As part of the dedication of Virginia's Civil Rights Memorial, Professor Janice Hale, of Wayne State University in Michigan, will moderate a July 20 panel at the Library of Virginia titled, "From Struggle to Triumph to Tomorrow." The Times-Dispatch and the organizers of the conference asked Hale for her initial thoughts on the topic.

DETROIT In the book Learning While Black, I wrote a 50-page chapter chronicling what I went through trying to get my son through the first, second, and third grades of an exclusive white private school in Michigan. Some of my passion comes from my experience as a mother.

I know of family members who are renting expensive apartments together so their children can attend better schools. But, what most people don't know is that the suburban schools are getting ready for us.

At the initial meeting with parents at an exclusive suburban high school in my community, the principal explained that if your child did not have good grades upon finishing the 8th grade, he would be tested before entry to this high school. If the child did not perform well on the test, he would be automatically assigned to an alternative high school. The parents have no choice. So, who do you think is the group who is getting funneled into the alternative school? The black males these parents are trying desperately to save. The schools have had meetings on us. They are not going to let their Annual Yearly Progress be lowered with an influx of low-performing African-American children.

More energy is being expended in running from African-American children than devising strategies to improve their performance.

No Child Left Behind is a punishment system, not a leadership system. The fear of punishment has caused school districts to mask low-achieving African-American children, or funnel them off to alternative schools -- not create the support systems these children need.

In Learning While Black, I make the point that African-American people are a pariah group in American society. Americans derive their status from the neighborhoods in which they reside and the schools their children attend. According to Claude Anderson, white Americans can tolerate the presence of African-Americans up to the 8 percent level. When the numbers of African-Americans in their schools and neighborhoods rise above that level, they take measures.

Further, we must face the reality that we live in a capitalistic society. My father says that Americans believe that a person should "get all you can; can all you can get; and sit on the can."

It is an integral feature of American society that there is the survival of the fittest. As Christopher Jencks has stated, "Despite the pious rhetoric about equality of opportunity, most parents want their children to have a more than equal chance of success -- which means, inevitably, that they want others, not all others, but some others to have less than equal chances."

As Rep. Augustus Hawkins once stated, "What do you do with a slave, when you no longer need his labor?" What do you think the white Americans who are in control of the political life of this country would answer? Do you think they would say, "You provide the former slaves with a high quality education so that they can take our sons' places in medical school?" I think not!

The first step in assuring the marginalization of African-American children in school was providing the black middle class with some degree of access to the American Dream. We think that we don't have a dog in that fight so no leadership for change has stepped forward from the black intelligentsia. The next step has been to feed us the notion that poor black people are responsible for the problems this society has created for them. This is known popularly as blaming the victim.
Janice E. Hale is a professor of early childhood education at Wayne State University. She also is the founding director of the Institute for the Study of the African-American Child (ISAAC). To read more from Hale on this topic please visit http://www.coe.wayne.edu:16080/isaac/.