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Randall Kenan

Randall Kenan on His Definition of a Perfect Educator

March 3, 2015

Source: Pine Manor College, 2007

Poor black kids trapped in failing neighborhoods schools, that’s the biggest race problem of today. That’s the biggest civil rights issue of today. Anybody who isn’t in favor of school choice, anybody who isn’t in favor of educational reform, anybody who defends the status quo in the educational system, that’s racist to me.

Condoleezza Rice

I was always taught to celebrate education and achievements. It was engrained in me that no opportunity was hindered by the fact that I was a racial minority, woman or also raising a family.

Teresa Sebastian

The two things people just really need are education and employment based on that education.

So I was the third girl out, but I had a master’s in fine arts when I went to New York and started, so.

It was very important to me to become a college graduate – not for anyone else, but for myself.

Please reject the slander that says a black child with a book is trying to act white. In short, be an example of excellence for the next generation.

There isn’t a day that goes by in my life that I don’t learn something. If I learn that I made a mistake, which I don’t think there are any, I will think about it and I’ll say, “Well, there’s a lesson to be learned from that” so that every single thing that happens in my life, I am the sum total of my whole life’s experience.

I don’t lecture. I sit back and direct the discussion; if it slows down, I speed it up, or if no one has anything to say, I raise a question.

Ernest J. Gaines

Faced with the rise of minority intelligence -- be it on the left or the right -- the "blame crowd" has no way to fight back other than to turn elitism into a pejorative.