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Dot's Information Service Hotline "Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use" Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race Vol. 11 Issue 20...This week’s full course meal...May 18, 2008
Intuit's Vibe Racism Is Around Me Everywhere By Francis Duggan
Of human ignorance I am almost in despair For racism is around me everywhere But like they say sheer ignorance is bliss Just like Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss.
And of their Nationality they brag They feel superior and they differentiate And against those who are different they discriminate.
So many people still judged by their race For such there never ought to be a place 'A fair go' those untruthful words I do recall There is no such a thing as a 'fair go for all'.
Of racism we never will be free They judge you by where you come from and the color of your skin For many equality and respect seems impossible to win.
His name to it has a familiar ring If against racism he did not choose to strive Today the great man he would be alive.
And racism is around me everywhere And racism only leads to division and war Just goes to show how ignorant some are. Understanding Race and Education Study
Tackling Racial Segregation One Policy at a Time: Why School Desegregation Only Went So Far by Amy Stuart Wells, Jennifer Jellison Holme, Awo Korantemaa Atanda and Anita Tijerina Revilla (2005) provides an overview of the major findings from the "Understanding Race and Education Study," a 5-year research project conducted by the authors at Teachers College Columbia University and UCLA. The study is based on 540 interviews with graduates, educators, advocates, and local policymakers who were directly involved in racially mixed public high schools in six different communities in the late 1970s- some of the peak years of school desegregation implementation. In trying to understand the impact of that experience on the first group of students and educators to go through desegregated schools after the federal courts finally forced districts to desegregate in the late 1960s, 242 members of the class of 1980 from the six schools were interviewed. According to the authors, the "central finding is that school desegregation faced enormous political obstacles, which compromised its effect. At the same time, this fairly radical policy fundamentally changed the people who lived through it but had a more limited impact on the society as a whole....racially diverse public schools were extremely challenged during the late 1970s because educators either tried to or were forced to facilitate racial integration amid a society that remained segregated in terms of housing, social institutions, and employment. This context compromised many of the goals of desegregation as politically powerful whites resisted meaningful equality within desegregated schools, and blacks and Latinos were often angered and frustrated by this resistance. Nonetheless, desegregation made the vast majority of the students who attended these schools less racially prejudiced and more comfortable around people of different backgrounds. After high school, however, their lives have been far more segregated as they reentered a more racially divided society." Available online at http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=12156, this frank examination of the impact of the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education should be required reading.
Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court unanimously declared that it was unconstitutional to create separate schools for children based on race. At the time, seventeen southern states and the District of Columbia required that all public schools be racially segregated. A few northern and western states, including Kansas, left the issue of segregation up to individual school districts. While most schools in Kansas were integrated in 1954, those in Topeka were not. The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) was the culmination of years of work by a highly skilled National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal defense team and courageous petitioners and parents to challenge racial segregation in public education. By 1952, the Supreme Court had five cases on its docket challenging the constitutionality of public school segregation. The cases, from Kansas (Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas), Delaware (Belton v. Gebhart and Bulah v. Gebhart), Washington, DC (Bolling v. Sharpe), South Carolina (Briggs v. Elliott) and Virginia (Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County) were consolidated by the Supreme Court under the name Oliver Brown et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka. Named for plaintiffs Ethel Belton and Shirley Bulah, the Delaware cases of Belton v. Gebhart and Bulah v. Gebhart, first petitioned in 1951, challenged the inferior conditions of in two schools designated for black children. Prohibited from attending the local high school in the suburb of Claymont, black children had to ride a school bus for nearly an hour to attend Howard High School in Wilmington. Located in an industrial area of the state's capital, Howard High suffered from a deficient curriculum, pupil-teacher ratio, teacher training, extra curricular activities and physical plant. In rural Hockessin, no transportation was provided for black students forced to attend a dilapidated one-room school house, while white children in the same area were provided transportation and a better school facility. In Briggs v. Elliott, which was named for Harry Briggs, Sr., court records show that for the 1949-1950 school year, the average annual expenditure for white students in Clarendon County, South Carolina totaled $179. The per pupil expenditure for blacks was $43. The county's 6531 black students attended school in 61 buildings valued at $194,575. Many of the black schools lacked indoor plumbing or heating. The 2375 white county students attended school in 12 buildings with superior facilities worth $673,850. On average, teachers in the black schools received salaries that were one-third less than teachers in the white schools. The county provided free buses for whites and none for blacks. While the lower court found schools designated for blacks grossly inadequate compared to the schools provided for whites, its order to equalize the facilities was virtually ignored by school officials and the schools were never made equal. In the Washington, DC Bolling v. C. Melvin Sharpe case, which was named for Spottswood Bolling, eleven black junior high school students were taken on a field trip to the city's modern John Phillip Sousa school for whites only. Accompanied by local activist Gardner Bishop, the students were denied admittance and ordered to return to their grossly inadequate school. A suit was filed on their behalf in 1951. Named for Dorothy Davis, the Virginia case, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, involved Robert Moton High School, one of the few public high schools available to blacks in the state. Located in Prince Edward County, it was built in 1943. Too small to accommodate its student population, the hastily constructed tar paper-covered buildings added as classrooms only highlighted its gross inadequacies. In 1951, students organized a strike to demand a new building with indoor plumbing. The NAACP joined their struggles and challenged the inferior school facilities in court. Despite the U.S. District Court order to provide plaintiffs with equal facilities, they were denied access to the white schools in their area. In the Kansas case, which was named after Oliver Brown, parent of Linda Brown, the Topeka NAACP, led by McKinley Burnett, organized a legal challenge to an 1879 State law that permitted racially segregated elementary schools in certain cities based on population. The local NAACP assembled a group of 13 parents who agreed to be plaintiffs on behalf of their children. On advice of legal counsel, they attempted to enroll their children in segregated white schools and all were denied. Topeka operated eighteen neighborhood schools for white children, while black children had access to only four schools. In February of 1951 the Topeka NAACP filed a case on their behalf. The Supreme Court first heard arguments in the Brown case in 1952. It failed to issue a ruling and scheduled a rehearing for 1953. However, it was not until after Earl Warren, the former governor of California, replaced deceased Chief Justice Frederick Moore Vinson that the Court reheard arguments in the case and handed down its ruling Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the unanimous opinion, declaring Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) a constitutional violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. The May 17, 1954 Warren Court decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." In April 1955, the court heard arguments on how to end segregation in the public schools. Ultimately, in what became known as Brown II (1955), the Court turned the implementation of desegregation over to the federal district courts in the South. The district courts were ordered to desegregate schools with "all deliberate speed," a phrase traceable to Francis Thompson's poem, The Hound of Heaven. Its ambiguity allowed many southern judges to avoid desegregation for years. (Sources: http://brownvboard.org/summary/, www.aaregistry.com, www.nps.gov/brvb/ and http://en.wikipedia.org) From Brown to Dumb Down! By Dot A lie told often enough becomes the truth. Lenin (1870-1924)
Yet, Brown remains important to blacks in America. We collectively demanded better educational facilities for our children and access and opportunities for them as citizens equal to those enjoyed by white Americans, and the US Supreme Court agreed. Unfortunately, the problems Brown sought to address did not end with the court's ruling. Today, most public schools, like churches and neighborhoods, remain highly segregated. While the Brown decision did not demand integration, it became the avenue down which the country supposedly moved to provide black children with improved educational facilities and access to higher education and equal opportunities. After more than half a century of desegregation efforts, folks across the skin color spectrum pretend the US has miraculously become a society of equals, as if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream has been realized. Let the advocates of this lie tell it, we have overcome. Jim Crow is dead, as are his racist relatives! Some blacks, most notably Ward Connerly, staunchly oppose any type of affirmation action to remedy past discrimination. His opposition to affirmative action in contracting and higher education is particularly asinine. Whites receive the vast majority of contracts awarded by local, state and federal governments. The percentage of contracts awarded to blacks under affirmation action is paltry in comparison. While arguing against affirmative action in higher education, Connerly is silent on legacies, the advantage in admissions white students enjoy as a result of relatives attending public colleges and universities, in many instances during segregation. Whites account for most enrollment in public colleges and universities; the few slots awarded to qualified blacks is meager in comparison. Even more troubling than thinking we no longer need Brown or affirmative action to level the playing field is the fact that we are being fed a constant diet composed of this pabulum that contains the lie that black children prefer being dumb to learning. I recently read another article - "Nearer to overcoming" (Economist, May 10, 2008, page 33) that cites research by Roland Fryer, a young black economics professor at Harvard University, which makes the claim that black children think it is "cool" to be dumb. Sure, there are some blacks that do not value education; just as there are people of all colors and persuasions that think they can succeed without degrees, including high school diplomas. However, like some white children, some black children may think it is "cool to be dumb," but that does not make it a black cultural norm. To place that stigma on the backs of blacks is utter rot and must be soundly rejected and denounced whenever and wherever it is repeated as though it has some scientific basis in fact. Sure some black children may fall into that sorry slot. Repeat that lie often enough and some will believe it, like those idiots out there that think it is "cool" to sag until their trousers indecently drop. However, sagging is not a black cultural norm. Not all black children are stuck on stupid. And, not all black children think it is "cool" to be dumb.
Zero-Tolerance Makes Zero-Sense
School suspensions and expulsions are not inexpensive remedies for misbehavior. Parents must pay for childcare for very young students serving suspensions or miss days away from work babysitting. Either way, there are costs associated with these suspensions. Days spent by students outside the classroom hurt academic performance. The students, schools and the society bear added costs in the long run, as suspensions increase dropout rates, which in turn lead to lower lifetime earnings and an increase in the crime rate. According to Jane Sundius of the Open Society Institute, a nonprofit organization that has studied suspensions and expulsions in the Baltimore, Maryland school system, "What we see is that suspension and expulsion are overused and actually push kids who need education the most out of school." Based on 2004 data, Maryland ranks in the middle of states nationally for the percentage of students receiving suspensions. With boys twice as likely as girls to get suspended and blacks 2.3 times more likely than whites to receive suspensions, questions about the roles of race and gender in discipline abound. According to statistics compiled by the Maryland Board of Education for the 2006-2007 school year, statewide total student enrollment was 825,966. There were 88,519 students suspended or 10.7% of the student population. Blacks accounted for 38.1% of total enrollment (324,500). However, 57.3% (50,726) of students receiving suspensions were black. White students, 47.8% of the student population, accounted for 34.8% of student suspensions (30,840). With zero tolerance, students, especially those of color, face some of the harshest disciplinary guidelines of any modern generation. Today, one lapse in judgement brands a child for life under zero tolerance. Gone are the days when "children will be children" and "boys will be boys." Our young people are not allowed to make mistakes; they are expected to exhibit the judgement of adults, even in kindergarten. To add insult to injury, these enforcing the zero tolerance policies do so in a discriminatory fashion. Children of color are punished more often and more harshly than their white counterpart for similar code violations. It is time for school systems nation-wide to re-think zero tolerance. As it is currently applied, it is a costly approach to discipline that makes zero sense. If the goal is to educate our children in order that they become productive citizens, we must employ commonsense approaches to discipline that keep them in a learning environment. School Funding '08
The DeKalb County, Georgia Board of Education is considering several options that are unlikely to make anyone happy. The first involves decreasing the size of its workforce. Layoffs are particularly onerous during an economic downturn, when it is far more difficult to find other gainful employment. By not filling vacancies created by retiring personnel and existing vacancies, layoffs may be averted. The other options on the table include delaying pay raises for teachers and other staff and a millage increase. DeKalb property owners are bracing for the real possibility of a millage increase. Assessment change notices were mailed to thousands of DeKalb residents earlier this month. In some cases, the proposed property assessments increased, which mean increased property taxes. A millage rate increase by the DeKalb School Board will mean an even greater tax burden for these property owners. Adequately funding the public school system is mission critical for any community. However, the school system must be fiscally responsible in how it employs the available resources. There are always, nearly every budget, items that can be trimmed or deleted to reduce waster and abuse. Before raising its millage rate in an economic downturn, the DeKalb School Board should explore all options to tighten its fiscal belt first.
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Call
Email www.legitgov.org...While delivering an address before the Israeli parliament commemorating the 60th anniversary of Israel, President [sic] Bush said that Sen. Barack Obama and Democrats favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists. CNN reports that Bush was comparing Obama to "other U.S. leaders back in the run-up to WW II who appeased the Nazis." In his speech, Bush said, "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939 [much like shock & awe in Iraq in 2003], an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." [Speaking of appeasing Hitler, are the DemocRATs going to give more money to Bush for the Iraq occupation this week?] |
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