Institutional Racism

With the election of President Barack Obama, there are many of us who would like to believe that race and interracial issues are no longer a major problem in this country. But if we just look around us, we would witness incidents almost on a daily basis that whisper or scream to us that bigotry, prejudice, and racism are not just alive and well, but thriving.

A federal study released last week on the achievement gap between black and white students in the nation’s major urban school systems paints a dismal picture. According to the statistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, considered the nation’s report card, in most major urban areas there has been little or no progress in closing the gap.