Supplemental: D’Leisha Dent to Miles College!

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 2014

Bittersweet good news:
When Nikole Hannah-Jones profiled Tuscaloosa’s public schools, she focused on three generations of the James Dent family.

That included D’Leisha Dent, senior class president at Tuscaloosa’s Central High School.

Dent was also homecoming queen this year. She’s a member of the mayor’s youth council; she was a three-time individual state champion in track.

But because of Dent’s low ACT scores, Hannah-Jones said she was barely getting a nibble from the four-year colleges she hoped to attend. Her profile ended on this downbeat note:
HANNAH-JONES (4/16/14): For black students like D’Leisha—the grandchildren of the historic Brown decision—having to play catch-up with their white counterparts is supposed to be a thing of the past. The promise was that students of all colors would be educated side by side, and would advance together into a more integrated, equitable American society. Polls show Americans embracing this promise in the abstract, but that rarely translates into on-the-ground support for integration efforts.

Late last year, D’Leisha took the ACT for the third time, but her score dropped back to 16. So early on a Saturday in February, she got up quietly, forced a few bites of a muffin into her nervous stomach, and drove once again to the community college where the test is administered. A few weeks later, she got her score: 16 again. She contemplated a fifth attempt, but could see little point.

A few months earlier, D’Leisha had talked about how much she looked forward to meeting people from different cultures at college and sitting in a racially mixed classroom for the first time. But her college hopes are thinner now than she’d expected then. As of this writing, they largely hinge on the tenuous promise of a coach at a small, historically black college outside of Birmingham, who has told her that the school will have a place for her despite her score. No official offer of admission has yet arrived.
As it turns out, that small, historically black college came through. According to the Tuscaloosa News, Dent will be attending Miles College, where she will compete in two sports—track and volleyball.

In her lengthy report, Hannah-Jones focused on issues of “resegregation.” Dent had always attended all-black schools in Tuscaloosa. According to Hannah-Jones, she looked forward to “meeting people from different cultures at college and sitting in a racially mixed classroom for the first time.”

More than half the students at Miles come from outside Alabama, but the school has very few white students. We’ll bet that Miles has made the right choice in accepting Dent, but Dent still won’t move beyond the classroom separation that was invented so long ago.

In our view, Dent may have missed out on white Alabama. But based on Hannah-Jones’ profile of this superlative kid, a lot of kids in white Alabama have surely missed out on the chance to know her.

For the record, no, it isn’t their fault. And better days lie ahead.

15 comments:

  1. Your Jonny Scrum-half gets results!

    "Jonny Scrum-half May 19, 2014 at 10:32 AM

    Just FYI: Ms. Dent has been accepted at a 4-year college. See http://tuscpreps.com/news/article/54456/central-track-champ-signs-with-miles/ "

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  2. You’re almost never allowed to hear that news, of course. In deference to elite propaganda, the successors to our American press corps relentlessly keep this good news under their hats.

    Occasionally, the good news slips out.

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    Replies
    1. omg so clever! keep patting, your back deserves it!

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    2. Yes, why wasn't D'Leisha Dent's acceptance of a two-sport scholarship to Miles the lead story in the New York Times?

      Obviously a media conspiracy to keep such good news hidden.

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  3. Well, it's not like D'Leisha Dent is dead. White people her own age still have the opportunity to get to know her. For gosh sakes, have a city-sponsored mixer or picnic or barbecue or trip to the zoo and invite every white and black teenager in Tuscaloosa.

    I went to an elite private school that was 95% white and an elite private university that was 98% white and now I live in a neighborhood that is equal parts white and black and interact equally with white and black people. It can be done.

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  4. Bob, these posts are invaluable. I am so grateful.

    LTR

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  5. Why is this a Supplemental and not an Update?

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    1. Better question, why is this not a "Correction" of the statements Bob made all through the month of May about how D'Leisha can't get into any four year college?

      Hannah-Jones' article is dated April 16. The news of her accepting the scholarship to Miles is dated April 27. Bob is just discovering it now.

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    2. Shame on you 10:28. For the record, no, it isn’t their fault. And better days lie ahead.

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    3. What is wrong with you people?

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    4. They are upper class pseudo liberals accustomed to avert their gaze from things we know now.

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  6. This was a good step. I look forward to the next supplemental.

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  7. Yo! Homecoming nigga! I am poor as yourself! Know wath I mean, dawg? I am motherfucking poor, I fry hamburguers for a living, and I live in a small 6-piece apartment (my own, no rented). And I live all alone, since my mother died (dad left us when I was 4). I was the only one in my family that ever graduated, but no university, no sir. Spent 8 years in the Army, where I learnt how to cook. And since 1983 I am doing my cooking job! So I am totally fucked up. Nice to talk to all of you niggas!
    James Leroy Tyson Marks

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  8. Segregation today and tomorrow, niggas! Away with the niggas, get back to Africa!

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