African-American social customs were developed long before
any slaves set foot on the auction blocks in Charleston and Savannah. In fact many of the customs were finely tuned
during the “middle passage” aboard the diseased and penal ravaged slave ships.
The history of these social customs is as much a part of
core American culture as any of our cherished documents. But don’t look for any of these core customs
in the Common Core State Standards or in the curriculum of charter schools, because they mostly represent qualitative
standards, not quantitative standards.
Most are about surviving as a community, not about races to separate a
few winners to the exclusion of all others.
Playin’ the dozens, aka “snaps” and “battles”, evolved from
slavery as a way of laughing in the face of danger and death, a way of putting
down (humorously disrespecting) those
who, in their actions, disrespect the community, the liars, the phonies,
and the cheaters. It disallows a person
to think too highly of himself within his community. Clear examples have been shown in various
forms of popular culture—in films like Barbarshop
and 8 Mile, in TV shows like House of Payne, and in thousands of
different rap songs. In each case the
snap calls out a person who has disrespected the community.
The phrase derives from a custom enforced by the slave owner
and overseers just prior to the auction.
Those slaves who had succumbed to the various diseases and punishments
during the passage and were thus a less desirable commodity were grouped typically
into bargain-priced blocs, called “the
dirty dozen,” and auctioned as a single sale. Playin’ the dozens singles out the cheats and
liars, those slaves currying favor from the masters and overseers, and shows
them to be lower than “the dozens,” making them feel as humiliated as those
destitute “bargains.” (For an
introduction to this custom see Percelay, Ivey and Dweck, Snaps, foreword by Quincy Jones, 1994.)
Why and how is this relevant to America's children? The charter school industry is a latter day
representative of the slave system, a dominant group’s exploitation of a
powerless, passive group. Many urban
municipalities are faux democracies, and, as with the slave system, everyone
knows how they actually work, openly sacrificing the many for the benefit of a
few. So far the implementation and
increase of charter schools in American cities has relied on the cooperation of
a few strategically placed masters and overseers (party bosses, ward healers
and administrations) and a highly functioning cabal of African American
“religious” leaders and latter day “house slaves."
This kind of structure is almost identical to the slave
system: It couldn’t have worked without political corruption and the willing
cooperation of acquiescent members of the ruling class and groveling members of
the “slave” community. And in the matter
of the charter school industry, the majority of America’s urban children are
becoming the cast off “dozens.”
The debilitating statistics of the charter system are self-evident. The charters evolve according to how they
want to be, not according to serving the learning needs of the community. They assure their cohesion by casting aside
huge bundles of children who do not fit their model of the kind of learners who
will help the charters prosper, just like the “dozens” were cast aside. Moreover, and especially, the charters do not
concern themselves with the plight of those cast off bundles. Just as with those “dozens” at the slave
auction, they will be tossed somewhere, anywhere, to some out-of-sight,
out-of-mind place, to be under-served and over-worked.
If you think this is an exaggeration, ask yourself these
questions: What happens to the children
who do not fit the desired group profile allowed to enter the charter school,
or are disposed of for want of sufficient learning ability or prescribed proper
behavior? Are they returned to the
so-called “horrors” of those so-called “bad or failing schools” and forced to
languish in anonymous destitution?
The charter school industry has created a playin’-the-dozens
model with the populations of America’s cities.
They claim to know what is best for those citizens. It is an anachronistic, out of place system,
just like slavery was. And even though
it’s an old and corrupt system, it’s hiding in plain sight. Now is the time for all American citizens to
call out and shun the chicanery of these exploiters.
