Playing' The Dozens With America's Children

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.