What is it about “diversity” that seems to get conservatives’ nuts all in a knot? I can certainly understand the rational and legalistic arguments against say, “affirmative action,” but I have trouble grasping the vehemence in which some conservatives fight against any affirmative policy aimed at promoting racial equality and diversity in public services and facilities. They don’t only seem to disagree with the policy, but with the goal.
I got to thinking about this after laboring through the front page at (un)Sound Politics, which at last glance consists of forty posts over the past seven days, seven of which deal directly with racial integration at Seattle Public Schools, and three of which raise the issue peripherally. That’s ten out of forty posts, a full twenty-five percent of the past week’s drivel that just couldn’t stay away from the subject. You gotta love their passion.
To be fair, the posts occur within the context of Monday’s US Supreme Court hearing on Seattle Public Schools “integration tiebreaker,” but (u)SP’s contributors clearly show more than just a passing interest in the issue, coming back to it again and again. Our friend Stefan was so impassioned by the discussion that he had to comment on one Seattle P-I editorial twice. The offending passage…?
Unfortunately, the country has a long history of conscious, legal discrimination once justified by the pseudoscience of racial classification. The hateful, comprehensive U.S. apartheid system continues to affect how communities are organized, where families live and what schools children attend. Some Americans think that, because most apartheid laws were gone by 1970, the issue is closed. Ironically, at the same time, U.S. troops are at risk daily over issues dating from the Crusades.
Stefan only reproduced for his readers the second sentence, which he calls “over-the-top” and “completely unhinged.” Stefan writes:
It is preposterous to equate South Africa’s former enforced system of Apartheid and ethnic clustering in America, which is a function of non-race-based economics and voluntary home choices, and most importantly, permeable and impermanent. Any vestiges of legally enforced segregation were eliminated here decades ago.
Uh-huh. The impact of hundreds of years of slavery and nearly a century of legal apartheid was simply erased with a stroke of LBJ’s pen. To Stefan and his cohorts, the last “vestiges” of our nation’s long history of institutional racism “were eliminated here decades ago.”
But here’s the thing: it’s just skin pigment. We don’t “voluntarily” segregate ourselves based on hair color or height or breast size or any number of other physical characteristics. Only race. And while it’s true that much of the segregation has to do with economics, the fact that people with dark skin on average tend to be much, much poorer than people with light skin probably tells us something. I suppose it could tell us that people with darker skin are inferior. Or maybe — just maybe — these economic and educational disparities that so closely track along racial lines, are in fact a vestige of the “hateful, comprehensive U.S. apartheid system” that Stefan so snarkily dismisses.
Seattle schools are segregated, and in recent years increasingly so. That’s a fact. And to be honest, I’m not exactly sure what to do about the problem. It’s really, really complicated.
But the difference between me and the folks over at (u)SP is that at least I think it is a problem, whereas apparently, they don’t. They are certainly opposed to any sort of government sanctioned affirmative action or racial balancing, to the point that they would ironically argue that the 14th Amendment forbids taking race into consideration when attempting to correct racial inequality. Talk about a Catch 22.
But why so passionate? Well, I suppose it might be reasonably inferred that they are all a bunch of fucking racists. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way implying that they are a bunch of fucking racists, I’m just saying that I can understand how somebody else might infer that. Personally, I think their position is more reflective of the type of cold-hearted social Darwinism that seems to afflict the most rigid, free market ideologues. It’s not that 94 percent of the students struggling to get a good education at Rainier Beach High School are black or hispanic or asian… it’s that they’re poor.
People make choices. They compete. There are winners and losers. And hell if the children of winners should be penalized or even inconvenienced on behalf of the children of losers. Other poor people in previous generations struggled mightily to give their children a better life than they had, and any mollycoddling of today’s underclass does them more harm than good.
Or so the thinking goes.
Personally, I believe that institutional racism is still rampant in our nation even if legal apartheid is not. And I find it “completely unhinged” and “over-the-top” to imply that “any vestiges of legally enforced segregation were eliminated here decades ago.”
In Exodus, God had Moses and the Israelites wonder the desert for forty years, waiting for the children of slavery to die. I’m not much of a talmudic scholar, but I’d say that this Old Testament God was a helluva better sociologist than Stefan or Eric, or even Matt.
Was that boring part after Charlton Heston killed Yul Brenner’s charioteers?
re Stefan: “… you’re better than him. You been born with white skin.” Bob Zimmerman
If you believe in a “top down” society , as all conservatives do, and you are more on the “down ” side, well, your inclination is to take any social advantage you can get.
That’s their investment in racism.
Stefan is running what amounts to, in my opinion, a blog that caters to the extreme right wing. He is Flush Rimbaugh of the blogosphere.
His mind attaches to a quote or a cause and he can’t let it die. I feel sorry for him actually. He is the embodiment of one of my favorite t-shirts. On it is the definition of a conservative:
Conservative: One who is so narrow minded that his brain has been squeezed from his head.
I am truly amazed that a Jew could write and feel the way he does. I wonder about his upbringing. Was he abused? Were his parents emotionally detached? Did his sister kick his ass daily?
So Stefan, what is the story? What the fuck happened to you? And, last question? Be honest, Goldy’s success in the blog world and talk radio really eats at your soul, doesn’t it?
Ted Bessell @ 2
Where the fuck have you been? I get pregnant and you disappear. You lousy bastard, you owe me child support for the first 18 years of Stefan’s life. That’s right, your son is a conservative. I disowned him when I found out, but Goddammit, Ted, pay up. I think we know where you son gets it, asshole.
(this is a humorous post, there is no intent to insult anyone, nor am I knocking Ted. I just recognized the name and made the connection to the late sixties TV show.)
SHARANSKY IS A SAD LITTLE ANGRY MAN.
HE MOVED HERE FROM THE BAY AREA. WHAT WENT WRONG DOWN THERE?
CAN HE BE HAPPY ANYWHERE?
What’s right about the Bay area?
Martin Luther King wanted us not to judge by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character. He wasn’t calling for reverse racism or white guilt.
Any objective observer of American society has to conclude that vestiges of racism are present in virtually all segments of our society–business, politics, education, and arguably even entertainment (certainly television and movies, but probably not music). So, the question posed here is a good one–why are conservatives so exquisitely sensitive about affirmative action programs? I could suggest the possibility of an inferiority complex, which I think Goldy’s excellent essay suggests as well. In particular, conservatives are so wed to the idea of a meritocracy that their ideological blinders prevent them from seeing the advantages that whites have in this society. They want to believe that they have achieved their status and position through their own efforts and abilities, and that they never got a helping hand. We all want to believe such rot. But, it ain’t true. Minorities in this country are still getting screwed, and I–a white, Protestant, heterosexual, relatively wealthy, male–don’t feel so good about that. Republicans can call it “white guilt”, but I call it social injustice.
1 Leave it to a wingnut to trivialize both the Bible and our nation’s most complicated social issue in one sentence. And you call yourself a journalist?
Goldy:
The Puritans, Determinists and Jonathan Edwards are alive and well and enhanced by the Religious Right – after all, if you are poor it was pre-determined that you would be that way by God. Sinners are poor, those blessed by God are successful and wealthy. More important, and this is the part that we can’t seem to get right, if we believe the Believers, we are supposed to accept our assigned roles and what the hell makes us think anything should be different. The Puritan Ethic mandates that 60 hour weeks are what is expected of us if we aren’t lazy. If you can’t afford health insurance, God didn’t mean for you to have any. And, it would seem logical, if you can’t afford education you just weren’t bright enough, important enough, or blessed enough to be considered.
Until that underlying precept of the colonial experience is dragged out in the open along with our other institutionalized rationalization of different rules for different tiers of society we are not likely to realize just how irrational the basis of our behavior is – not science, not sociology, just bad theological rationalization for maintaining the status quo for the benefit of a few.
It’s hard to believe that the Seattle Schools are even worse when it comes to equity that when I taught in the district during the early 70’s. Nothing is different – they didn’t want to send African American k kids home with textboods (“they don’t respect them”) or teach those same kids math (“they just have no aptitude so don’t even try” – directions from the head of a Jr. High School Math Department Head upon the busing of 8 African-AMerican students from the CD to Madison Jr. Hi. in West Seattle).
Keep up the good work keeping us thinking and feeling we need to involved in change.
Of course there are lingering black-white race issues in our society; you can’t erase 200 years of slavery and discrimination overnight, or even in 1 or 2 generations.
But there are other race issues, too. There is much moreo black-against-black violence, than there is white-against-black or black-against-white violence. And there is reverse racism (i.e., black-against-white racism), and minority group-against-different minority group racism, and so on.
And then you have the problem of illegal immigration with its racial overlay, but I believe the underlying problem here is fueld less by racial attitudes and more by the burden of illegal immigration on communities and taxpayers. The closer you get to the Mexico border, the pricklier people are about “illegals.” I have friends in southern California who say southern California is literally getting overrun with illegals. And, of course, there is resentment over the burden on taxpayers created by the heavy use of public services by this desperately poor population. And it’s true the “illegals” don’t have a right to be here, and it’s true that the presence here reflects a disrespect for our laws.
So, in a nutshell, racism is real and we have to deal with it, but addressing it solely in white-against-black terms is far too narrow an approach and misses a large part of the problem. And, there is a sense in much of the nation that illegal immigration is out of control, and saying that we should let people ignore our immigration laws and come here at will seems like a difficult position to defend.
In my opinion, these complicated issues require informed debate and thoughtful responses — in other words, exactly the kind of situation where the rigid thinking of ideologues is not only unhelpful but counterproductive.
And that goes for ideologues of both right and left.
While economic issues are entertwined with racial issues, I view economic justice as a separate issue. The fact is, there is an imbalance between how labor and capital are rewarded. Labor is not getting its fair share of the nation’s output. Labor gets disadvantaged tax treatment. Labor is disrespected. Listening to economic conservatives, you get the clear impression that only capital ownership, capital investment, and risk-taking with capital contribute to the economy and deserve reward. That’s utter nonsense! Capital is worth nothing without labor. Labor does all the hard work, suffers all the workplace deaths and injuries, and puts up with all the arbitrary and sometimes abusive treatment in the workplace. The owners of capital suffer none of the hazards and indignities that workers are subjected to daily. And for making their bosses rich, workers get treated like dirt. Considering how workers are treated, why the fuck should anyone work in this country? We should all walk out and let the capitalists do the work themselves. If they don’t want to pay us, fuck ’em!
Hi, Roger, and everyone else following this thread.
This is a topic near and dear to me, as I truly believe that schools (and government in general) should be concerned with “leveling the playing field”.
It will never be completely level, but where there is obvious disparity of opportunity, and where that disparity closely follows racial lines (regardless of other factors) then there is a problem, despite what we may wish to believe.
There is a good article on this subject at:
http://www.rethinkingschools.o.....e154.shtml
that spells out the problem, although it doesn’t give solutions.
Like most problems in society, this problem will not be easy to solve, and may not be solved in our lifetimes. It may actually be a situation where the “children of slavery” must pass on before it finally goes away.
Still, that’s not a reason to stop trying. We may not be able to solve it, but we can get closer than we are today. Simply declaring the problem to be solved will do nothing but perpetuate it.
14 The University of Washington is doing some interesting things to help “level the playing field” of which we Washingtonians can be deservedly proud:
“What about low-income students?
“One of the things that is important for our alumni to recognize is that the University of Washington has a remarkable record in accessibility to people from modest financial backgrounds. The Chronicle of Higher Education says we are third in America among similar institutions in the percentage of our students that receive Pell Grants. Pell Grants are only available to people from working-class and lower-income families. So that means that we’re third — only behind Cincinnati and UCLA — in the economic diversity of our student body. …
“In October, [the U.W.] announced Husky Promise, which guarantees that resident undergraduates from low-income and some middle-income families can attend the UW tuition free. It uses the same criteria as the State Need Grant program. For a family of four, if your income is $46,500 or less, you qualify. If you come from those economic brackets, no student will have to pay tuition and fees here — ever. This is a very simple statement and commitment to the citizens of Washington that the University of Washington will always be accessible to them, regardless of their financial circumstances.”
http://tinyurl.com/y5cmxg
Does this mean there isn’t more to be done? No, of course not. But one of the things that needs to be done is keep what we’ve already got. The Bush administration cut student aid to give tax cuts to billionaires. Neo-conservatives go even farther; they want to eliminate public funding of schools, so only children from families of means will have access to basic education. These people want to pass their privileged economic position down to succeeding generations, and they don’t want their children to face competition from poor kids who are smarter, work harder, and produce more. The last thing they want is upward mobility for those who aren’t already at the top.
Well, when the chinese have all the money and they decline to do business with “white folks” because they are insufferably overbearing, talk and dress funny, have no manners, and really just wouldn’t “fit” selling computers in Peking, then maybe the conservative cohort will have some FUCKING CLUE about the effects and the ongoing nature of racism in this country.
And for those who just need to see the numbers–check out the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
For legal views on this pending decision go to the blog: Lawyers, Guns, and Money. PS: you’ll also find out more about battleships than you ever wanted to know!
Republicans continually accuse Democrats of having no program, no agenda. That’s a lie, of course. It’s part of the wingnut propaganda windmill. You can sum up the Democrats’ legislative agenda in one word:
OPPORTUNITY
Conservatives, for obvious PR reasons, don’t want to come right out and admit they’re against opportunity. But they are. Why should people at the top welcome competition? Why would they want their kids to compete for jobs against smart, hard-working, poor kids who worked their way up? And KNOW HOW TO WORK HARD TO REACH THEIR GOALS? If conservatives really believed in meritocracy, they would leave their estates to charity, give their kids nothing, and make them create their own wealth and position in the world. What conservatives are all about is twofold:
1) Turning our society into an inheritocracy; and
2) Slamming the door on those not already members of the “club.”
16 All you need to know about battleships is they can deliver ordnance only to a range of 20 miles, and can easily be sunk by an air-to-ship missile costing only1/100,000th as much as the ship.
Battleships are as obsolete as steam locomotives.
I have an idea. Let’s enslave all whites on plantations for two hundred years, then subject them to the oppressions of Jim Crow for another hundred, allowing blacks to acquire nearly all the wealth and social\political advantages that brings, then say–OK whitey, now you’re ‘equal’, aren’t we noble?
The failure to squarely meet and deal with white racism in this country is a monsterous crime.
Conservatives detest competition.
Check out Dean Baker’s book, “The Conservative Nanny State” available free on an internet tube in your neighborhood.
“Battleships are as obsolete as steam locomotives.”
Well, yeah, that’s true. They both went out of style at about the same time. So what’s your point?
Battleships didn’t do to well against torpedos, either.
I’m a sociologist to
22 There is no point. I just told you more about battleships than you wanted to know. You brought it up.
20 The failure to squarely meet and deal with white racism in this country is a monsterous crime.
That’s an absurd statement. How can you say that when millions of white Americans supported civil rights legislation? Fought segregation? Tried to do the right thing? Our country has made tremendous strides, incalculable progress, since the Jim Crow days. Is there more to be done? Yes, we’re not all the way there yet. But this country is an immeasurably better place for blacks to live than it was 50 years ago. You would have to have lived through those times to understand this. I did.
22 There is no point.
Well, since I already knew more than what you told me, your assertion makes no sense.
The defense rests.
But check out that blog in any event. It is well worth the visit.
I did.
So did I, Roger. You’re not the only old fuck on this board. Certainly we have made great strides. There is no denying this, and I do not. However, the continuing outcomes re social and economic equality are stark, and patting ourselves on the back, especially by conservatives, is insufferably, well, racist.
Sure, maybe the glass is “half full”, but the self deluding comfort of “we’ve come a long way” doesn’t go far in places like east LA.
The problem with racism is that it is, fundamentally, the absence of something. It’s a vacuum. It’s an emptiness. You get rid of the emptiness by filling the space.
The emptiness of racism is the absence of cohesion. Put two pieces of paper together, and, without an adhesive to keep them together, they’ll fall apart as soon as you let go of them. So long as cohesion doesn’t exist, racism will exist.
This need for cohesion places a burden on both the majority and the minority. The onus on the majority is overcoming the ingrained sense of superiority that comes from being a member of the oppressing group. The onus on the minority is to overcome an equally ingrained sense of suspicion that arises from generations of being oppressed.
Affirmative action, while it has a role, is merely a stop-gap measure, and it will never overcome the full problem of racism until we begin to fill the void.
re 7: 1964 came and went and nothing was changing. Black guys in the South and everywhere else were not being hired. Conservatives everywhere were smirking (some things never change) and saying: “You can make all the laws you want. But how you gonna make us hire them?”
The answer of course is “affirmative action”. A phrase that means: “Positive action in favor of a good outcome.” You want a guvmint contract, then you best be hirin’ a brothah. I ain’t never seen so much anti tax and spend people hirin’ negros as fast as that!
Conservatives hate that shit!
Yeah all the righties are racists. That what I tell all my voters at my rallies.
“I went out and bought a fast motorcycle just to feel that high alertness….. I need the adrenaline rush because now (at home) nothing really seems as exciting by comparison. There was always a lot of shooting (in Iraq). When someone’s shooting at you it definitely gets your attention and you can never get complacent. I’m home now but I’m still afraid to slack off and relax. The bike helps me burn most of it off, but I don’t know what to do with it (adrenaline) when I’m not riding.
A Soldier home from Iraqi Freedom”
Folks Roger and I have been in this twilight zone before and it is a real challenge to deal with the world we come home to enjoy. This transition is a real disaster for some soldiers and others don’t make it and live a life of hell. Now if you want to help these soldiers make this transition lean how to communicate with them on PTSD. You do not have to be in a battle field to suffer with this problem.
With all due respect to Goldy, the PI editorial was inane. Comparing the issue in Seattle today to Apartheid trivializes the issues of Apartheid just as much as equating anything to slavery itself. Seattle does have real problmes of integration, but they are not like those of South Africa.
A good place to begin to understand Seattle’s racial divide is the Montlake Tavern of Tuesday nights. African Americans or Hispanics are as rare at Drinking Liberally as Chassidic Rabbis in Tehran. While I enjoy the Tavern, it bothers me that it is segregated. Unfortunately, the DL crown reflects the reality of Seattle’s young liberal community. If the DL community addressed itself to that oddity, maybe they/we would find a better answer to the schools issues.
Back at the PI, did anyone at lesser Seattle’s major Daily question the reference to the Algonquins? We ar over 3000 miles from the nearest center of that culture. The wierd refence made me wonder if the editorial writer was sitting in a dorm room at Harvard? Maybe she is at Lakeside and learning about Native Americans from reading Hiawatha?
The fact is that forced integration has failed because it implies that folks, regardless of race, do tno want to put their kids in the “best” school they can find. If that means private school or moving to Clyde Hill, they will do so. The result in Seattle has often been the worst of both worlds, penalizing ALL kids in Seattle because of the all too real problems of the disadvantaged African Americans.
We need a fresh and honest start that lets every parent choose the ebst for her kid, even if the kid is an albino.
John Barelli says:
Hi, Roger, and everyone else following this thread.
It will never be completely level, but where there is obvious disparity of opportunity, and where that disparity closely follows racial lines (regardless of other factors) then there is a problem, despite what we may wish to believe.
Still, that’s not a reason to stop trying. We may not be able to solve it, but we can get closer than we are today. Simply declaring the problem to be solved will do nothing but perpetuate it.
12/06/2006 at 6:38 pm
Reverent John Barelli how many souls did you save today? How did your communion go in the Church of Liberalism and did they understand the sermon? Brother John you cannot make people love someone they cannot understand what they bring into this world. You have to get them to meet on a common cause and subject matter. Preach Reverent John about God and maybe you can develop that common focus point that they all agree upon. Pray for understanding and love then there will be light at the end of the tunnel. Amen Brother.
Stephen Schwartz says:
With all due respect to Goldy, the PI editorial was inane. Comparing the issue in Seattle today to Apartheid trivializes the issues of Apartheid just as much as equating anything to slavery itself. Seattle does have real problems of integration, but they are not like those of South Africa.
A good place to begin to understand Seattle’s racial divide is the Montlake Tavern of Tuesday nights. African Americans or Hispanics are as rare at Drinking Liberally as Chassidic Rabbis in Tehran. While I enjoy the Tavern, it bothers me that it is segregated. Unfortunately, the DL crown reflects the reality of Seattle’s young liberal community. If the DL community addressed itself to that oddity, maybe they/we would find a better answer to the schools issues.
Stephen you got a great head on your shoulders and introduce a great point of view. Now keep up the great work on communicating your point of view.
Folks it looks like not everyone agrees with you on this subject.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the move to block the Senate confirmation of John Bolton as America’s ambassador to the U.N. a “cheap political stunt on the part of a handful of people.”
Bloomberg also declared that the holdup of Bolton’s confirmation, which led him to resign Monday, was a “disgrace” and “an outrage,” and said “countries like America and Israel will suffer because they won’t have John Bolton there.”
Bloomberg told reporters on Tuesday: “John Bolton was a guy that was standing up and trying to change the United Nations in ways that would make it a lot more responsible.
“Hopefully the president can find someone else with the same skills that will get through the Congress.”
The Bolton nomination had been stalled in committee since March 2005. President Bush bypassed the Senate and temporarily installed Bolton in August 2005.
In my Constitutionally protected opinion, Steffy is a racist, pigshit eating coward. Who gives a fuck what Steffy thinks? He’s got no traction, no issue and no audience. People long ago figured out what this pathetic little asswipe’s game is. He and Timmy Lieman are both GOP hasbeens.
BREAKING NEWS — PARTIAL RECOUNT IN REICHERT – BURNER RACE
http://www.nowpublic.com/anoth.....ses_to_die
28 So did I, Roger. You’re not the only old fuck on this board. Certainly we have made great strides. There is no denying this, and I do not. However, the continuing outcomes re social and economic equality are stark, and patting ourselves on the back, especially by conservatives, is insufferably, well, racist.
I don’t agree that a racism-free society, by definition, requires equality in social and economic outcomes. Nor do I agree that unequal outcomes is proof of racism. The key to economic advantage is ownership of capital, and the dominant white segment of society has been accumulating capital for a much longer time. I think we should focus on equality of opportunity. There will always be inequality of outcome due to differences in intelligence, motivation, effort, thrift habits, etc.
Can anyone name an African-American billionaire born to unmarried teenage parents whose mother was a maid and whose father was a coal miner? Hint: This person was born in 1954, the year of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Stephen @33,
In all due fairness to the P-I, they wrote “apartheid” with a lowercase “a”, and thus were in no way making a direct comparison to South Africa. Also, they were talking about the lasting societal impact of the legal apartheid we once had, and were not using the term “apartheid” to describe modern day Seattle. So I do not think it is fair to accuse the P-I of trivializing big “A” “Apartheid.”
As for Drinking Liberally, don’t think it’s escaped my attention that the gathering is largely white and male. But I’m not sure what, if anything we can do about that. I post notices every Tuesday. I invite everybody, even Republicans. The people who show are the people who show.
But it does prove the point how segregated our society is. The problem is endemic.
32 What the fuck did you ever do to get PTSD — besides being born?
I don’t remember being born, but I assume it must have been traumatic at the time I was going through it.
Roger Rabbit: Do you think it was disrespectful of Webb to call a soldier in Iraq “boy”?
From The Hill
“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.
http://www.raisingkaine.com/sh.....aryId=6150
34 WTF are you prattling about?
Is this site just extremely disfunctional like all liberal endeveours or is it censord like the one in communist countries?
36 Yeah, well, Bloomberg is a Republican so what did you expect him to say? That Bolten is a crappy ambassador and should be forced out?
Is this a new klake tactic of proving wingnut talking points by quoting wingnuts?
rabbit, I have been trying to show you Jim Webbs quote about his “boy” but it never comes up. Anyways it was published in The Hill and I was wondering if you thought that Webb calling a soldier in Iraq was disrespectful?
“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.
36 (continued)
Of greater interest in the Bolton story is Bush’s ignoring of the will of the Senate, with regard to an appointment that requires the “advice and consent of the Senate,” and going around the Senate to appoint the guy despite the fact the Senate didn’t confirm him.
My mistake, Webb calling a soldier in Iraq a “boy”
What president in his right mind would appoint someone who doesn’t believe in the U.N. to represent our country in the U.N.? That’s like hiring a CEO to run your business who doesn’t believe in your business model and whose goals is to make sure your business fails.
41 “In all due fairness to the P-I, they wrote ‘apartheid’ with a lowercase ‘a’, and thus were in no way making a direct comparison to South Africa.”
Geez, Goldy, even I can’t swallow that one.
left turd @3 your fucking brain what little there is must be full of shit.did you say you were an officer in the military.sea cadets.get a life better still get laid.and oh ya fuck you
47 “That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House.
Substitute “sarcastically” for “coldly” and you’ll get the context, rob. (Or, at least, intelligent people will.) Webb obviously echoed Bush’s use of the term “boy” in a tone of reproval. Webb did not call his son a “boy,” he simply repeated the term Bush called his son. The accurate meaning of Webb’s remark is,
“Don’t call my son a ‘boy’!”
Sorry, rob, but your clumsy attempt to spin this is full of shit — and so are you.
So you are saying webb can’t speak for himself? Words have meaning rabbit.
It is funny that he has a rabbit interpreting for him though
You should read the article rabbit, he didn’t say “don’t call my son a boy” so spin away idiot
45 Well I think we can agree that comment #45 in this thread is dysfunctional.
“Apartheid” means separate or apart. What went on in the US was no different, and at various times, far worse than anything that went on in South Africa.
We had SLAVERY, HUMAN BONDAGE FOR 400 YEARS IN THIS COUNTRY.
a 14 YEAR OLD BLACK CHILD in the 1950’s was shot in the head, mutilated and killed by two ignorant , dumbass crackers because he made a comment to some white hoor in the South.
These murderous morons were acquited and RELEASED back into the community by white Southern retards.
Do you think anything but the laws have changed since then?
Roger @51,
Look it “apartheid” up in the dictionary. It is a word that accurately describes the legal system we once had in much of the country.
Rob @45,
I assume you are referring to comments of yours that got caught in the spam filter. HA gets hit with hundreds of comment spam a day. Since upgrading, the Akismet spam blocking service I use has caught almost every single one of them. In the process, it also catches a few comments that shouldn’t have been caught. I clear them out of the filter when I get to them.
thanks goldy, don’t rush I made my point by quoting Jim Webb
Goldy, I did follow your link to the dictionary and it didn’t mention the United States of America? Was that an oversight on the dictionarys part?
In an attempt to somehow argue against a point I was trying to make, our far-right fringie buddy, klake, called me what he apparently considers a dirty name. He thinks I’m a liberal.
You know, the more times I’m called a liberal, the better I like the title. The folks that use that word as some sort of epithet never seem to have any opinions or thoughts of their own. It’s as if the word “liberal” is some sort of magic mantra that they think negates any need for logical argument.
I guess that actual thought and reasoning is not permitted among fans of Ann and Rush.
In an earlier post, I mentioned that it is my belief that public schools and the government in general should act in such a way as to “level the playing field”.
Re-reading that post, I realize that what I was really trying to say was that we should raise that playing field, bringing those folks who are at a disadvantage up to the same level as the privileged.
Unfortunately, I didn’t say that, and what I did post could easily have been misinterpreted. I also realize that any reasonably intelligent conservative could make a logical argument against my proposition. After all, there is often more than one side to any argument, and people of good will can disagree.
But rather than try to make a counter-argument that I now realize that I left myself wide open for, the only response from the far-right fringies is to call me a liberal.
Yes, I think I like that title.
And for you, klake, our little right-wing nutjob, I have a little prayer that I think of whenever I read your posts.
May God bless and keep you… far away from me.
Good night, all.
Goldy,
I’ve got a lot of trouble taking your long-winded concern for institutional racism, and fancy essay about children and segregation seriously when you are the same guy that posted video of a young girl in an anti-Bush rant, and called it art.
You’re just a fuck looking for a reaction.
Sometimes Daddy talks about the race problem after he’s been drinking, about how all them nigrahs got so many ‘vantages us whites ain’t got. Like what limp dicks guys like Dole and Giuliani and Daddy have.
That’s why I dig black dudes. They hot!
63: The reason that people have a disdain for liberals is that they try to achieve a good with the wierdest and most idiotic practises. If you want to achieve parody in the schools then have your democrats who control the state grow a pair. The fairest way to do it is to put all the money from all districts in a pot and distribute it equally. It will never happen because the democrats who have controlled the state for decades don’t have the balls to do it. Instead they want to bus people all over the county as cover for their lack of courage.
It reminds me of the fact that this is the first year I can’t eat salmon out of the sound because of the great job liberals have been doing with the environment.
65 “People” don’t have disdain for liberals, only rightwing fucks like you disdain liberals. Here’s something I copied and saved from a letter-to-the-editor column several years ago:
Here’s something written in my local paper the other day, which sums up this liberal-hatred nonsense quite nicely:
“We all live in a liberal democracy in which, ironically, the word liberal is being distorted and made negative. If one looks up the word ‘liberal’ in the dictionary, one will find defining words such as: freedom of individuals, representational form of government, tending to give freely, generous, tolerant of ideas or behaviors of others. Which of these thoughts do you find offensive? Which of these would you like to have taken away from you, or your neighbor, or your country?”
I could say more, but that suffices.
@65: “It reminds me of the fact that this is the first year I can’t eat salmon out of the sound because of the great job liberals have been doing with the environment.”
So we overpopulate coastal areas, dump sewage and mine tailings into the rivers, over-develope….this kills all the salmon spawning grounds, and you get upset because now you can’t eat a fish caught from the Sound, even if you were lucky enough to catch one?
If there had been no environmental movement push-back, there would be no salmon at all. Think about it.
re 65: ” … achieve parody”!!!!!!!!!!!! You are the answer to my liberasl prayers!
Roger,
11 is one of your most thoughtful comments, actually it is your most thoughtful. You should spend more time doing it.
At 14, I think that labor is something that needs to be respected and is in most businesses, both agricultural and non-ag. However, for an owner to provide the goods/services they must make a profit and shouldn’t they reap the benefits the most from that? The labor has a job from the owners business. The laborer needs to be taken care of, but not from the aspect that they business suffers and then there is “no business” and the laborer loses his job.
If the laborer spent more time with education, whether that is college, post grad, certifications, etc. then they would be in a better position to control their lives and maybe own their own business or get out of the dangerous jobs.
For the racial issues, I do see more liberal people that perpetuate the idea that minorities as suppressed and that they are a victim of someone. I believe this is a political strategy to keep someone beholden to them. There are folks that are racist still in this country and we need to work thru that, but by having a busing system based on race isn’t it.
Will having the “right racial balance” make a school better? I don’t think so. Making sure that children understand that they control their destiny by studying and increasing their education will help them have a better shot at succeeding in life will. That will help make the school better. The problem is too many in our community are telling them that they can’t make it because they are a certain race or even from a certain economic background.
Roger, although we agree on most issues, I’ll have to quibble about criticizing Bush for referring to James Webb’s soldier-son as a “boy”.
In the South, it is common usage to use the word “boy” instead of “son”. It denotes kinship and informality, whereby “son” is considered more formal and distant. Kind of like the difference between “Dad” and “Father”.
So in the South, it would not be uncommon to hear a 70-year old father, when talking to a friend or neighbor, to say, “Yep, my boy got a promotion, he’ll be moving down to Decater with his family to run the new factory down there”.
But that doesn’t mean that Bush gets off the hook. He arrogantly thought he could ignore everyone’s warnings to stay off the subject, and intrude into a subject Webb had consistently insisted remain private. Bush then got pissed off when Webb didn’t make a special exception for Bush (apparantly Bush is accostomed to being deferred to by kiss-assess, and mistakingly assumed Web was one also).
I think if Webb had really had time to think about it, he should have replied: “My son almost died yesterday serving his country in combat on a screwed-up mission. How are the twins doing in Argentina, Mr. President?”
“If the laborer spent more time with education, whether that is college, post grad, certifications, etc. then they would be in a better position to control their lives and maybe own their own business or get out of the dangerous jobs.”
re 66: Let me get this Straight: Your view is that poor people just forgot to take a little more time to finish graduate school????!!!!??? How do you manage to get one foot in front of the other?
What a DENGLE!!!!!!!!!!
GBS at 53:
Just exactly what are you getting at here? What was your objection to my post? Did I hit a little to close to home for you?
I would caution you not to denegrate my service. With the exception of my two children and family, it is the most important part of my life. It is very easy for a coward to throw rocks from behind the protection of his computer screen. Come out and play GBS. Post your name. Let’s meet. Have a beer. Discuss openly. I am perfectly willing to stand behind my words. Are you?
You conservatives are all the same. Chickenshit cowards, with big mouths and nothing to back it up. You don’t have the stones to stand next to me you anti-American, neo-con asshole.
Fuck me? No, sir. Fuck you.
By the way That Girl was a one time (well now two time moniker) used for fun by My Left Foot.
Where is JCH? John Craig Herman did you get arrested? Did your heart give out Nov 7?
I guess technically I used it three times now.
Ted,
I should have put in finish high school 1st…but it remains the same that you must do more. also, the poor aren’t the only laborers….actually some laborers are quite well off. The gist of this is that in order to better your life economically, you need to strive to have the best/most education you can. With the ease of getting school loans, this is something that most can do. If they wish.
I also know lots of college grads that are doing low end jobs or are not able to reach other levels because they haven’t gone out and done more….thus the etc….grad school being one.
re 75: You are totally out of touch. “Ease in getting school loans.”!!!!!!!!!!????????? You blather these glib solutions that have no basis in fact and your peanut mind scoots down the road. Children of MIGRANT farm workers often do not get the best of education because their families MIGRATE frequently. That’s why they are called MIGRANT farm workers. MIGRANT is not a synonym for Mexican.
Re That Girl! I saw your face on a St.Judes’ Hospital ad. I almost did a spit take!! You still look great even with those wrinkles and your crooked mouth. Are you still with the big Irishman? He scares me!
Ted,
Where did I mention migrant workers and/or say migrant = mexican? Are you projecting? I suppose this is your “pet issue” and it can be spoken about.
As for getting school loans they are something that can be gotten and fairly easily. Why is this glib? And why is striving for higher education bad?
As for migrant workers children not getting the best education because they migrate…I’m not sure what the hell you’re talking about? ARe you saying they migrate and don’t go to school? Or because they go from school to school that they can’t get a good education? The former is an issue and something that their parents should think about trying to rectify with the free services that are availble. They have a very hard life and you would expect that they would grab onto the knowledge that if they educate their children then they won’t be migrant workers.
re 77, Dengle: Your mind is filled with glib, dismissive saws and bromides. You sound very young.
What is your viewpoint on this issue? Seasoned and mature or young and smartypants? The world needs to take you down a notch before you have even the slightest hope of comprehending the problems we are talking about.
If a poor person had to drive an old beater and live in a tiny dwelling your solution would be for that person to rent a bigger place, get a loan for a new car, and go to graduate school so he could make more money to pay for it all.
Simple! Right? What’s all the Fuss about?
70 “If the laborer spent more time with education, whether that is college, post grad, certifications, etc. then they would be in a better position to control their lives and maybe own their own business or get out of the dangerous jobs.”
This old conservative canard doesn’t work, and the reason it doesn’t is because having a degree doesn’t create a job requiring the knowledge or skills of that degree.
We saw this in the ’60s when many people stayed in graduate schools to keep their student deferments and avoid being drafted for Vietnam. We ended up with a bunch of Ph.D.s for whom there was no employment. And the fact you have more people graduating from college today doesn’t mean the economy can place more BA.s, MA.s, MBA.s, etc. In fact, the economy is moving in the opposite direction — as high paying manufacturing and IT jobs are offshored, our job market is tilting to lower paying service jobs. So you end up with MBA.s waiting on tables.
No, simply getting more education isn’t the answer. Because if the economy has jobs for 3 million engineers and 6 million people get engineering degrees, 3 million of those engineers will have to find some other way to make a living.
The “get an education” argument is facile and ineffective to solve the problem of providing enough family-wage jobs for our people. At the same time, the labor polices of a conservative cheap-labor-philosophy administration are accelerating the downward race of wage income in the United States. Workers’ incomes are falling in real terms even as management and capital-owner incomes soar. There is a fundamental imbalance in our society now of how rewards are distributed, and labor is getting the short stick.
In addition, tax policies heavily discriminate against labor. This is nowhere more glaring than in conservative attitudes toward inheritance taxes. Conservatives are unsatisfied with the current $2.5 million exemption on inheritances; they want to pay no tax at all on estates, no matter how large. Meanwhile, the effective exemption on wage income — personal exemption + standard deduction — for a single person is less than $10,000 and for a couple is only about $12,500; and the effective tax rate on wage income climbs to 25% long before income reaches $75,000 (if you also consider FICA taxes, the marginal tax rate on wages is about 33%). Meanwhile, extremely wealthy people who realize capital gains on investments are taxed on that income at less than half the marginal rate of taxation of wages, and pay no FICA taxes (I’m not saying they should).
From this tremendous disparity between tax rates on earned income and unearned income, it is clear that our government has put in place destructive tax policies that heavily favor owners of capital and effectively punished workers for working and earning wages. And that’s before you even begin to consider all the legitimate and illegitimate write-offs that self-employed people can and do take. For example, writing off yacht expenses as “business entertainment” and so on. Wage earners get no breaks of that nature.
What I’m saying is tax policy punishes working to such a great extent that it is destroying incentives to work and preventing workers from accumulating any capital. This sytem creates an inheritocracy in which the primary means of doing well in our economy is being born into a propertied family, and being born into a family that has only wage income makes it very, very difficult to have access to education and opportunities and for the vast majority of people is a lifetime sentence to hard labor and economic insecurity.
It may not be a proper role of government to meddle in unequal economic outcomes. After all, effort, risk-taking, and productivity are not equal, so why should outcomes be equal? I’m opposed to the Marxist system. But it certainly is a proper role of government to reexamine government policies, including tax policies, that treat people unequally according to how much wealth (read: political clout) they have and deny opportunity and fair treatment to those who need it most.
74 I don’t know what happened to JCH, but I have reason to believe Goldy’s new software ID’s him as a spammer and is blocking his posts. In fact, I suspect he may have been behind some of the spam thatappeared as if by magic in the comment threads, by some stroke of remarkable coincidence, at the same time that JCH happened to be posting. I even suspected that JCH possibly was trying to sabotage this blog, which supposition might tend to support an inference that he has been banned. But I don’t know what happened to JCH, and all of this is speculation on my part. Maybe he just fucking died.
76 Well, finishing high school is pretty basic, isn’t it? My focus tends to be on access to higher education, partly because I came from a non-affluent family that could not send any of its numerous children to college. I left home while a teenager (on a freight train, if you must know) and never looked back. I’m one of those who put himself through college, graduate school, and law school the hard way, working at hard-labor minimum wage jobs in college towns where there were far more needy college students than jobs and you considered yourself lucky to get a minimum wage job turning over patients and emptying bedpans on the graveyard shift, and it was extremely hard. Extremely hard. That was in the ’60s, and in those days, you could still work your way through college if you were willing to endure tremendous hardship and deprivation. And in the ’60s, if you wanted to go farther, say to a professional school, you could get some modest G.I. Bill benefits (far less than tuition and living costs, but more than nothing) by volunteering to serve in the military and go to war. My concern is that today’s young people don’t have the option of working their way through college anymore, that’s gotten out of reach. We need these programs that Bush is cutting — he cut billions from student aid to give tax breaks to billionaires, and that’s wrong. Not just wrong, but morally wrong.
But I digress. The issue of people not graduating from high school is a serious one, and one that I admit I’ve tended to overlook in my focus on access to higher education. Occasionally I see something in the newspapers to the effect that something like a third of Seattle students are not getting diplomas. I’m not sure if I’m remembering the numbers accurately. If it’s that high, it’s a big big problem. We need to address it. I’m not an education expert, my career was spent on the non-education sector of government and public policy, so I don’t know how to deal with this problem. I have to rely on the education people to tell us what’s needed. I agree that we have to deal with it.
78 “They have a very hard life and you would expect that they would grab onto the knowledge that if they educate their children then they won’t be migrant workers.”
Now here is something that could be framed and hung on the wall as an object example of a glib, facile statement by someone who has no idea of what he is talking about.
I’m gonna be honest here. Non-citizens who come to this country seeking work, especially those here illegally, aren’t entitled to the same expectations that our citizens have. It would be nice if we could offer opportunities to all, but in the real world of limited resources, I think we have an obligation to take care of our citizens first. Now, whether you like it or not, children of migrant Mexican farmworkers (including illegals) who are born here are U.S. citizens. That’s in the Constitution. You may not like it, but that’s how the Founders defined citizenship and it’s never been changed. And how many of us would be U.S. citizens if the door had been slammed shut to birth citizenship, say, in 1830? Nobody except the descendants of Madison, Jefferson, and those guys would be citizens, which would leave out most of us. So I’m not in sympathy with the wingers who want to fuck with the constitutional definition of citizenship. So now that we all agree that, whether you like it or not, children of migrant farmworkers who are born in the U.S. are citizens, how do we deal with the issue of educating these children? Of giving them at least equal opportunity to get the basic education needed to survive in our society? I don’t know the answer to that. The only answer I can offer is that we owe some duty to them in the same sense that we owe a duty to our other citizens, that is, we don’t have classes of citizenship and they are not less equal nor do they have less entitlement to the system of free universal public education that our great-great-grandfathers established in this country after the Civil War and somehow we have to figure out a way to give them access to it.
Ted,
What’s your view? What does seasoned and mature mean to you? Is it just age? Is it having been in the situation you describe?
Having been poor and now not so, but by no means wealthy, I believe that my life experiences give me seasoning as does my age.
I don’t believe I ever spoke about someone going beyond their means? What I was speaking about was kids needing to go to school and get as much education as possible in order to better themselves. That includes going to college and grad school if they can. It also means getting certifications offered by their profession to better themselves and their company. If you are “poor” and working at Dicks or bagging groceries (add any example job) you have the opportunity to apply for school loans at Community Colleges, Tech Schools or other venues to aquire the skills get a job with better compensation.
Now as to answering your question, that person should make the decision he/she seems best for their lives and live with the consequences of that decision. Of course if that decision does turn out to be a horrible one, our society provides a safety net to help them get back on their feet. Though some abuse that net, we do need it.
“No, simply getting more education isn’t the answer. Because if the economy has jobs for 3 million engineers and 6 million people get engineering degrees, 3 million of those engineers will have to find some other way to make a living.”
Correct. Maybe those 3 million people didn’t study the current market and made a poor decision in trying to enter that profession and should have made another choice. Of course that is a sweeping statement. I know there are other factors in why people chose a profession (such as they love doing it) or the market might have altered extremly after they made the decison to become an engineer, but most look to make money from it and then couldn’t in your example.
“the labor polices of a conservative cheap-labor-philosophy administration are accelerating the downward race of wage income in the United States. Workers’ incomes are falling in real terms even as management and capital-owner incomes soar. There is a fundamental imbalance in our society now of how rewards are distributed, and labor is getting the short stick.”
Funny about the cheap-labor, which I’ll assume you man the illegal worker, is that is a crazy argument. Both Liberal and Conservative phiosophy cause legal labors to get screwed. Cheap labor lowers the wage threshold and free benfits to illegals causes their taxes to increase and thus leaving him with less of their low wage.
Who should decide how “awards are distributed”? Some on this blog would scream socialist, but I don’t think you mean that. I believe you mean that the worker should receive more of the profit from the work they do. Some companies do that some don’t. I’m glad I have worked hard and put some value in my education to be able to work for such a company.
This last point rounding back to the fact that we need to make sure that parents and communities stress to children that striving for an education is best for them. A person with an MBA may have to wait tables, but eventually will break out of that. Someone that is a drop-out or just has a high school diploma might not.
Well, it’s no surprise that it is Liberals who run the school. From teachers to administrators, Liberals at every level, local to district. So, what does that say if the claims of racism abound are to be believed?
Well, namely that Liberals are racist. There’s no hiding behind that fact.
85 So everything is the fault of people who made “poor choices?” Yes, that’s the standard-issue wingnut bullshit:
“Cheap-labor conservatives constantly bray about ‘morality’, ‘virtue’, ‘respect for authority’, ‘hard work’ and other ‘values’. Why. So they can blame your being ‘over a barrel’ on your own ‘immorality’, lack of ‘values’ and ‘poor choices’.”
http://tinyurl.com/lnzs3
ROGER RABBIT POLL
Who’s in the best position to know what jobs employers will hire for?
[ ] 1. Employers
[ ] 2. Students who made “poor choices”
[ ] 3. Workers
[ ] 4. Tarot card readers
ROGER RABBIT POLL
What’s the best way for a freshman engineering student to know if there will be jobs for engineering graduates 5 years from now?
[ ] 1. Ask his high school career counselor
[ ] 2. Flip playing cards into a hat
[ ] 3. Ask a gypsy to read tea leaves
[ ] 4. Roll a pair of dice
ROGER RABBIT POLL
If there’s not enough engineering jobs to go around when he graduates, it’s because …
[ ] 1. He’s immoral
[ ] 2. He’s lazy
[ ] 3. He lacks values
[ ] 4. He made poor choices
[ ] 5. The wingnut economy sucks
86 We’re not racist. The only people we’re prejudiced against is young, white, male, smartass, lily-livered, yellow-backed, ass-kissing dittoheads like you.
85 “the cheap-labor, which I’ll assume you man the illegal worker”
You assume wrong.
86 “Well, it’s no surprise that it is Liberals who run the school. From teachers to administrators, Liberals at every level, local to district.”
Thank God! The taxpayers of Dover, PA, are far less fortunate: Their experiment in wingnut education cost them dearly:
“Legal fees for thousands of hours of attorney services and a six-week trial: $1 million. Damages paid to 11 parents whose rights were violated in the Dover Area School District: $1 each. … The Dover Area School Board voted last night to pay $1,000,011 in legal fees and damages for parents who successfully sued the district for teaching intelligent design in ninth-grade biology classes. The district — ultimately, its taxpayers — must pay the fees because a federal judge ruled that the policy to require mentioning intelligent design was religiously motivated and violated the Constitution.” http://tinyurl.com/yx22mt
Dover Area School District, you will recall, is where voters threw all 8 creationist-Republican school board members out of office.
P.S., “intelligent design” is not only quack religion, it’s also quack law.
Wow, so much to cover…though only a few minutes to do so.
Why is it glib for me to state the obvious? My parents were poor too, not migrant, but poor and they worked hard to better themselves and instill in me the knowledge that if I didn’t study and work hard, I’d be poor and have a worse life. Or maybe they don’t know any better and some in society don’t want them to – and again that comes from both sides of the isle.
With the children of illegals being citizens that is correct and the law we live by. I do have issue with the fact that they are benefiting from illegal activity, but that is the constitution and until an amendment is passed altering it then I agree with them having the same services as citizens. However, I do have issue with their parents having these same services, but don’t know how you not harm the child because of the illegal nature of their parents. That is a very tough issue….
On taxes before I have to depart….I still don’t understand why someone has to pay a huge tax on their life after they die. They have been taxed already and you hurt their family. Yes they have more than a laborer, but why take it? Why not just take it now? Why wait? Shouldn’t the government just decide to take 40% of say Warren Buffet’s or Mel Gibson’s or any other astronomically wealthy person’s estate right now? I can see some blowing a gasket right now at those questions….. :-) I do see the argument that the surviving family members should pay some tax, like a capital gains level, but only if they say sell the family home within two years or some other time frame. Makes sense to me on that. But the amount that is currently taken is ridiculous.
One thing that is interesting is that the lots of wealthy and non-wealthy folks take deductions or shleter money, thus not paying “their fare share”. The tax laws are setup that way and so they are just doing what is legal, but I have to laugh at John Kerry talking about taxes and how the poor get the shaft, when during 2003 he only paid 12%. I only single him out because I remember how absurd that was, but as I remember GW only paid 22%. So tax reform is needed and maybe it is time to look at a flat tax system. There are pros-cons to it and I need to read more (or just wait for the onslaught I think I’ll receive from that comment) to understand if that is truely an option.
Roger’s been hitting the bottle now I see. Is there bad luck involved? You bet. Some make reasoned choices and thing don’t workout. (more seasoning…had a business fail….picked the wrong partners who dismatled company…poor choice in retrospect, but was well reasoned based on all the facts at hand).
ARe some people doomed to fail because of their parents or economic? Maybe. But if we teach self reliance and not that you’re a victim then maybe less would be doomed to fail. We also need to teach that there are consequences for your choices and making poor ones is bad.
Finally, busing based on skin coloer is bad and against the constitution…at least that’s what I think SCOTUS will rule.
Michael Parenti gave an interesting talk about race, class and related struggles, which was broadcast on Alternative Radio this week.
You can get it here.
Apartheid …
Goldy …
1. No the USA has not had Black Apartheid
Apartheid was a legal system that attempted to create separate geographical entities for the Black South Africans. There has never been anything similar to this in the USA for Blacks, but we do have exactly this today for indigenous Americans. How many folks on this blog remember when the Seattle Times ranb ads for folks wanting to gather together and go down to the Columbia to shoot at indigneous “tribal” Americans for exercising their right to fish?
2. In Seattle Being Black is Not Being “Of Color”
The District has long been crippled by its inability to be hinest about the issues facing Seattle’s African Americans. here are a few facts:
a. many affluent Blacks, just like comparable non Blacks, send their kids to private schools. Unfortunately this has traditionally included the children of many of those who were/are most active in the schools .. including the McKinney’s. There is something disturbing about a Black Activist telling white parents to accept the pain imposed by affirmative action.
b. In an unspoken effort to conceal its own successes, the SDS never celebrates the impressive successes of schools like Garfield and Roosevelt. I do not know the current statistics, but a few years ago children of comparable socio-economic status at GHS, were regularly outperformng any other groups of similar kids in the State, including Lakeside. How do you induce parents into a system that can not be proud (and color blind) of its own successes?
c. The District cooks its numbers to inflate the minority “problem” by referring to “people of color.” Seattle has a very large component of Asian and Indian children who come from ethnic groups that achieve highly. Conflating these kids with the hispanic and black kids is a racist way of saying the world is divided into two camps.
In the same spirit, until called on it, the District’s website featured overt anti “white” racism.
d. In its efforts to address racism, the District has CREATED segregated schools (the AA academy and the Native American school) and then overlooked the poor performance of kids in these schools. At the same time, in the name of desgregation, the District destroyed ethnic schools associated with the Chinese/Japanese part of Seattle. There ought to be nothing wrong with having ethnically centered schools as long as they do not exclude other kids.
e. Efforts by parent groups to create magnets that would attract kids from the entire city have routinely been scotched by the District. Can anyone explain why Seattle does not have even one central high school?
d. despite the obvious opportunity to make use of resources at the UW, Seattle’s School District has created an anti-intellectual barrier unworthy of this city.
e. Years ago the Board had a very impressive African American member who preached tolerance of all kids and a focus on using the larger community to work with Seattle’s poorest kids. He was castigated and evicted by a coalition of folks who objected because he hired white assistants.
Now look at the board! Can you imagine Chery Chow leading the search for an impressive new superindent???
Bottom line .. the District ain’t gonna get better till gets rid of this unprofessional school board.
Flame Off.
OH YEH!
Chery Chow was the administrator who almost killed gifted education.