By Tanya Camacho

Contributor 

In January, President Obama proposed free community college for low-income Americans. But there is a catch: one must have a grade point average of 2.5 and have graduated from high school.

This becomes problematic when aligning college and low-income communities. Looking at the large urban-suburban gap in graduation rates of 2009- in school districts like Detroit, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Los Angeles, etc.- graduation rates were the lowest in the United States at 45 percent, while Detroit reported 25 percent compared to the national suburban graduation rate of 71 percent.

Identifying who lives in these communities becomes important in order to see who this free community college program will serve. The answer: me, among the impoverished and people of color. I live in a low socioeconomic space amongst those who earn the bare minimum and face a huge obstacle when it comes to education. Students of color attending inner-city schools face criminality quicker than they are presented on a path to college.

In order for the free community college program to be successful, we must illuminate and implement a path to college, rather than a path to prison for students of color. As of right now, inner-city high school students face obstacles and not dreams.

According to the Office of the Attorney General, California Department of Justice for the year 2013, dropout rates in Alameda County for African Americans were 20.9 percent,  and among Hispanic students the dropout rate was 16.1 percent compared to whites who drop out at the rate of 5.5 percent.

In a 2005 Teaching Tolerance study, it was found that children are more likely to be arrested at school now than they were a generation ago. A plethora of these arrests are for nonviolent offenses where the student is being disruptive, a noncriminal offense. In addition, the U.S. Department of Education found that more than 70 percent of students arrested in school-related incidents or referred to law enforcement were black or Hispanic.

In order for our future generations of color to be able to see a path to college, and take full advantage of President Obama’s proposal, we must create high schools that illuminate roads to the academy rather than roads to prison for students of color.

This would start with removing metal detectors so that students of color can see themselves welcomed into an institution that embraces intelligence rather than criminals and/or troublemakers. Also, the removal of current police presence on high school grounds will aid the ability to see our future generations of color differently. Attending a high school with a police presence myself only presented the message that I was not a trusted student, and that they needed to constantly surveil my movements as a reminder for me to not do anything wrong.

With this change in a positive direction, these students may be able to focus on school and learning rather than focus on the surveillance of their every movement by the police. So, it is now that we must recreate how inner-city schools lead our students of color to a road of college versus a path to prison.

In addition to the removal of mechanisms of criminality, high schools within inner-city communities should offer classes that will be geared to fulfill college level entrance requirements versus alternative classes that will get a student to barely graduate high school. For example, I moved to a new high school where the population was highly occupied with Hispanics. With the last name Camacho, profiled as a brown student with a low level of intelligence, I was given the lowest level math class available. Not happy with the level of this math course, I had to challenge my placement of the math course, and waive myself into a higher-level math course while acknowledging that I was “taking my own risk and I was not recommended at this level of math.”

With the proper preparation for college, these students will learn to embrace the idea of college and be confident in doing so. With pre-exposure to what college expectations are, the preparations prior to the college experience will help to remove the fear of the unknown.

Some may argue that college is not for everyone, arguing that advancement in education is not for people of color. But if students of color are not properly prepared for advancement, then how can one become “prepared” for a college education? With the proper college preparation in high school, youth of color will then be able to take advantage of the free community college program.

Through the removal of props that symbolize criminality, replaced with proper guidance and preparation, students will be able to meet the requirements for this program, thus granting students of color in inner-city high schools a chance at free community college.