I just finished reading “A Hope in the Unseen” by Ron Suskind. This is a nonfiction account of a young African-American man who grew up in South East D.C. and went on to attend an Ivy League university (Brown). This young man overcame many obstacles and worked extremely hard to do so. Like many other students at this school, his mother raised him by herself, because his father was in jail for dealing heroine. The book was excellent, but it highlighted two disturbing things.
First, the public school system in D.C. is abysmal and is an embarrassment to our nation. This fellow graduated in ’95 from Frank W. Ballou Senior High, which is fairly recently. This school is completely hostile to the learning process. Unfortunately, I suspect this school is not unusual among low income sections of American cities. When there are students carrying knives and guns around in halls and frequently skipping class, something has gone wrong. I don’t know if things have improved since then, but for the school to have deteriorated to this point is a complete failure of the government.
Secondly, the church that this fellow and his mother attended is a parasite. The pastor, who drives a Cadillac (which was subsequently upgraded to a Rolls Royce) and lives in a middle class neighborhood, encourages his economically destitute parishioners to donate all they can to the church, because God will pay it back to them with dividends. How this preacher sleeps at night is beyond me.
The book also went into some detail about the difficulty that minority students from low income areas have in adjusting to other segments of society. While it was an excellent read, this book in no way made me proud of some of the things going on in this country.
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