They Kicked her off the Plantation
By Mack Rights

Here's to freedom.

In December of 2011, the Rochester City School District, which ranks dead last in all of New York State outside of New York City, held an essay contest for students at school #3. Students were to read Narrative of the Life, an autobiography by Frederick Douglass and write their impressions.

Miss Jada Williams, a 13-year old student, understood it better than I think she was expected to. She wrote an essay that offended her teacher so much that the teacher reprinted it, shared it with other teachers and has created a situation where Miss Williams has been socially forced to leave the school. Upon attending another school, she was forced to withdraw again because the essay followed her and so did the deliberate attempts to make her feel uncomfortable. While she’d been a straight-A student, these teachers, who didn’t like what she had written, decided to deface her academic record with some unearned D’s and F’s. This academic warfare cannot stand.

I’m not exactly sure why the teachers were offended. I can only surmise that it was Miss Williams’ thesis that her “white teachers,” due to their apparent inability to teach her and her black classmates to read, were a part of a racist-based plan to keep the blacks uneducated- just as Frederick Douglass’ slave master had attempted during the time of slavery. Miss Williams writes (all emphasis is mine):

My thoughts: This type of thinking is somewhat still prevalent in our society today. Most white teachers that I have come into contact with, over the last several years of my life, has failed to instruct us even today. The teachers are not as vocal about us not learning how it has been described in this narrative; but their actions speaks volumes. When I myself sit in crowded classrooms and no real concrete instruction is taking place. It makes that saying “history does repeat itself” all the more true. For white teachers to be able to be in a position of power to dictate what I can, cannot and will learn, only desiring that I may get bored because of the inconsistency and the mis-management of the classroom and remain illiterate and ignorant; or better yet distracted because some children decide to misbehave because they don’t understand, and ashamed to ask for help. The teacher recognizing all of these things and still not addressing the matter at hand, so much time has been wasted- then the bell rings and on to the next class, same drama different teacher, different class. When do we get off of this roller coaster? When the white teachers began to pass out pamphlets and packets, they expect us the black students to read the directions, complete it, and hand it in for a grade. The reality of this is that most of my peers cannot read and or comprehend the material that has been provided. So, I feel like not much has changed, just different people, different era, the same old discrimination still resides in the hearts of the white man.

Those were her personalized impressions of the autobiography, and she wrote them right after quoting Frederick Douglass’ recounting of the moment when his slave master initially discovered that his wife was teaching Frederick Douglass the slave to read:

“Very soon after I went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Auld, she very kindly commenced to teach me the A, B, C. After I learned this, she assisted me in learning to spell words of three or four letters. Just at this point of my progress, Mr. Auld found out what was going on, and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read. To use his own words, further, he said, if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master-to do as he is told to do. Learning will spoil the best nigger in the world. Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there will be no keeping him. It will forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm. It would make him discontented and unhappy.” (Skipping down) “I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty- to wit, the white man’s power to enslave the black man. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.”

The truth is, the teachers do indeed have a small reason to feel offended, but not as much of one as they think. Miss Williams goes to a school where it is hard to learn because so few there are actually willing to learn. Classes are indeed hard to manage, and the teachers can claim that as an excuse. These are the children that have come from several generations of minorities who’ve been taught by the Democrat Party in America that America is racist and it is the white Republican that has been trying to keep them down. In other words, they’re taught that the Democrat Party will take care of them with benefits if only they will continue to vote for them. The Democrats will take care of them so well that they won’t even need to know how to read.

This willingness to go through life illiterate is a learned habit. It was the Democrat Party that mandated that blacks be illiterate in the time of slavery, and it is the Democrat Party, through their complete control of the school systems in the inner cities, that encourage blacks to be illiterate today.

This is something that we Republicans know about, because we’re able to see if from the outside, but rarely are we ever given the chance to get on the inside to try and change things. The Democrats have so thoroughly taken over control of nearly all inner-city school boards, city councils, and mayoralships. This process is so thorough that the city school systems are like walled-in fortresses where the Democrats “protect” their future minority voters from the influence of the Republicans, whom they treat as barbarians at the gate.

I’m used to that. I can handle being thought of as a barbarian because I understand who I’m dealing with. However, I also know that the minority students who are being “protected’ from me, as Miss Williams discovered, are analogous to slaves being kept on a plantation. This is not my theory. It is a well-known theory spoken about often, but kept purposely by the Democrat Party from as many of those “protected” students and their parents as is possible.

The Democrat Party is there to make money. They run the teachers’ unions, teachers pay union dues, and union dues go to help reelect Democrats. In other words, the Democrat Party is using the teachers’ union as a money-laundering scheme to take money from the taxpayer to fund their own campaigns and largesse.

The Democrats will say and do anything to protect this fiefdom for themselves from the Republican Party. But the truth must be told. The Republicans aren’t at the gates of the fortress to get themselves a piece of the action. They’re there to help free the “protected” students from the plantation. The gates that the Democrats claim to be there to “protect” the minorities from the Republicans are actually there to keep the minorities in their failed system.

Republicans know, unlike many of those “protected” students, that the Democrat Party is the party of slavery, segregation and the KKK. They also know that the Republican Party is the party that was formed to end slavery, was the party that voted to end segregation and was the party of folks after the Civil War that the KKK was formed to terrorize. That had something to do with the fact that all blacks were Republicans at the time. As a result, instead of trying to steal a piece of the action, folks in the Republican Party believe that gems like Miss Williams need school choice. She needs to get to a place where she can follow her desire to learn and where she can be sure that she won’t be functionally illiterate by the time she graduates.

But the teachers unions hate the idea of school choice. Schools with non-unionized teachers cost less to run and produce better educational results. If that secret were to get out, the whole union-built fortress of cards would collapse.

Nonetheless, I do want to make the point to Miss Williams that it is not that these teachers are white that they fail you. In addition to the fact that they’re tasked with managing very hard-to manage students (and that is a serious component), it is that they’re Democrat union members. Union members are not rewarded for success. They are more likely to be rewarded for failure. If they were to be so successful that Miss Williams and her friends all of the sudden started to read at a higher level than average, what argument would the teachers unions have for demanding more money from the taxpayer? No teachers union has ever gone to the taxpayers and said: “Good news. Students are learning better than ever and are now reading above the national average. We don’t need raises.”

At the same time, Miss Williams’ teachers need to understand that Miss Williams’ immediate conclusion- that it was a racial thing that white teachers were failing black students- is natural. This is especially true considering that so much of the public-school teachings are geared toward creating in minority students a natural distrust of white folks. White folks run the Republican Party and the Republican Party is racist, so blacks need to vote for Democrats. What they don’t tell you is that this is how the Democrats keep blacks on the “plantation.” Functionally illiterate minority students have trouble getting jobs because they can’t read the application. Folks without jobs tend to live on the dole, and folks on the dole vote for Democrats who promise to give them a raise. It’s that simple.

So when the teacher discovered that Miss Williams really understood the meaning of Frederick Douglass’ autobiography and was able relate what happened to Douglass to what was happening in her own school, the teacher alerted other teachers. The teacher took it to his colleagues. “Look at this, fellow teachers union comrades. She’s on to us. What do I do?”

“Persecute her. Give her an F.”

Collectively, they saw Miss Williams as a “runaway slave.” But since they weren’t able to string her up the side of a barn and whip her until she agreed to unlearn what she’d just spent so much effort to learn, they had to get her off the plantation before she infected the rest of the plantation’s population with her radical ideas:

In closing, my suggestions to my peers, people of color, and my generation to try achieve what has been established by the African Americans and Abolitionists that paved the way for us to receive what’s rightfully yours. Blood, sweat, and tears have been shed for us to obtain any goals, which we may set for ourselves. Never being afraid to excel and achieve, because our ancestors have been bound for so, so, so, so, so long. We are free to learn, and my advice to my peers, people of color, and my generation- start making these white teachers accountable for instructing you. They chose this profession, they brag about their credentials; they brag about their tenure, so if you have so much experience, then find a more productive way to teach the so-called “unteachable”. They contain this document that states they have all this knowledge to teach, so show me what you know, teach me your ways. What merit is there, if you contain all this knowledge and not willing to share because of the color of my skin. To all of our surprise, we all have the same warm, red blood running through our veins, regardless of what race I may be. If you don’t believe me, then poke me and poke a white man and you will see. To my peers, people of color, and my generation, start asking questions, start doing the research, get involved. A grand price was paid in order for us to be where we are today; but in my mind we should be a lot further, so again I encourage the white teachers to instruct and I encourage my people to not just be a student, but become a learner.

These are the ideas of a black Republican in the making. And that’s the kind of thinking that can’t be allowed inside the teachers union-run government school fortress. She discovered she’s a human and not just a future voter for more Democrat-Party sub-par status quo. We at the Frederick Douglass Foundation of NY want to welcome Miss Williams as a fellow 21st Century Abolitionist. Welcome to the fight Miss Williams. You may not have chosen the fight, but the fight chose you. You can’t unlearn what you’ve just learned. You can try to rationalize it all you want, but you can’t unlearn it.

Read

Part II  A Follow Up on the Persecuted Miss Williams

Part III with video of her reading the essay:

They Kicked her off the Plantation Part III

For more information on this incredible story, please contact the Frederick Dounglass Foundation at info@fdfny.org or (585)615-9551.  Thank you.

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