I just love the front page of The Washington Informer, June 15, 2017. That photograph of the Ballou High grad and his mother was fantastic; I just loved their smiles. I also just loved the photograph of my all-time favorite person, Muhammad Ali, and his son; the look on the face of Muhammad Ali Jr. is priceless. Now I do have one complaint, and that’s the statement next to the photograph of Kevin Durant, stating that he is an adopted son of the DMV. Everyone knows that the DMV is Kevin Durant’s home, not adopted home, and that’s why everybody was hoping he would come back here and play for the Wizards. Other than that, great front page!
Edward Cooper
Silver Spring, Md.
Black Parents Must Take Charge of Kids’ Education
After reading Stacy M. Brown’s article in the June 15, 2017, edition of The Informer, “School Segregation Still a Major American Problem,” all I could say to myself was “here we go again.” Still chasing after someone else to do the job we should be doing ourselves. Believing that trying to keep up with “white flight” and that sending your children to those schools will be automatically better is totally wrong. We as black parents need to take a stand and start taking some responsibility for the education of our children. I know people don’t like to hear this, but before integration, blacks wanted their children to be educated. Now, since integration, all of a sudden our children can’t get a good education. I think that is a bunch of you know what! We need to demand that our schools, teachers and administrators provide our children with the tools they need to succeed. Now that’s the easy part. The hard part is that we need to teach ourselves and our children to “respect” those same teachers and administrators and that, in turn, that “respect” will help them teach our children what they need to know to be successful students. And as parents, we need to understand that learning is not easy and it cannot be accomplished by our children with no help from the community. They need our help and we must find a way to give it to them. All of this will not be easy, but it can be done — it must be done!
Jamal K. Johnson
Washington, D.C.
