The position of blacks in America today remains an issue that is much argued. After almost four decades of the Civil Rights movement, the degree of change in the black community, while real and noticeable, also remains inadequate. Blacks have achieved positions of power, are less subject to institutional racism than in the past, and have redress in the courts and even in the court of public opinion that was once denied them. Yet, the black community remains disproportionately poor, uneducated or undereducated, and unemployed. Education is seen as the key to success in America, and every immigrant and ethnic group has eventually come to the conclusion that education for the next generation will give that generation a leg up on the ladder of success in American life. We still believe this today, even in an era of diminished expectations, but blacks seem to have been unable to make this idea work for them as well as some groups have done in the past. There are a number of reasons for this, and an analysis of what black writers have said in different literary works shows how the educational experience in America contributes to the problems of black people rather than solving them and also contributes to the crisis of black identity encountered by each generation, even in an era of supposedly improved racial relations.
The basic problems for blacks in the educational system begin with access - the schools of the inner city regions are not as good as some and are also increasingly more dangerous. However, the problems are deeper than this and extend to the curriculum, the attitudes of teachers, and the institutional structure. Once in school, black students may encounter a form of institutionalized and unintentional racism in terms of the way topics are presented, often in terms understandable to children from the suburbs but coming out of a very different social structure than is understood by inner city youth. These children a...