Blacks' educational failures due to lack of resources.

A short time back, a handful of black and white conservatives churned out legions of op-ed articles and best-selling books claiming that young blacks were hopeless educational cripples.

The proof of black incompetence supposedly was their low-test scores, and high dropout, suspension and expulsion rates. Black students were miserable educational failures, so the experts maintained, because they are in perpetual rebellion against white values and authority. They also fritter away countless hours blaming whites for their problems, and go into near catatonia at the prospect of studying hard and being ridiculed by their peers as "acting white."

This rehash of the old stereotype of black inferiority went virtually unchallenged in high academic circles. But that stereotype has again been shattered. A survey of student attitudes by the Minority Student Achievement Network, an educational advocacy, group, found that black and Latino students were as motivated, studied as hard, and were as serious about graduating as whites.

This is not the first time the myth of black educational failure has not stood up. Previous studies have shown that more than 80 percent of blacks graduate from high school, that their dropout rates are only marginally higher than that of whites, and that nearly 35 percent of those who graduate went on to college. During the nightmare years of legal segregation, blacks repeatedly said they prized education above everything else and regarded it as their children's passport out of poverty and segregation. Generations of black students attended de-facto segregated inner city schools and legally segregated schools in the South. Many graduated, went onto college and became successful in business and the professions.

Teachers expected and demanded that their students perform up to the same level as white students. They challenged the students to learn, set goals, demanded their full participation in classroom work, gave them positive and continual reinforcement.

While far more young blacks than whites are in prison, on parole or on probation, the overwhelming majority avoided the dead end cycle of crime, drugs, gangs and violence. The black students that tumble through the educational crack do so not because they are stupid or lack ambition. They fail because they are trapped in crumbling, under-served public schools, stocked with inexperienced, insensitive, or indifferent teachers and administrators, and lack parental and social supports.

Their failure provides grist for conservative educational ideologues to victim-bash and propagate the phony notion of chronic black educational incompetence. The big question is why do so many educators and much of the public still believe these falsehoods? Indeed, some teachers expressed shock at the Network study's finding, and even questioned its validity.

The media is an obvious culprit. The relentless barrage of stories on ghetto car jackers, drive-by-shooters and dope dealers reinforces racial stereotypes. But fuming at the white media skirts a huge point. Many African Americans perpetuate the same negative stereotypes that the "white press" does about themselves and young blacks. They are just as culpable in believing the racially warped media images.

Some blacks in the rap and hip-hop world are also complicit in fanning the stereotype. The rap moguls have reaped kings' ransoms peddling their music-video-cartoon version of the thug life. While most young blacks do not self-describe themselves as gangsters, many do identify with the swagger, clothes, rhetoric, sex and violent antics of gang members and some rappers. This further deepens the public belief that all young blacks are thugs, and, of course, educational losers.

The Network's study buries the dangerous myth that black students are inherently "anti-school." The way to permanently bury the myth, and end the sabotage and self-sabotage of black students, is to provide them with the educational resources and tools to succeed.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and columnist. He is the author of "The Crisis in Black and Black" (Middle Passage Press).