INEQUALITY IS OUR CHALLENGE


Our Educational Challenges in Black Hawk County

What progress can be expected without an education, specifically, a college education? This is the critical education question in the year 2020. In Black Hawk County, high school graduation rates between Blacks and Whites, and Hispanics to a lesser degree, are quite comparable. But, the most telling achievement gap is in college graduation, where Whites graduate from college at nearly 30%, Hispanics at 13%, and Blacks in Blackhawk County are at a shocking 8.6%. This is unacceptable.

For too long, educators and politicians have focused on the gap between standardized test scores rather than college graduation rates. But the gap in college graduation reflects not merely a difference of skill level, but more importantly a vast difference in institutional vision. Comparable high school graduation rates followed by a gross disparity in college graduation rates suggests that in Blackhawk County, a high school education is the expected level of educational attainment for Blacks and Hispanics, while a college education is the expected level for Whites. In short, Blackhawk County Black and Hispanic students are not perceived or prepared to be future college graduates. We know that this is a recipe for the gross inequality that has come to characterize our community.


The Poverty of Home and Business Ownership

Like college education, home and business ownership are the hallmarks of the American middle class, which has shaped the success of American society, and at its best, has made the American Dream the envy of the world. When we inspect the levels of home and business ownership, particularly for Blacks in our community, the numbers are abysmal. Black Hawk County home and business ownership, again like education, is not only a matter of skill, but of personal and social vision. Owning property is subject to deliberate processes of preparation that take place long before one attempts to purchase a home or establish a business. In a manner identical to our not perceiving Black and Brown students as college graduates, our community does not perceive Black and Brown citizens as home and business owners. Otherwise, the lack of financial and economic literacy and provisions for acquiring them in our community would not be acceptable.


State and National Comparisson

Perhaps the greatest specific strengths that characterize Blackhawk County’s Black and Hispanic citizens are the intelligence and talent of its people. These talents are on par with those of any community in the country. McArthur Genius grant and Pulitzer Prize winner Nikole Hannah-Jones is representative of the talent that resides in Eastside Waterloo; she has made a national and global impact on our social discourse. Others in our community could too.

When I accompanied Waterloo youth to China on an international exchange, I witnessed youth from around the world gravitate towards our young peoples’ abundant talents. And yet Black Hawk County’s low rates in terms of college education, median income, and home ownership, and our community’s high rates for poverty, compared to state and national averages, is intolerable.

We need to leverage our kids’ creative and intellectual potential to the positive place of accomplishment and abundance they and our entire community deserve. Our youth and community members need exposure to the strategies and practices that have yielded success in other areas of our nation. For example, the College Bound Culture initiative in Oakland California designs college admission and attendance into their institutional structures. In so doing, Black and Hispanic students matriculate through their K-12 experience perceiving a college education as the next step in their educational journey, instead of seeing their high school diploma as a terminal degree. We also see places like Prince George County, Maryland possessing rates of home ownership for Blacks and Hispanics at 60 and 47 percent respectively, even in the face of the daunting housing costs that characterize the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. These families can pass down their wealth to their children.

Combined with the talent and intelligence of our Black and Hispanic students and citizens, our more resourced community members need to have the institutional courage and will to create positive change towards a radical transformation in our community. As the recent events related to police brutality have demonstrated, we can no longer tinker around the edges of the problem. We can learn what works in other areas, tailor those approaches to Black Hawk County, harness the talent and intelligence of every one of our citizens so lead the way to positive Massive Change. Diversity is our strength.

-- Dr. Shuaib Meacham, Literacy Education, University of Northern Iowa

The wealth gap for black and white Americans is the largest that it’s been since we started really recording this in the 1970s. - Nikole Hannah-Jones

Resources for white parents to raise anti-racist children:

Articles to read:

Videos to watch:

Podcasts to subscribe to:

Books to read:

Films and TV series to watch:

Organizations to follow on social media:

More anti-racism resources to check out:

Document compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker, Alyssa Klein in May 2020.