Amos N. Wilson | Special Education: Its Special Agenda Unhooded

Dr Amos Wilson but I would like to give a brief synopsis of his his disposition number one Dr Amos leads a professional career that has now established itself as status quo he has appeared before many public forums including radio and television guest appearances he has lectured at a large number of colleges and universities including forom Colombia Temple toan New York Southern Northern Entt uh I'm sorry North Carolina entt Florida A&M universities and others he has also lectured before many groups conferences and organizations both L and professional including the National Association of black social workers the

National Association of black so uh psychologists the Rockland children Psychiatric Center staff twice he has been invited to appear before the New York State assembly's committee on Children and Families and the Centers For Disease Control in Atlanta Dr Wilson has called upon was has was called upon to testify before the government operations committee chaired by The Honorable John con uh regarding the National Institute of Health's Federal Violence initiative Dr Amos has four profound books uh one is the developmental psychology of the black child two understanding black adolescent male violence three Awakening natural the Natural Genius

of black children and four black on black violence brothers and sisters remember we have to study but most of all we have to practice we have to serve as an example because the power of example is the most moving Force but it is time almost the year 2000 that we must affirm that and truly be that beginning that never ends so let's give a warm African welcome for Dr Amos [Applause] Wilson thank you my brother thank you thank you all [Applause] [Music] right okay thank you thank you thank you very much it's indeed a pleasure

to have been invited to speak with you this evening and to share this time with you this evening and to wish you all the best of the coming year and the years to Come I'm going to talk a bit about uh special education this evening I want to beg your Indulgence though because for many people it may not appear that I'm talking about education uh directly we have to be aware of the fact that sometimes we really may not serve ourselves so well when we appear to come directly at a at a at a problems

such as special ed you see uh because sometimes When you come so directly at it you omit looking at the context of the problem and we also have to watch the tendency due to our being here in this system to focus so exclusively on one issue that we ignore other very important issues this system for instance tries to get us to talk about problems that confront us as people and not consider the political economic context in which these problems are Generated and often though we are well-meaning when we do this we end up not solving

the problems so uh I'll beg your Indulgence because I'm going to talk a bit about some things that may appear not to be directly related to special ed but I think it will realize that they are I want to start off by indicating that for the African in America whether a slave or as so-called fredman has always been subjected to a special education and this is the thing we have to recognize we have to forget that this thinge called special education is something special there's nothing special about special education black people have been specially educated

from day one we've always been the subjects of a special education so this thing that you Call special education is special education within special education it's just a subass of the general special education to which we have been subjected as a people and to which we are now subjected as a people this is no less the case that's being subjected to a special education today as it was in 1619 when we first set foot on this planet and for the same essential reasons that that is we are specially Educated in this system for essentially the

same reasons in 1993 as we were in 1619 I have told you often that there are certain things that remain constant despite all obvious changes and it is very important that we as a people recognize the constants and not be deceived by apparent changes we must recognize when the changes are engaged in in order to maintain the Constants to keep the world the same and many times many of us are deceived by parent changes and uh we then lose sight of what is consistent in the world I've talked in about what I called European constants

those intentionalities of Europeans that have been present since the 15th century as far as we are concerned are still present right here today and are Expected by Europeans to be present into the foreseeable future and no matter what has happened these expectations have remained consistent and if there have been changes and drastic changes in terms of our relationships to Europeans these constants have remained the same and these changes have been engaged in to maintain them some of those constants you've heard May mentioned one of course Which is very important which we see operating in Africa

today which we've seen operating in Panama in Grenada and which will operate in the future on the African continent and other places African people are is what that we call the military differential with Europeans who are 10% of the population their continued dominance rests on their maintaining Superior military Force in fact to a great extent our being over here today is the result of military differences there is no intention for the Europeans to equal equiz that differential between Africans and themselves that differential has been there since we met them and it has really not changed

up to this very moment and we see it operating in Africa at this very moment and there there is the intention that it will continue to Operate in the world hidden behind this intentionality are a lot of Glorious looking things such as nonproliferation treaties the treaty that uh Bush just signed with yelson uh perpetrated in the name of Peace when it is nothing more than an intention to maintain European power by limiting the growth of military power on the part of non-european people it has nothing to do with peace it has to do With maintaining

uh superiority and white supremacy in the world so we must not be deceived by these games to maintain the European of course has all all intentions to maintain H the economic differential there is no intention for the European to see Africans as uh equally uh economically equal with them no matter what the talk is about there is every intention for the European to continue to exploit African natural and Human Resources no Matter in what go eyes even though he may appoint African so-called leaders and support African uh regimes the intention is the same as it

always has been to maintain economic advantage of African people to maintain the the technological differential these are constants and we saw European technology as it was used against our ancestors the intention is that it will be used in the future as it is used Now the Europeans intend to maintain the power of definition which we'll talk about tonight because special education is we will talk about shortly is a definition and as I said I think earlier today before we get involved in a discussion of special education we should ask why have we permitted the Europeans

to to Define what it is why do they have the power to do so and why do we submit to their definition Of our Behavior as a people so before you get caught up in the the intricacies of whether tests can differentiate between the learning disabled and the non-disabled you should ask first questions first who determines it and why are they able to to impose their determination on us as a people it is through then defining the world as we will Elaborate that the European manipulates the world and maintains his power in it and therefore

he he he intends to maintain that power of definition he intends to maintain control of the domain of discourse a great deal of the discussion today over the various kinds of curricular the Multicultural curriculum the the curriculum of inclusion the African Senate curriculum and so forth our struggles with the European over who Will Define what is it is important to talk about what shall be taught and what shall not be taught what people shall learn and not learn what educational experience shall people undergo and not undergo because all of these are are related to power

and to power relations and therefore if the European is intending to maintain power and control of the world he must seek to maintain control over the domain of Discourse to decide what is worth talking about to decide what is news to decide the subject matter of curricula of various types there are other areas the area of course of ours making those things African secondary to those things European these constants had were there from the beginning they're here now and it's every there's every intention for them to remain in the future despite the elevation of blacks

to high level Jobs despite you know some amounts of assimilationism and despite some multiculturalism into schools and so forth these intentions remain the same and it becomes very important for you to watch the changes and how they maintain these things because if you are to gain power in the world it must be these very things which must be changed ladies and gentlemen the education of Africans has always revolved around education for servitude that has not changed one wit I have I have warned in Awakening the Nitro genus of black children that the main purpose of

education is not preparing black children for jobs it is not preparing them to work for white folk that is not the main purpose of the education of our children or our people for if that is our main purpose then it means another constant has remained in the world and that's the Constant of slavery under a different name now it's called looking for a job with the same people having the jobs and the same people determining our wages if you're talking about true change in the world then you must educate yourself to create your own job

and to employ [Applause] yourself but today education for blacks I don't care how high it is is essentially still being defined in Terms of servitude and we think when we are educated in terms of how and where we will be employed by Europeans that has to change but the education of black people from 1619 right to this very moment has had this as a central tenant training Black Folk to serve white folks interest training Black Folk to be as productive as possible for Europeans with the Europeans owning the Means of production education that was separate

and unequal and believe me I'm not an advocate of integrated education education that was ultimately and is ultimately degrading to black people has not changed it was that way from the beginning and it's that way right now education that ultimately insults the history and culture of African people education that is Eurocentric meaning and education that prepares black people to maintain European power as the central power power in the world education of black people according to the white man's estimation of black intelligence and his need to shape and direct it I've W you before that you

need to change the definition of intelligence before you get into an argument with Europeans as to whether their test or measuring intelligence or not you must ask what is the political function of your definition of intelligence what is the political economy of your definition of intelligence and why is it that the way you define intelligence always ends up that means intelligent people work for you and your interest so consequently then we must recognize as an African people that the Ultimate goal of intelligence must be that of preparing a people to solve their problems the way

intelligence is defined today and in America is such that if we as African people are said to behave intelligently we are behaving in ways to perpetuate our oppression and to maintain European power over us and therefore it becomes important to the European to Define what intelligence Is and to Define how it is measured and for us to engage in feudal arguments as to whether it's caused by cultural differences or genetic differences when it really is not even the point according to Henry Allen bulock author of a history of negro education in the south from 169

19 to the present in the beginning there was no thought of educating Negroes yet the necessity to do so was Always present you see ultimately the white man is faced with the Dilemma in his heart and a way he would not like to educate us but the very structure and demands and dynamics of his economic system in a way forces him to do so and so even though he had no intentions and you can see in the history books some uh some overt statements about not educating blacks And of course if you read the history

of uh Frederick Douglas you saw the issue there of the slave master and his reading uh abilities what kind of problems they created but in a sense the white man's education of the African man under white supremacy has been very ambivalent both intentional and non-intentional bu goes on to say that soon after the establishment of the slave regime in the American South there was set in motion unintentional processes in uh destined to introduce the first of many educational opportunities that Negroes were to have prior to the Civil War because we must recognize that the plantation

system and the slave system system was what we call a rational system in the sense that it was an organized economic system and operated according to definite goals and intentions and another expression of Rational business practice in terms of the slave system of the South appeared in the attempts of Planters to utilize their labor efficiently you see so if you got an economic system whether that system is called slavery or not ultimately you want to make it function efficiently to get the greatest bang for the buck a complex system of division of slave labor was

instituted on every Plantation And all of this was done in pursuit of maximum production per unit of slave labor if you would read the magazines during this period you will see great discussions as to how to max maximize our production on the plantation how to relate to the slaves how to train them and how to to motivate them so as to maximize profit So within the broad limits of this rational system he the slave master was expected to require and get absolute Obedience loyalty docility diligence and other patterns of behavior considered essential for profitable production

and survival of the slavery economy another constant that has not changed say it not at all for ladies and gentlemen this is the central essence of the education of African-Americans today to maximize what production for Europeans and to establish in the African body absolute obedience loyalty Dil diligence and other patterns of behavior considered essential for whom for Africans themselves no profitable for production and survival of the European economy that's why we Define ourselves in terms of our education as preparing to get jobs from Europeans and how best to what qualify Ourselves to fit in the

European economy so that we can Aid its efficiency the laws of every slave state back the normative line which he the master could draw and every slave was expected to fear the consequences of any deviation from the range of tolerance his master set and we shall see again these rules that determine special education still have these things in mind because these rules rules that determine deviancy and non Deviancy and their purpose is to correct deviant like behavior and bring it back in line with European economic and political intentions and to create in our children personality

orientations and behavioral orientations that are supportive of those intentions these requirements that is set up by the European set a rigorous social cultural Matrix within which young Negroes were to be socialized and were to become the Personality types required by the rational order and we are going to come back in a minute to what we call the political economy of the personality and the political economy of normality you see because we are used to looking at normality as a psychological concept and and a psychological State no ladies and gentlemen normality essentially is a political and

economic State not a state of psychology so however we've been Deceived you see but we'll get back to that in minute all the slaves could not be efficiently utilized as the rational system required unless they were trained in the ways the system by law itself prohibited it in a sense the system broke its own laws in order to increase its efficiency and even though it might have had laws against teaching slaves to read slaves still were taught to read and teaching slaves other things Slaves learn many skills and so forth why and in the sense

then slaves started their education on the job in America and receive on the job training they also were hired out in in other uh professions where they earned monies for their masters and bought the money back that's right with all due respect to Malcolm X there were greater divisions than field hands and house servants there were deep hierarchies of Slaves with numbers of skills and so forth the slaves not only worked in the house but not only worked in the fields but they worked throughout the Southern economy they were Mill rights and carpenters and blacksmith

and ship Builders and all other kinds of things you can name you recognize that in many areas of the south after the Emancipation there were more skilled black laborers than there were white laborers as a result of their training On the plantations and that is a whole another story and it's amusing today to see people would talk about black people as unskilled as if our lack of skills were here since we started that was not the case we had to be deskilled as a people in this country and those skills began right on the plantation

we were hired out in a sense then the plantation was the first training school for African People and to a great degree the slave masters recognized as they do today that a trained slave could sell for more on the marketplace and therefore when you went on The Auction Block the more skills you had the more he could fetch for you in fact some of the skills were developed as an investment so that when the slave was sold he would bring more than was invested in him sounds like today ladies and Gentlemen sounds like uh this

kind of thing when we are told and we tell our children to build your Mar marketable skills so that when you go on The Auction Block in front of your white employers you can demand a higher price because you can project the skills that he has set in you what do the French tell us the more things change the more they remain the Same and this capacity we must maintain or else we will be deceived by superficial changes as so many of our people are some of you heard me on the radio this morning you

heard some references to colon power as representing some advancement for African people and yet those of us who have a little knowledge of African history and of the history of the Byzantine Empire know very clearly that there were Slave generals yes generals who led massive armies who were slaves and despite the fact that they were Generals and led empirical armies they were slaves just the same so the idea then that you're are going to have an African man under the power of European and white supremacy being a general that he represents some kind of power

and that advancement for black people is a Delusion and I'm certain if you read people even like Chancellor Williams and God bless his soul and rest her soul who talks about those Africanized Arabs also leading those armies against whom other Africans so let's not get carried away about black man being ahead of the US Arm Forces ladies and gentlemen because essentially he's going to play the same Role that we've always played when we were promoted to these secondhand positions that is leading aggression against our own people let's look a minute at the political economy of

the personality you see before we talk about personality as a psychological entity ask yourself the question what is its political and economic function you see we get a lot of people Get caught up about normality and abnormality and trying to Define what is normal and what is not normal before you get caught up in ask asking uh that question ask yourself what is the social function and the political function of normality you see in other words then the personality to a great extent is a political creation and a social Creation so is normality that is

why they are defined differently by different cultures and that is why what is called normal in one may be perceived as abnormal in the other and therefore to a great extent what is normal and what is abnormal are the results of the interaction of social power and social forces within a society it the the personality and abnormality are the result results to a great extent of the systematic use of Reward and Punishment on the bodies of people threat and intimidation control of information control of interaction and social interaction in such a way that over time

people tend as a result of social conditioning to behave in particular ways and often then those who Define what is normal and what is the normal and what is the normal Personality are those in power and their definition of personality and normality involves then the conditioning of people in such a way that in relating one to the other in those people perceiving themselves in particular ways in perceiving the world in particular ways they maintain a social and economic system they respond to particular authorities and particular types of stimulation and diff and specific types of signals

am I making myself Clear and there for all of what's involved in special education as an indication of deviant personality or as an indication of them abnormality ultimately is built and structured right into the political and economic system of this world and we must keep this in mind before we just fall for the yokey do and take what somebody else describes as normal ladies and gentlemen to be a normal black man and woman under white Supremacy according to White definition is to be sick according to African definition yes personality and normality involves a particular organization

of the person's ways of thinking the organization of of a person's ways of Behaving of seeing the world of seeing himself of looking and at the world and relating to people in that World more deeply it is an organization of people's tastes and interests and desires and if you look closely at it then normal people people in a particular society will be interested in those things that maintain that Society will have desires which if satisfied maintains the power relations in that Society am I making myself clear Here okay they will be interested in things that

maintain power relations they will Define themselves in ways that maintain power relations the way some black men Define themselves today as skirt chases as beer drinkers looking at a TV set watching Men run into each other and fall down that's a Man keeping up and being toly obsessed by wom Solly obsessed as we say with playing with balls yes drinking themselves into a stoer looking at people running Bang into each other and get up and run again not reading not studying War not developing economic power not developing military power not learning how to relate and

associate with other men and women to form an organization That will be an expression of African power and to liberate African people that somehow has been made to be perceived by many of our young men and women today has to be engaged in feminine or less than manly activities and the Society is willing to pay black males millions of dollars to maintain those interests that's why I have told you in other context that man has little to do with Your penis or your testicles what is a man has a social definition it is a political

definition the definition of what is a man must be ultimately connected to the needs of the society itself so that a man in acting out his manhood is maintaining his social group if man is not defined and what it means to be a man is not defined socially and in terms of his social group then he will not be social but Antisocial and one of the major reasons then our males are attacking our own societies and communities today is because they have not correctly defined what it means to be a man a normal African man

would not kill another man right in order to take the money he rifles from his pocket to a white man and give it to him and make him Rich so that he can rule over him further not normality in fact you don't even have to Go that far a normal Man black man doesn't work day and night only to give his money to a white man you have to be abnormal but of course the white man has to make you feel that that is what normal and that is the American way and you're doing what

you want to do and nobody else can tell you how to spend your money you are now expressing American individualism and what it means to be free isn't it strange and watch it Ladies and gentlemen every means by which the normal African-American defines his freedom ends up supporting white folk to prove that he can live anywhere he wants to he's got to move into a white neighborhood to prove that he's free to go to any school he wants to he goes to a white school to free to prove that he can spend his money anywhere

he wants to Because it's a free man he spends it with white folk you understand yeah white man feels as free as a bird and feels no compulsion to live among you and does not feel that his freedom is infringed upon it all doesn't feel any compulsion to go to school with black folk he doesn't feel like he's unfree because he not going to school with you he doesn't feel as he's unfree because he's not spending money With you because he's not laying in the bed with you and all these other kinds of things but

the Negro in order to feel free and express his freedom must spend and give his money and his lab power and everything else to everyone else but himself that establish es him as a free individual and a normal individual so then normality you see ladies and gentlemen more than a psychological function is a political and economic function because as you Express your normality as you express your law abidingness you maintain a system yeah you heard me talk about this this morning I will respect for the law the law as if it's represents something holy and

above all people the law is nothing but a bunch of rules laid down by one gang of people who have the power to enforce it on another Gang understand nothing sacred about it and it's passed and ratified to protect group interest one set of group interest against what another set of group interests that's all it's about nothing sacred about it but you see if you see law and law bidness as indicative of pro-social behavior an indicative of normality then by obeying that law and looking at law that way you will have to do what maintain

the people who passed the law In what in power it was until M Luther King and others decided that they would do what break the law okay break the law be what abnormal that the power relations and the social relations of America began to Tumble down so you have to be careful you see when how you define yourself a Lura argues in his book cognitive Development its cultural and social foundations and I recommend this highly to those of you who in education AA because it demonstrates so very clearly how the mentality of people are shaped

very much by the type of social activities they're allowed to engage in by the type of social and political structure they are conditioned in as a people the science of psychology has avoided the idea that many mental processes are social and historical in Origin mental processes just don't flow from the brain as a natural huia mental processes are historical effects and are related to historical experiences or that imparted manifestations of human consciousness have been directly shaped by the basic practices of human activity and the actual forms of culture we have to recognize this and we

don't have time Time to go into this this evening uh when when the new publication in a few months comes out educating black children for the 21st century I we will find in there detailed what is being stated here of how the mentality in consciousness of our people is very directly related to the experience of our people in America and how teachers what you call concrete thinking in African children in these schools is directly related to the fact that African people were brought over here not to think not plan not to conceptualize not to control

but to work and to do what concrete things and the whole thrust of the American Experience is to seek to shape the thinking styles of African people to fit the role that white people made for them and therefore if the roles of African people was to be that of practical workers concrete workers then it was in the interest of Europeans to make their mentality Concrete and practical rather than conceptual and Abstract but you see if you don't know this history and if you don't know the Dynamics of how this mentality has been created and if

you don't know the political economy of thought then when these children come into your schools and they demonstrate what you call concrete thinking lack of planning at a lack of conceptual thought you ready then to label them as learning Disabled and relate to them in terms of being learning disabled I'll be back to that in a minute the manifestations of African consciousness is directly are directly shaped or influenced by the social political practices and forms of American culture shaped by the Social Power relations of white and black people you know that if we had a

different Power Relationship with white folk we wouldn't think and behave the way we do now no we would act differently and behave differently to a great extent then the things we talk about the things we're interested in the way we look at ourselves and all of these kinds of things are a product of the nature of the power relations that have adhered between us and white folk imagine how you would be if we were The more powerful ones in fact we wouldn't be having this lecture tonight it wouldn't even be a subject matter we'd be

talking about how we could keep it and how we could protect what African interest right now we have to talk about how we're going to take it these relations these power relations have and are Guided by social and legal definitions and rules and their enforcement by whes These definitions and rules provide standards and ways of judging others as deviants or nond deviants of transforming an instance of conduct into a deviant or non deviant act I want you to keep in mind what I'm talking about in terms of rules you see and definitions because it's what

is defined as learning disabled you see what is defined as as in being in need of special education and that definition being Based on the exhibition of certain types of behavior and then stigmatizing people based on this Behavior even though when you get to really look at it ladies and gentlemen the behavior is not not Devi deviant or non deviant these definitions and rules serve a dual function they provide for the labeling of others and Supply the means and the authority to stigmatize The behavior of others you will recognize as we go on then that

when you permit others to label behavior and your own behavior you are giving them a power over you and it will be that label which will authorize them to do certain things to you and about you so they are not just labels but they are the justifiers of behavior and they prescribe various behaviors toward those who are Labeled consequently definitions and rules are expressions of group conflict and interest I want you to keep that in mind labels are not not just labels of behavior labels are entered into as a part of the interaction between groups

I don't want you to do this therefore I will make it against the law and when you do it I shall call you a Criminal you see and so what do we have here and why am I making this law and why am I calling you a criminal so that I can protect what my interest right you see and can justify myself in treating you in a particular way so that my interests can be protected and these and the formulation this formulation of rules and definitions translate into power to impose one group's will on the

other the Power to Define and enforce one group's definition on the other conduct and this is what this is about if you look back in your old Bible there you will see that uh Adam is symbolically given the power to dominate the Earth by God by the fact that God permits him to do what name name all the animals the fish and the fowl and to name the Earth thems itself that is a power and this is a symbol by saying thing this he is saying You are the one who dominates the world because I'm

going to permit you to define the world to name it and to relate to it in terms of the way you define it and name it this then will give you the right to impose yourself on nature and to impose yourself on the world consequently when you let another people have the right to Define your behavior you let them also have the right to impose themselves on you and it's amazing what happens when You have definition you talk about uh some of you familiar with the book regulating the poor it's interesting it's interesting how so-called

normal behavior Can in an instance be turn into abnormal behavior by the mere Act of labeling how for instance some of you may have gone to Boston you heard something called the common guard Gardens of the Boston Common Gardens apart which Hearts back to a European Tradition where certain lands belong to to all of the people and The Peasants then had the right to hunt on those lands to fish to find their firewood to uh to do various things to graze their cattle and so forth as a means of supporting them that they had that

right and this right was sanctioned by tradition over hundreds and hundreds of years but something happened the price of wool started Increasing tremendously and became very profitable and those who were in power decided then that they wanted as much land as possible and they went to the British Parliament to get a law passed so that they could enclose what was once common property and fence it off and make this property private and therefore overnight now those people who had been bringing their cattle and doing these things in their normal way were turned into what Criminals

criminals why because their behavior was different because they were admitting emitting criminal Behavior no because the rules had changed right overnight now they became criminals and as the price of wool went up and as the English economy changed when these land owners no longer needed the peasants on the land and when they needed them in the developing factories they literally turned them out Into the highways and the byways and overnight they became Beggars but also overnight it became against the law to beg without a license and overnight it was all right then to if you

didn't have a license to be beaten until the blood ran and overnight then it became possible to talk about the personality of the beggar and to see the person the beggar as having a criminal personality no doubt built into his Genes yeah the same kind of game that we have today a group of people interested in their profits and interested in maintaining power and control pass laws and overnight then the behavior of our peoples suddenly become what criminal and abnormal and now the same behavior that they were exhibiting before the laws were called become indictive

netive of criminal personalities and of illness and abnormality let's wake Up and notice then that the labeling and defining of behavior again not essentially and only a psychological process but it is a psychopolitical psycho economic process as a matter of fact I will give you a short publication to re uh uh shortly called the psycho economics of black-on-black violence you thought I screw with it didn't you oh I knew when I knew when I I knew when I wrote the psychodynamics of Black-on-black violence that that wasn't all of it no no black onbl violence is

determined more than internal psychodynamics because you must recognize those psycho Dynamics are reflection of economic Dynamics they are the psychological reflection of economic demands and of an economic system they do not therefore begin in the psyche of African people they begin the very economic structure of European people and it acts itself out through Their behavior because the purpose of that system is to organize black behaviors I said earlier to maintain itself this is why ladies and gentlemen when you get over your anger with Elijah Muhammad and your unwillingness to analyze who he was because you

can't get Beyond some ACT you think you know just destroys everything he was about and you fall into a trap when you Do this I call this super niggerism when all of those who may have achieved some position of leadership or influence must be perceived as totally and superly clean and must not be perceived as having one of a CLA of a flaw in their personality there is no man who is unflawed He who is without sin cast the first stone and yet when you demand of your leaders that they be totally Saints and total

Saints then all your enemy has to do is put one little smudge of diet on them and everything of value that they have to offer now is thrown out and no lessons are learned yes and The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is due a good analysis of his leadership and what he had to offer black people Regardless of what you may think because the honorable Elijah Muhammad was the greatest psychologist that people black people ever created bar none but you see that sounds odd if you haven't taken time to get around your anger to look at what

was going on there you understand when you look at the mythologies of Islams as just mythologist without looking at them in Their political and economic function it was not an issue as to whether the white man was a true devil or not which he is but what would be the result of our Behavior if we perceived him as one you see if we related to him what as one not as an object to be merged with to be assimilated with to be integrated with but is one to be pushed away and one so that we

could engage in our own Self-development instead of trying to create ourselves to fit his image of who we should be you thought Elijah Muhammad was hard when he dictated diet and taste but your taste had already been dictated by the Europeans and it had been dictated in such a way that you became glutton for European things and being glutton for European things you gave them all of Your money you gave them more than you even earned that's why you're in debt today and in giving away and feeding your gluttonous appetites that the Europeans had inculcated

in you you had no money left to educate your children no money left to invest in your businesses no money left to support your families and the other social institutions and now you wonder why your children are stabbing you in the streets and Robbing and Elijah Muhammad then says we will change their taste let him eat bean pie let him get a taste for this kind of clothing let them get an interest in this let them lose their taste for alcohol let them lose their taste for cigarettes let them lose their taste for junk food

let them eat once a day why because they spend from two to $5,000 a year per person buying junk and garbage and therefore with that savings They can build their own institutions universities of of Islam across this country but you see when you let other people determine your perception of your own leaders you fall back to be victimized by those people and fall back into your habits which of course lead to supporting them and we have to understand then what this is about this is why ultimately you see an African Senate education is not a

mere teaching of African history and culture But Ultimately a reorganization of the African personality and a reorganization of African taste and interest such that Africans become self-supporting and self-sufficient and become a powerful people so you have to be careful you see black people are absolutist yeah we're absolutist you know it doesn't matter whether you're Christian or Marxist or whatever whatever religion or Whatever you belong to when it comes from other people we hear something and we believe it because it's absolutely true you see yeah that's true and you know and we dedicate ourselves to it

that's irrefutable yeah this will get you in trouble you know again you Christians Thomas says Lord I believe but help th my what unbelief don't make me believe too much you got to prove something to Me you just can't come back here and tell me that you got off the cross man show me up talk God yeah let me see something here you see we just can't take it on your what Your word but you see the idea of the European is to get us to take him on his what word and he handed us

the word yeah and he ended up though what did we say with the land and everything Else why because we believe the word only absolutely because the word to us appear true now let me quickly show you what I mean by this a nice a European walks up and says we shouldn't really see each other in terms of race we are all human and the globe belongs to all of mankind we shouldn't really relate to each other in terms of nationalities we should be free to move Across the Earth as we see fit and we

should be free to invest wherever there are opportunities to invest all of us should have that right that's called a free market free market yeah free market economy oh yeah that's right that's right and of course we're glad to hear from him you know oh this man has become civilized at last but wait a minute you see you got to ask something even though you might Not argue with the basic premise you got to ask who is saying this and why are they saying it what will be the consequence of Might believing this you see

you got to go beyond the absolute truth of something and look at it in the context of power and the context of differences you see you got a bunch of people around here telling you well we preach Universal Principles and we talk about Universal truths then why isn't the Bounty of the earth universally distributed why yes why why aren't the goods of the earth randomly distributed why is there a nonrandom distribution of power and benefits and so forth and it it seems to Cluster around the very people who preach Universal principles and the people who

believe it most have at least Yeah because you see that guy who's telling you that we all should be free to invest wherever opportunity lies is the only guy that has what the money and therefore through your very moral belief you will give consent to being to having your property owned by others to have your resources owned by others and then you find yourself wondering why do good people suffer it's built in they suffer because they believe in absolute truth and Nothing else and the more they suffer those who preach those absolute truths tell them

that they suffer because their belief isn't strong enough so they believe harder and become [Applause] poorer and therefore we find Among Us the people who played the loudest and the longest and kick over the benches and fall back tend to also be the poorest in the Society you have not learned anything from your Bibles than that very first book demonstrated to you that the Israelites had a contract with God called a covenant you scratch my back God and I'll scratch yours God was they just didn't say I'm going to lay down on my ground and

just worship you you do whatever you want to to me uhuh that wasn't what it's about When you read it closer you'll see Moses negotiating that says Okay God says you do this and what and I'll do that you break the rule then you will suffer but if you follow the rules then I will deliver so God also does what serves he's not only served he what serves but the Negro is only taught to what serve God and therefore we serve religions but our religions do not serve us Somebody told Elijah Muhammad being a black

Muslim makes you unorthodox that's exactly the point because being black Muslim means that Islam will serve whom Black Folk it just won't be an instance of black folks serving what Islam alone but Islam being black Islam becomes an Islam that operates in the service of Black Folk and black interest hope you understand what I'm saying here yes sir you Understand we have to recognize this so we got to get over this absolutism and the Marxist run the same game Scientific Socialism same old nunsense in what way does you got to ask in what way does

my believing this serve me and in what way do you're preaching this and having me believe this serve you and say wow what you say is true and I don't argue against it I am not in agreement with the Consequences we must also change some other things in our relationship along with this belief so that in my believing it I will not be deprived of my freedom or deprived of my resources and of my possibilities share some of that dog gone money if you believe it so [Applause] hard oh let me run I know my

time is going out here go ahead go ahead we're going to run it through ladies and gentlemen we got another speech Coming but due to power differentials the processes of Laing Behavior are tanam mount to the processes of creation it goes back to this the application of certain rules rules and definitions to others influence how they are related to when you put a label on somebody you also defining how other people how that somebody is going to be related to by others it's not a mere a a mere label it is a prescription for relationships

how other people will Relate to this individual it is also a prescription for how this person will be perceived by others and how they relate to themselves and perceive themselves in other words then the labeling of people affects their perception of themselves and of the world and by being labeled then their vision is transformed and to a degree so is their psychology and so is their relationship with other people thus due to power differentials the Process of labeling Behavior are tandm out to the processes of creation what am I saying here the processes of letting

Europeans label our behavior and apply their rules and definitions to our behavior is not a mere stigmatizing of our Behavior but it is tantamount to their creating our behavior for today ladies and gentlemen we are a created people we have been created by the European power System we have yet to become self-creating and we will become self-creating when we become self-labeling and we become labelers of the world ourselves when we measure our children and relate to them in terms of our measurement not in terms of other people's measurement of them labeling in the prescriptions it

implies May therefore become a part of the problem it is designed to solve you thought it was going to solve Your child's problem when they were taken the special ed no no it becomes a part of the problem itself it helps to maintain the problem it is there to maintain the problem I was going to do a definition of learning disabled but in the interest of time I'm going to skip over that the process of classifying a child is learning disabled typically begins when a teacher or parent of both becomes dissatisfied with the child's Performance

in school and then the child may be tested or test or recommended why are no test there no test of the teacher yeah no test of the school no test of the school system no test of the political purpose and direction of the educational system itself why is it that this the child who's the only thing tested in this equation ladies and gentlemen who is the learning disabled child according to the definition passed By public law uh in inin the public law 94-142 who is the the disabled child leaves the specific procedures for classifying learning

disabled children up to individual school districts and to States and then you're going to have various definitions definitions that center around aptitude as they relate to the child's actual achievement that is IQ and what he's really achieving some of them will Look at the discrepancy that is a discrepancy between aptitude and achievement others will uh base their learning disability estimation on the number of grades below grade level some will say one year others will say two others will look at special tests maybe some perceptual motor test and other kinds of of test psychol linguistic test

test and how they have just cataloges of tests they may even Measure the EEG and put them through the pet scans and emrs and all the rest of that stuff they have special ways of interpreting standardized test look at look at the uh the scores on the standard uh Stanford Benet or the other test all of these are ways in which the learning disa child is supposedly discovered according to a respected Authority in this area arth of the book learning disabled yes uh child and uh by civia fernem Diory an alarming number of children of

misclassified as learning disabled by recent estimates 80% of the children who are classified as learning disabled should not have been we have a game going on here Gerald Cole's in the learning Mystique a critical look at learning disability contends that there the rare genuinely genuinely learning disabled children perhaps five out of every thousand children are often lost in the Misclassified crowd and are not receiving the specialized education that they need and that the federal law mandates I just want to just mention here in closing you you got to recognize that there are any number of

definitions despite the increasing number of students being declared eligible for learning disabled services and the intuitive appeal of this term Learning disabled there's little agree little agreement as to what it really is in the Journal of psychoeducational assessment a study by Von and hares reported as many as 38 different definitions in a survey of 42 State Departments of Education as to what it means to be learning disabled so what are we talking about here they found considerable variation across States and districts and of course related to these variabilities in Definitions and rules for defining what

is learn behavior is of course the variability in the number of students you're going to get defined as learning disabled this is why I was talking earlier about rules and definitions you see words what rule and definition you apply creates populations you see because the rule then will enclose certain types of behavior one rule will enclos it whereas the other rule will not you see in re in A research sample including 48 School identified LD students learning disabled students and 96 non-learning disabled students Von and hares determined how many were classifiable as LD as learning

disabled according to 14 operational definition that is they sat of these 38 we're going to take 14 of the definitions and we going and the these are operational definitions meaning that these definitions not only Define what uh they perceive as learning Disabled or abil or behavior indicative of learning Behavior but they Define also how this behavior is to me be measured you see how do you come to discover this the total sample then was a 144 students and it contained therefore 33% of school identified learning disabled that is children who' already been designated learning disabled

were 33% of the sample and 66% roughly speaking of the sample were non-learning Disabled students now when they applied these tests then these 14 tests applying these different rules and definitions they got then different uh populations of people they call learning disabled the percentage of the total sample including both including both learning disabled and non-learning disabled students as defined by the schools the percentage of the total sample identified by each definition range from 5.3% that is some of the definition that said only 5% of these students are learn disabled learning disa despite the fact that

33% had already been identified as such by the schools others defin The Other Extreme says 70% of the sample is what learning disa which mean then if you originally had 33 that were Iden 3% that was identified as learning disabled this extreme definition went Above that 33 and included something like 30% 6% of the ones who hadn't been so defined so what are we saying again here the definition the rules create in a sense the disability and Define the populations so why do we just lay back when we let another people apply definitions and rules

to our children is it because we believe psychology is some kind of exact science or is it because we simply Believe that those who engaged in this process are only performing Psychological Services are only uh in there to serve educational purposes where they don't even know what the hell they're talking [Music] about okay for the for the learning this able sample alone nine of the 14 definition did not identify even half of the learning disabled students as learning disabled Okay so that's that but in terms of time we going to have to move on let

me skip over some things maybe on another thing we will we'll look at this let's quickly though look at the political economy of special education has many economic implications once the child has been certified as learning disabled additional money is sent to the school district on the child's behalf the exact amount varies but it's Substantial It is Well now over $77,000 per child you're talking about an industry as a result of defining our children is learning disabled that generates now well over 15 billion the money is not sent directly to the individual children but goes

into a general budget to pay the special education personnel and buy uh supplies so what do we have here ladies and gentlemen a builtin incentive to do What classify our children has learning disabled because it brings in money to the district so it's no wonder then that between 1977 and 1986 the children classified as learning disabled moved from 800,000 to 2 million you'll learn one day ladies and gentlemen that black problems and the image of black people as problem people is worth billions of dollars through Europeans okay let's just this label then does what it

obscures the nature by which our children are dis enabled and obscures the fact that this society and Europeans if they are to maintain their power must disenable the capacity of African people it is a political and economic necessity that the African mind is disengaged and dis Enabled and we have to understand that but as long as you stay focused on labels and as long as you're reacting to the labeling of your children and as long as you get into controversies about whether these labels are culturally biased or not and so forth the process and the

means by which our children and ourselves are mentally lamed by the system are overlooked and the economic ends of destroying our mentality are overlooked I've got to mention one other thing here and one of the major obscurations of the political and social process and that's what I what we call the medicalization of social problems because the learning disabilities in our children are political problems ladies and gentlemen they are not even academic problems we have to understand that they it's just in the academy and in the School that the political iCal problems between Africans and Europeans

are manifested as what learning problems they do not originate in the school they originate in the political and economic relationship between African people and European people and reflect the power relationship of our people and if we are to remain relatively powerless as a people then our mentality must remain relatively powerless this is what it's About and one of the major ways you can obscure these historical and sociological processes is by making the result of these processes appeared to be Medical in nature yes this is the game just is now they're trying to medicalize the so-called

violent behavior of our youngsters and make that behavior now an expression of genetic Orientations that's the endpoint of medicalizing problems you see you no longer have to talk about the social historical processes and the criminality of Europeans and how it reflects itself in the so-called criminality of African people you can now discuss the genetic foundations of African criminal behavior and you can now call conferences dealing with genetic markers for violence behavior and now you can talk about identifying those who are violence prone By age five before they even know what the hell violence and criminality

is about and therefore we then once you move the definition away from the social and the political system you didn't no longer demand social and political change and you didn't no longer demand the change in power ations and you then no longer decide to create Revolution to change the situation that we're in you just only then want to take them to the Doctor and have medicine prescribed for them and so what happens then when you medicalize the behavior which is what happens to a lot of our so-called learning disabled children who are given riddin and

other stimulants and tranquilizers and so forth the medicalization of deviant Behavior his defining and label of labeling of deviant Behavior as a medical problem not as a political problem not as a social problem not as a Problem of conflict and interest between groups not as an issue of about power and so forth but as a medical problem as an illness and and mandating the medical profession provide some types of treatment not that political leaders provide treatment not that revolutionary leaders provide a treatment for the problem that our children are facing not that they we revise

the economic and political system but that now our children's problems be dealt with by the Medical profession and the medical profession is given sole Authority in determining how to label their behavior and treat their behavior and our authority over them and our right to determine the nature of the society and change the nature of the society that our children has been inherited now will be looked upon on too has an expression of illness and abnormality and that is why medicine in the 60s and even today looked at black Revolutionaries has candidates for psychos surgery and

saw this the very just protest of black people has indicative of illnesses in black people so what is what what are the consequences of medicalization to remove a Court's responsibility from the political system to expand the jurisdiction of Medicine to to increase the pharmaceutical profits of uh of pharmaceutical Corporations and Inter Enterprises to put an apparent neutral morally neutral label on our people to remove discussion from public discussion to use powerful methods to maintain the status quo we must then ladies and gentlemen look at this system critically we must look at this system politically and

economically we must recognize the political and economic functions of education and the Intentionalities of Eur Centric education we must review the accepted theories of learning and thinking we as African people must construct and apply new African centered theories of learning and theories of pedagogy yes yes this is why I developed and wrote the developmental psychology of the black child you must all school systems are ultimately founded on what I call the implicit child these schools which your children Now attend were schools that have were not designed for them schools not the based based on their

psychology and yet we have walked directly into them and permitted their structures and original intentionalities and designs and so forth to remain which which means then there is a built-in discontinuity and dis synchrony between these schools and the philosophies of these schools and the methods of teaching in these schools and the Psychology of children on which these schools are based and the true psychology of our people and the true intentions of our people and we now wonder why they have problems the problems are generated by the very structure and nature of the schools themselves and

they're generated by the fact that African people have not founded a theory of Education based on the African experience we have not explored and Examined ourselves deeply to recognize to what extent our learning styles and our thinking Styles and our value Styles and our motivational Styles have been created and distorted by being an oppressed people and how those Styles represent themselves in our children as they walk into entric schools and how they express themselves then as so-called misconduct as hostility as boredom as misbehaving and all the other things that are now used as markers to

Say that they are learning disabled you have to understand this you have to understand yourself and come to self- knowledge and know who you are so that you will know who your children are so that you can then you can then design your schools and their educational experience in line with who they are and in line with where you want to go I've told you before that the African child has a different Destiny than the European Child that the destiny of the African Child is revolutionary by the very nature of the economic and political position

that African people are in it is no way if you in your right mind you could demand that your children have the same education as right children they do not have the same problems as white children to Ser if you were to say that African people do not own even their own Nations if you were to say that Japanese and Arabs and Lebanese and all these other eases have control of the African economies if you can say the Koreans and the Arabs and the others have control of your economies here in America if you can

say whether you go where every black country you go to the blackest of the people are at the bottom of the ladder right then you must know that the role of the African Child is to overthrow the system and to change the power relation Here so the major problem the major problem that the African child must solve is the problem of Oppression this is not the problem of white children and therefore if this child is to be appropriately educated it must be educated to undertake Revolution and to gain its Liberation through its own Struggle you

understand but it's because you think equality and and being the same as other people are one and the same no no to be equal is not to be like to get an equal education to white folk is not to be like white folk because it is in our effort to be like white folk that we generate the power for white folk to continue to rule us therefore you got to look at yourself you got to look at your history you got to look at how that history still Reflects itself in the way we behave I

don't have time to talk to it here tonight but we talk about the oral tradition a lot of what is perceived as learning disabilities is still a reflection of the African oral tradition operating in African people today but of African people coming and children coming out of that oral tradition being placed within the context of a European literate condition and then using European standards Looking at that behavior is indicative of learning disabilities our black children do not come to school behind white children they come to school as they are they are not behind any children

they are our children and they represent our experience and therefore consequently then the schools that they go to must be red designed to meet their needs and to meet the needs of African People and where you see and where you see those African schools which have redesigned themselves and we have many examples you see African children doing what learning and surpassing other children I'm telling you and we can name them one one right after the other but they don't make the news I heard One S of made a little news a couple of weeks ago

on 6 minutes but like these things they pop up and nobody hears of them again I was listening to aail a few Weeks ago naming these examples of schools that have demonstrated the great learning capacities of black children and he says when he goes around to the school and ask the administrators have any of the state officials of Education been here to visit this school no they don't visit it they're not Incorporated we know what the intention is there ladies and gentlemen then ladies and gentlemen I have to end it here I did have some

advice for Parents who are are working with this situation now perhaps we can deal with that a bit later but we have to recognize then that ultimately if we are to change the so-called disabilities of our children and of ourselves we must change the nature of the power relations we have with others and ourselves thank you for your attention thank you [Applause] that's Dr Amos Wilson that's