New Standards and Old Inequalities: School Reform and the Education of African American Students

CORIBE&s;s approach call attentions to ways the ideological corruption of research, buttressed by the mainstream research orthodoxy, blocks the development of beneficial knowledge, education practice and policy. The findings and recommendations presented in this volume also illuminate the far-reaching social costs of alienating, soul-damaging education - costs that top-down, corporate-driven, for-profit reform efforts fail to address. Ameliorative reforms may facilitate individual economic goals for a few but not our collective advancement and empowerment of Black people and our communities. Moreover, the evolving "diversity" discourse in the United States too often encourages a false hope in "multicultural chic" -hybridity, inclusive-ness, anything but African. Although Europeans are attempting to forge a new pluralism and respect for their multiple heritages and languages. African people are being cut off from our collective identity and care for each other, strengths that have been so integral to our survival, which is clearly in jeopardy.