Two Cases For Civic Education

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the National Urban League's, "State of Black America" address. During the presentation, National Urban League President Marc Morial offered many observations, accolades, and warnings in relation to the current state of African Americans in the U.S. Something else that he and the Urban League offered was what he called, The Main Street Marshall Plan, based on the famed Marshall Plan enacted by the U.S. post-WWII in an effort to help rebuild the most war torn parts of Europe that hadn't yet recovered. The Main Street Marshall Plan is the Urban League's attempt to get needed aid and programs to some of the most war torn parts of our nation, only instead of traditional war, the war these places are recovering from are the "War on Poverty" and the "War on Drugs" and some might additionally offer the war on the middle class.

So many wonderful ideas were offered by Mr. Morial during his presentation, such as job placement programs, job skills programs, business incubators, pre-K education, etc. All of these types of programs are no doubt needed by the areas that the Urban League wants improved, unfortunately, none of these initiatives are very new and most are centered on one thing, money. Money is an important resource and one that, for many Black communities and neighborhoods, is in far too short supply. However, there is another resource is even more precious than even money when it comes to Black America, civic education.

In an alternate universe where Black America does not suffer such economic inequality with whites, but everything else stays that same, over time, economic inequality would once again rear its ugly head. Why? Because money does not equal power, knowledge and relationships do, and civic engagement is where knowledge and relationships intersect. Whites on average understand much better than Blacks how to monopolize on the benefits of civic education and civic learning opportunities. Learning comes from practice and practice comes from opportunity to practice and an understanding of the value of practice, the inequality between whites and Blacks when it comes to civic learning opportunities is on par, if not worse, than that which exists when it comes to economic opportunities and unfortunately until organizations like the Urban League make addressing this inequality a priority, beyond voter registration drives and voter access, Blacks America will continue to find itself trying to ice skate uphill.

During the 2016 Presidential Primary, voters on both sides of the aisle have cried foul, feeling "cheated" and that "the system is rigged" after discovering the rules of various state primaries and caucuses run by their respective parties. The most recent coming in Nevada, with supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders causing borderline chaos to ensue as the Nevada Democratic Party sought to deal with delegate allotments. Trump supporters also raged against the Republican machine during that brief moment when Sen. Ted Cruz seemed to be gaining delegates even as he was losing contests. One of the most ballyhooed aspects of this Presidential election cycle has been all of the "new" blood that has entered the fray of political involvement and I completely support as may people joining the conversation as possible.

Here is the issue, so many of this new blood are coming to the conversation with a very limited vocabulary and understandably are getting angry because eventually they find themselves left out, and this is where excitement alone is not enough to make a long term difference when it comes to our system of government. I admire many of our government's forefathers like Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Washington, and Franklin, but these were very learned men and it only stands to reason that the government that they would create would require a higher than basic education from it's participants in order for them to be truly effective practitioners.

The average person doesn't even know when his or her school board meets or where his or her polling place is, so without a commitment to civic education, how can any of them be expected to understand the structure and rules of their respective party's primary or caucus process. We have a government of the (educated) people, by the (educated) people and for the (educated) people. Those in control of government already know this, but it will take a commitment at both the state and federal level to sufficiently educate its citizens on the necessity and practice of civic life, before ours is a government of ALL people, by ALL people and for ALL people.