunity I got, Mom snuffed out.

“Quit being a dreamer,” she said, before rolling over and going back to her own dreamless sleep.

It was my sixteenth birthday, and my godfather was at the house. It wasn't a party for me, but every day was a party for my mother. She was right at the coffee table, forming lines of cocaine with a razor like she'd done a million times before. But then she did something new.

“Here, do you want some?” She looked up at me and smiled.

I looked at her, then the lines. Though I'd been around hard drugs my whole life, I had never done them. But it seemed like my years of hard work at school, in acting class, and ballet had never really mattered. I wasn't any better than they were after all. After living in my family for all these years, I didn't need instructions. I leaned down, held one nostril shut with my finger, and clenched my teeth. I didn't want to blow on the line. I snorted it, pulled back on my forehead above my left eye and inhaled sharply a couple of times. What was happening physically at that moment was that the cocaine was being dispersed in my sinus cavity, absorbing into my system. What was happening emotionally was far more complex.

“Just sit back and relax,” my mother laughed. “Let it take hold.”

It burned like hell, but I liked it. I really liked it.

After that day I shaved my head, became a punk rocker, and started hanging out in Greenwich Village. There creativity emanated from cafes with the cigarette smoke and the aroma of pastries. When I walked through Washington Square, someone might offer me marijuana, someone else might be playing folk songs, another might be reciting a poem. The people who made culture lived in the Village, collaborating, arguing, inspiring, and catalyzing each other into greatness. Greenwich Village opened my eyes to the possibilities of life and art. Consequently, I didn't see the world as something I couldn't have. I wasn't trapped in the Bronx—not for a second. The words Uncle Freddy said to me so many years ago had never left me:
Don
'
t settle
.
You can do whatever you want
.
You aren
'
t limited to here
. Now, I finally began to believe him.

Though I began to do a lot of drugs, there was one thing I wouldn't do: smoke cocaine. I hated the smell. The aroma of it always lingered around my mom, the fog of musty dysfunction. With my newfound drug habit, I stopped going to school unless there were tests . . . and only for the classes I liked. I would find out assignments, do them at home, and then go for the bare minimum requirements. At this point, I just didn't give a shit about anything. Anger became all-consuming, though it was the quiet kind. I became very withdrawn and didn't talk much. I had very few friends.

One day when I was almost seventeen, I was sitting alone at the school cafeteria when I felt someone staring at me. I was used to the attention, since everyone was talking about how much I'd changed lately.

What
'
d she do to her hair?

What
'
s gotten into her?

Have you seen Stacey lately?

But this was different. I looked up and saw a blonde, blue-eyed Irish kid looking at me. Our high school had all kinds of different groups. I belonged to the “disco” group, but there were also “punks,” “nerds,” and “dirtbags.” This guy was considered a dirtbag because he rode a motorcycle. He and his brothers used to rebuild old Harleys.

When my eyes met his, it seemed like he could see into my soul. We had a stare down, literally. I looked at him and he looked at me. I might have licked my lips! The next thing I knew he got up—our eyes still transfixed—walked over, and said, “Ay, you want to go out?”

He had me at “Ay.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“I'm taking you riding after school.”

How could I refuse? Pretty soon he was coming by every day after classes to pick me up, and I'd jump on his bike. We were inseparable. I felt like I had finally connected with someone in a real, almost magical way. I felt that Mike “got me.” The issues with my family receded into the background whenever we were together, so I made sure we were always together.

One night he came and got me around 10:00. I was wearing high heels like always because I'm so short, and I climbed on the bike and we took off. The next thing I knew, we were driving through the forest.

“Where are we going?”

“If I told you, it wouldn't be a surprise.”

It was dark and trees were flying by. I couldn't see anything in front of us.

“Are you out of your mind?” I yelled into his ear, pulling my arms around his chest more closely.

“Just shut your mouth.”

Oh
,
hell no
, I thought, but I didn't have time to protest. He parked the bike at the bottom of a hill, grabbed me, and threw me over his shoulder.

“Why are you doing this?” I began to scream. “Where are you taking me?”

He ignored me and steadily climbed the hill, me kicking the whole way. Eventually, he put me down on the ground, put his hands on my shoulders, and turned me around. There, before me was the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen: a lake surrounded by low-hanging trees, the reflection of the moon on the water. Oh, and a sleeping bag right by the lake.

It was the most romantic moment of my life. We made love all night—my first time. In fact, the whole summer was one big romantic adventure. It was just Mike and me. That's all that mattered.

Or so I thought. It's easy for teenagers—even for adults, really—to slip into the idea that a fun romantic relationship will solve all of life's problems. That sex will be the thing that makes things better. I didn't know it at the time, but the very thing that I thought was taking me away from my troubles was actually compounding them. In fact, researchers now say that young adults who engage in casual sexual activity are more likely to be depressed and to seriously consider suicide. Casual sex leads to poor mental health—in both guys and girls.
¹
Isn't that a fascinating fact—one that feminists should deal with honestly if they really are about the well-being of women?

Many times, Democrats stigmatize Republicans by saying that all conservatives care about are social issues, the so-called “family values” that rob the fun out of life. Democrats, on the other hand, present themselves as being sexually permissive and helping to defend the poor. This, of course, is exactly opposite to the truth. When Republicans talk about “family values,” they are talking about solving cultural problems that disproportionately affect the poor. They are talking about poverty reduction, suicide prevention, and much, much more.

Did you know that marriage is our strongest weapon against poverty? It makes you wonder why Democrats attack it. A decline in marriage drives child poverty through the roof. It also increases welfare dependence. Of course, liberals wring their hands when conservatives start talking about “family values” and “traditional marriage” but it makes sense for the government to do what it can to strengthen marriages. If we ever come across a kid who wants to drop out of high school, we immediately encourage them to stick it out. We should view dropping out of marriage as we do dropping out of high school. It's so important to get and stay married for everyone—especially parents in low-income neighborhoods. Children should arrive on this earth within the bond of marriage with parents who are more economically stable.

Our current administration undermines marriage, and it's time to quit “Murphy Browning” everyone who says that family values and traditional marriage are important. In fact, it's time for Americans—including black Americans from lower-income areas—to realize that the smartest thing they can do to help their kids grow up well in America is to stop having sex outside of marriage. Once they are married, they should stay married . . . and stop supporting liberal politicians whose policies undermine the very lives they pretend to want to help.

Liberal policies and attitudes harm people in the inner cities. I'm speaking not from a place of strength, not from a pulpit explaining how I did everything right and was rewarded for it. I made mistakes—lots of them. Hopefully you can read my story not with judgment, but with an eye toward helping people like me more easily take responsibility for their lives. I didn't understand any of this when I fell in love with the “dirtbag” with the bike. But I knew from the times that my grandmother took me to Catholic mass that sex outside of the benefits of marriage was not a good idea. Against God's plan. A sin.

Guess what? I didn't care. Having someone to love me, to understand me, and to hold me was too big of a temptation. It's hard to turn down affection and love when at home all you get is contempt and scorn. I sank my life and soul into Mike, until one day we had a fight. It was a rather silly fight, in retrospect, but it was a fight nonetheless. We had been arguing more frequently now. But this time when I knocked on his door, ready to make up, his mother answered with a concerned expression on her face.

“Sweetie, I think you ought to go home and talk to him tomorrow,” she said. Her voice was kind, with a tinge of pity.

“Why?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

Then the door opened a bit more, and I looked in the house. I saw Mike—the love of my life—standing there with another girl.

“I don't want to see you again,” he said. I guess the “dirtbag” name was appropriate for more reasons than just his motorcycle.

“Come outside and fight!” I yelled at the girl, who slunk further into the house when she saw the anger in my face. “You better get out here, little girl! I'm not playin' with you! I'm gonna kick your ass!”

Wisely, she didn't come outside. On my way out, I kicked over Mike's bike, but it didn't help me feel one ounce better. There was nothing to say, nothing to do. The one person in my life I loved and adored—the person I'd given myself to—no longer wanted to see me. Like everyone else in my fucking life, he left me.

Alone, again.

That was it. For the next three months, I went dancing at clubs all the time by myself; I slept with guys I don't even remember; I woke up a couple of times in places I didn't even recognize, before slipping out, hailing a cab, and making my way home. Not that home was that much better. Thankfully, my teachers liked me, which meant that somehow I was able to pull off high school graduation. I didn't go to my actual graduation ceremony, though. I called my friend David and said, “Hey, did they call my name?” They had. I took his word for it—they called my name, but I never received that diploma. It didn't matter anyway. I couldn't imagine any sort of real future for me. It was time to end this.