Lack of agency

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

William Allen describes the time of his youth in Florida as marked by genuine racism. But somehow he did not see himself as helpless or in need of rescue. Calling it a sense of agency, he knew he could still act as an agent, could build something for himself despite the environment.

"People [his black community] were not so overcome with the spirit of oppression that they lacked agency." But that's how he sees our current time. It's the spirit of the 1619 Project, that America is and always has been defined by unredeemable racism.

Some see racism as built into the essence of America. But not Professor Allen. On the contrary, he sees the antidote to racism as built right into the essence of America: 

"[W]hat looks like a tension in the United States might just as well be thought of as the explosion of a seed planted earlier. And that seed planted earlier was planted in the Declaration of Independence . . that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator . . ." 

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Received agency

Born in the American South in 1944, William Allen saw racism up close. He remembers what it was like when a black person could be "the object of contempt, derision or hatred, or even random verbal violence, which could easily happen as you walk through the streets.”

Racism was real and open in his youth. But old age invites comparison of the decades, and he has seen change. Good change came slowly after civil rights legislation, but he sees another change in today's black people that is not so good, a sort of despair.

His mother always told him, "Boy, hold your head up!" She gave him agency (definition 2), to see himself as able to act, to do something on his own behalf, to not be a helpless victim. "We knew who we were . . and we didn’t need to be rescued." Empowered by that view of reality, he was able to create a good life for himself as a college professor.

Today it's different. Certain black voices use their public platform to send a poisonous message of hopeless anger and violence.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Agency/Equity

"Equity" is the goal of public schools today, it seems. Equity as a goal aims to make every student's outcomes the same as every other student's outcomes. It is claimed or implied that this is fair and just. 

A charter school leader in South Bronx NY disagrees. He says it denies the role of individuality because all students bring their own abilities, weaknesses, talents, choices to bear on their school experience. 

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Of course it does. Race does not lock every student of color into failure, or even every white student into success. 

What all students of every color need is a sense of agency, the knowledge that they can defy rather than confirm low expectation. They need to be empowered rather than resigned to defeat. William Allen is one who defied victimhood because he was empowered. 

from NYPost

(cont'd tomorrow)