One of the main problems you face when you speak a language that your own ancestors didn’t create is that you’re subject to be manipulated by it.
We already know that code words such as “urban” are meant to be politically correct replacements for the word “Black” but there are also many more subtle, often insidious code words that are used to communicate certain ideas that are intended to be completely understood by the few while being totally missed by the masses. The word “gifted”, in connection to children, is just such a word.
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Now, what we’re supposed to think that the word “gifted” describes is a child that has superior academic potential and intelligence. This is determined by the results of standardized tests given to children as young as kindergartners, but not required in most states until children reach the 3rd grade.
Yet a recent New York Daily News study showed that Black kids make up 15% of New York City’s “gifted” program despite making up 27% of all kindergarteners.
Now, before I cry “racism!” (and I wasn’t going to cry it anyway), what I think is important to remind people is that since most discrimination of any sort has been more or less outlawed, those wishing to continue to discriminate have been forced to become more clever.
It’s no longer cool to simply state “No Blacks Allowed.” Fitting more with today’s protocol is establishing a list of criteria that make it more difficult for Blacks to be included.
I pride myself on being one those “centrist” Black people. Meaning I’m the guy that’s right in the middle of the Blacks that are always screaming “Everything is whitey’s fault!” and the ones that are always screaming “Black people are our own worst enemies!”
In this capacity I can see how white people, feeling as always the need to create some corner of the academic world exclusive to themselves and their progeny, would slap a label like “gifted” on the schools that teach their own goofy brats how to feel superior.
Yet at the same time, I can see how the results of standardized testing are hard to manipulate and if there are Blacks out there that are burning with desire to see their children included among that “gifted” number, then we ourselves better do a better job of making sure that they’re properly educated.
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