Education in African Americans Community Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Education in African Americans Community - Essay Example The issue of education in African American communities has often found its way into public and scholarly debates in equal measure. This has come as a result of the agreeable lower quality and less appreciation of education in these communities as compared to areas occupied by the whites. The situation is one largely resulting from historical factors as well as continued neglect. All the same, continued interest can only boost the current situation. Hopefully, in the next decade the situation will be much better and quality as well as appreciation will have reached peak levels. To help in the inquiry and analysis of the current situation of education in the African American communities this study utilizes the Burke’s Dramastic Pentadic Criticism. This is a five stage approach which examines five aspect of a narration or situation these five are agent, act, agency, scene and purpose.African Americans are one of the most academically disadvantaged people marked by low literacy ac hievement. This is irrespective of the fact that African Americans are the subject of continuous focus in literacy based studies in United States. The current state of African Americans education is mainly due to historical factors which enforced segregation. This meant that discrimination against these individuals was officially recognized and enforced by the state government. This hindered equality in the social circles and this permeated through to the education sector (Belgrave, 2009). The greatest challenge for the African Americans was that they were historically considered slaves. This meant they had very few rights and education was not obviously one of the rights. In the absence of education, some few religious set ups realized that this was largely promoting inequality and sought to act. This was by availing education opportunities, at the forefront was the French Catholics in Louisiana in 1600s and Quakers in the 1700s, these were largely based in Pennsylvania. Such local ized approaches meant that education opportunities could not be holistically provided to all African Americans especially those living in other states (Taylor & Philips, 2005). The situation would be worsened by state governments which refused to grant equal education opportunities to their black population irrespective of whether they were free or not. The injustices directed to the African Americans in terms of education would later remain unaddressed for so long that they were generally accepted by the policymakers. A slight change came after the Civil War where most Blacks achieved some form of freedom and continually became aware of their entitlement to education amongst other rights (Murrell, 2002). However, marked improvement would only be registered in the 20th Century following political activism and civil activism led by such distinguished leaders as Martin Luther King Jr. Such activism brought to the limelight the great injustices and the continued segregation of the blac k community. However, it was still impossible to address the historical injustices (Morris & Morris, 1999). Besides, most African Americans had already formed a notion that education was not for them and they were resigned to disadvantaged positions and hard and dangerous street lives. Literature review The above discussion offers a brief synopsis of the historical factors that have contributed to the current dire situation of education among African Americans. This is irrespective of the marked improvement that has taken place in the past half a century or so. This study seeks to provide a rhetorical criticism of education in the African American Community as represented by the discussed factors amongst other emerging issues characterizing the same. The rationale for this criticism is as presented by Kenneth Burke under, Burke’s Dramastic Pentadic Criticism