"Imagine me as president going to a convention of Whites and half of them were unemployed or incarcerated and I just smile, wave, sing a hymn and leave. They’d whip me with a pocket knife," Sharpton said.
Adelaide Sanford, vice chancellor of the board of regents of the State of New York, said education was the solution to the incarceration problem. But it must be an education of liberation, she said. "The education system most visible in this country is not an education of liberation, but one of dependence. If they talk about chattel slavery, they don’t teach about the insurrections and the measures enslaved people took to get their freedom. What African-American teenager wants to identify [himself] with a person who was born a slave and died a slave?" asked Sanford.
The panel concluded that Black males are not endangered but in serious danger.
Added Cose of Newsweek: "If one were to add the number of incarcerated Black and Latino men in the United States, their numbers would rival that of the seventh largest city in the country. That is the most serious civil rights issue that we face today," he said.
— Michelle Nealy
© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com
