We know something has gone terribly wrong in our world when a $4 sandwich is worth more than a black life.

No one should discount the possibility that a little black girl or boy might succeed in life without bathing in whiteness.

While we focus on improving education in the nation's K-12 schools, we also need to focus on reforming education in the prisons where many who failed in public schools end up.

It should be shocking that middle-class educators with college degrees and above average occupational benefits trade in these hasty, dehumanizing generalizations. Even you the reader might harbor similar classist illusions of the stereotypical low-income parent who passively allows their kids to be redlined into the dark underbelly of public schools.

The possibility of independent thinkers is the thing that haunts the Devil. He says he fears that "someday some courageous person will reverse the present system of school teaching" and create one where "children establish ways and means of developing their own minds from within."

Given the dominant, gross, and hostile narratives told about our black beings - and because we KNOW these depictions disregard our brilliance, talent, and potential - it should be obvious why we want to counterbalance bad news with affirmations of our worth.