Black Boys and Education

I've done all my teaching in urban schools.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a teacher in an urban school because I thought I could make a difference and it makes me feel more . . . relevant? alive? important? idk . . . to make a difference in the life of a child for whom a difference might be the difference between being intellectually stimulated or not, versus the difference between going to Harvard or Yale.  I grew up in the 'burbs and while there are things I appreciate about that - going to the park without worrying about getting killed being foremost (one of my students recently told me about a friend who was killed at the park around the corner from my house, which is why said student doesn't go there anymore), I spent (spend?) a lot of time being frustrated by the fact that so many people in the 'burbs could live their life like it was normal, like shit didn't happen in the real world, and like the fact that the choices they made didn't have an impact down the road.  I happened to grow up in a really liberal town, too - and it galled me that people felt they were morally okay because they recycled, and got good grades, and played soccer, and listened to NPR.  All of which I think are good and all, but does it balance the racism which many subconsciously betrayed?  Or, from my perspective, even worse, more obvious, and absolutely pervasive, the fact that by participating in, nay, embracing the capitalist economic structures that allowed them to buy their million dollar homes they were condemning others to live in substandard and segregated housing?

Okay - enough about me . . .

This American Life recently aired a show about the achievement gap.  Lo and behold, it turns out that the achievement gap isn't caused, or solved, by teaching to standardized tests.  Now, now, I know it sounds sacrilegious.  I know that you can't believe this.  I know that you want to go running from the room in horror and disbelief.  Sorry I just blew your mind.  It turns out that a lot of the achievement gap can be traced to how stress changes the wiring in the brain.  You know, that incidental stress that comes from watching violence happen on a daily basis.  From having your best friend shot for no reason.  From having your house robbed by your neighbors.  From being homeless and hungry.  From the fact that your parents are unemployed and have stopped even trying to look for work.  From the fact that there isn't any prospect of a job when you graduate.  Turns out these things can have major cognitive and social skill impacts.  And that this gets in the way of learning.  No shit.  It's true.  I know it's hard to believe, but there it is.  It was on NPR, so it must be true.

Which isn't necessarily to let schools off the hook entirely - school can be a place that can provide some measure of stability and sanctuary.  But they have to conceive of themselves differently.  They have to train teachers differently.  They can't just say rigor, or "whiteboard configuration", or MCAS and expect shit to change.  Testing hasn't made a difference in children's lives, except to make them more stressful.  If anything, public schools have become more bureaucratic and cold with the mantra of high expectations, not the places that love students and hold them to high standards at the same time.

I'm not a fan of charters, or private schools.  I believe in public education.  It says some pretty fucked up shit about who we are as a community when we are unwilling to work together for our children and instead outsource the work to the most efficient company that comes along.  But I think some of the more successful charters can teach us some things about building community in a school - about building the kind of culture that loves children but also challenges them.  I brought this up once to a boss of mine and was given the wide-eyed, eye-roll and a firm "Not gonna happen" - after all, who has time for that when we need to work on rigor and analyze data and shit.

And, let me not finish without talking about William Julius Wilson, who in the last year or two published a book with the title More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City.  Now, I've been enamored of Mr. Wilson's work since my college years sometime in the previous millennium.  Sadly, I'd had him confused with James Q. Wilson.  Unfortunately for me, they share little more than a last name.  In any case, in WJW's book he talks about the idea that came up a lot at the time, though I've not heard much recently, that black men need to be more responsible.  You know, raise families, get jobs, etc.  President Obama even had a speech where he talked about this idea.  WJW says, basically, well okay - sure.  But . . . what does this mean in the context of an unemployment rate, or better yet, a joblessness rate that is multiple times higher than the national rate?  The wage gap?  What I want to know is what we're going to be doing about these problems?  Why don't the Republicans and their corporate/"philanthropist" brethren start focusing on the economic structures that create the "standard of living" gaps that lead to the achievement gap?  Oh, right . . . sorry.

Hiatus

Dear fearless reader,

I want to apologize for being remiss in my updates. I assume that the legions of readers I once had have dwindled since I more or less went on unannounced hiatus. Unfortunately, I know not when I will be back in true form, if ever. This indefinite pause in my online life is a result of a number of factors - both personal and intellectual, and as usual, there's a connection between the two.

On the intellectual side, I think I've become even more of a Luddite, in the actual original sense, rather than the contemporary misappropriation sense. While the term is casually tossed around to mean somebody opposed to the modern or the future - somebody hidebound, somebody stuck in their ways, tradition for tradition's sake and conservative in outlook, I use the term in its revolutionary sense, for the Luddites were people who recognized that the introduction of machine was a direct attack on the community, a direct attack on the value of human endeavor, an attempt at control. In other words, I've decided that the relationship I have with you, fearless reader, is one mediated by a screen, which creates distance, while giving us a false sense of immediacy. As a society we've somehow come to believe that Facebook can replace face-to-face conversation. That blogs can replace actually getting to know each other as real, flesh-and-blood human beings. On that note - if you want to get together, call me. Or email me. Let's do lunch - it'll taste better, anyway.

On the other note, it turns out that there has been a radical shift in my own personal life that has caused me to pause and take stock. It's one of those events that will probably keep me thinking, and reflecting, and attempting to understand, and otherwise feeling like I have no clue as to the answers and therefore nothing to share for the next 18 years. Some big questions have been raised about life and soul and society and community and how to relate to one-another, and I don't see any path towards answers to those questions on the horizon. If I come up with anything, perhaps I'll pop back in here, but I wouldn't count on it if I were you.

So, to those of you left - who've had faith that I might actually have something to say, but was just too lazy, thanks, but you may go about your business. Nothing to see here, for the foreseeable future.

The Disconnect

I find John Stewart and Stephen Colbert to be pretty funny guys. And I think that much of what they have to say is actually important.

On the other hand, I also think that maybe, just maybe, it's a little too cool.

Supposedly, there were 200,000 people at the Colbert/Stewart rally in DC. Which is cool. But where were they a few weeks earlier? You know, at the "One Nation Working Together" rally?

Janet Malcolm makes a good point in the New York Review's blog:

The signage from the Stewart/Colbert rally:

WE HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF AND SPIDERS
MODERATION OR DEATH
JEW AGAINST INVOKING HITLER FOR POLITICAL POINTS
ATHEISTS FOR MASTURBATION
GAY MAYLASIAN MUSLIMS FOR SARAH PALIN
YOU KNOW WHO ELSE WAS A WHITE SOX FAN? HITLER
SUPPORT SEPARATION OF HEAD FROM ASS

The signage from the Working Together rally:

GOOD JOBS NOW
STOP CORPORATE GREED
GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER EQUALITY
I WANT SINGLE PAYER HEALTH CARE
GET OUT AND VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS

The point being that while the bourgeois liberal youth continue to use snark, sarcasm and irony in a bid to be political without having to actually be political, real people with real needs are getting ignored.

There's something more important happening in America besides a crappy media culture. Stewart and Colbert have hidden behind the excuse that they are "just a comedy show," but they are clearly no longer that. They've started a "movement" - as pathetic and wayward and selfish as it is - and now they've got a responsibility to do more than cry about rhetoric and the system. How about organizing and mobilizing against the class war that the right-wing bourgeoisie, via the Tea Party, is currently perpetrating against the working classes of America in the name of freedom (for some)? The problem, of course, is that the audience for Stewart/Colbert isn't really interested in recreating a society that might not fuck people over in the name of freedom to amass wealth (for some); isn't really interested in doing some soul-searching about how their own actions within the system further the exploitation of human beings in the name of cheap consumer goods.

Here We Are Again

With the election results in, it's time for those of us on the Left to pause, take stock, and make some hard decisions. In some ways, I think this election couldn't have turned out better. I have the suspicion that secretly many hoped that Obama would represent a new, Democratic hegemony to replace the conservative hegemony that has dominated American politics for the last forty years. This election, then, would represent a slap in the face from reality.

It strikes me that the whole problem is that we put all our faith in this one guy, but we don't have a coherent political platform. Who's the conservative wunderkind? The closest you get is Sarah Palin, but she doesn't even really fit the definition. What the conservative's have is a narrative - a story about who they are and what they believe about government. The Left has lost that. Perhaps we want to be Big Tent - and I think that's important. But we also have to balance that with core values. Otherwise, we fall victim to what the Right paints us as.

Why do we concede the argument about Big Government? Surely, government has been and continues to be a problem and a danger - but that's only because the government is a tool, and has been misused. The Left should stand up for Big Government, because who else is going to protect us from Big Business? (This is the Progressive platform going back to Teddy Roosevelt.) Who else has the resources to protect the weak from the strong? What happened to the American Dream of a society based on values of equality? Why can't we portray the Right as the people who support selfish, hateful policies? Why can't we build a real movement around real values?

Of course, we lose the argument the minute the Democrats get into bed with Big Business - see the Wall Street bailout. Which brings me to that constant question from my end of the spectrum - to support or not to support the Democratic Party? Do we continue to try to work within the system to force the Democratic Party to the left? Or do we work to build a third party? I think it's time to acknowledge that the Democratic Party has broken with the left - it recognizes that we represent the base, but it cannot effectively champion our cause because it embraces capital. The Democratic Party can't have it both ways - it's either for the people, or for business. By trying to be both, it loses both.

It's time to build a third party - at least on the state level. I'm not sure the Green Party is it, though. The restive, independent, left-wing unions like UNITE/HERE and SEIU should be looking into the myriad of small third parties to support. Then we should begin organizing in districts with a natural constituency that is represented by tools of the traditional Democratic Party. We can leave the Lefty Dems alone (see: Barney Frank), but we need to take out those that bought into Clinton's centrism. We've got to start getting people to think of themselves as ______ whatever, and we've got to do it now - so that by the 2012 election we can win a few seats, build some momentum, promote our agenda. We also need to look into building a broader movement in rural areas: we need to unite on economic issues, can we find ways to build bridges across the social issues that divide us? Can we talk more about religious values of love and care, than about the religious values that divide us?

We need to find another message and another medium. The Democratic Party is dominated by the liberal, middle-class that cares more about individual rights than it does about the collective welfare. It's time to build another voice.

NPR - Keep Mr. Williams Fired

This started out as a comment to my friend Harold Clemens @ ghettouprising.com, but then it got kinda out of hand and I decided to publish it here instead of leaving a really long and rambling comment that started going off in crazy directions.

The OP argues that NPR did wrong by firing Juan Williams for prejudicial comments Mr. Williams made on Fox television - "The O'Reilly Factor" was the show in question, I believe. Mr. Clemens makes an interesting suggestion: that keeping Mr. Williams on the payroll and then creating some sort of open forum or debate in which Mr. Williams's ideas would be show to be the bigoted comments they are would do better for the public discourse than merely firing him. Mr. Clemens contends that the firing forces Mr. Williams to a shadow discourse which feeds itself. Perhaps my biggest issue with this idea is that the Fox network is somehow shadowy - it is as mainstream as one can get, if only mainstream in an excruciatingly stupid, biased, demagogic way. Juan Williams is going to be paid well to opine on issues which he has lost all rights to opine on, sense his burden of proof appears to be his emotional reaction to that of which he is ignorant.

Anyhoo - my comment:

I dunno - seems like giving bigots access to legitimate media sources only legitimizes them. It's my problem with all the so-called non-mainstream media sources (Fox, Rush, etc.) that legitimize the most illegit shit (Obama's a non-American muslim).

Anyway, doesn't NPR have the right (and responsibility) as a business (although non-profit) to let go of employees that don't further the mission statement. I gotta say, I kinda buy their argument that they are trying to foster intelligence and Juan Williams seems to be getting in the way.

CNN of all places (one of my personal least-faves) published a coherent article defending NPR on this one (wish I had saved the link). Hate-mongering is not a valid opinion. Opinions are only valid (and Juan Williams should know this) if they are based on facts. Fact: none of the terrorists that have attacked airplanes have been in so-called "muslim dress". Fact: Timothy McVeigh often dressed in camouflage. If our fears were one iota justifiable, we should freak out every time we see an army vet, not every time we see a Sikh.

I don't think NPR did wrong by firing Mr. Williams for being an idiot. It might have been better to create the hypothetical debate you call for, but then again, people being stupid, fearful and cowardly, it probably would have resulted in Mr. Williams only reinforcing the very ideas we acknowledge as baseless.

Which brings me to John Stewart, who makes me laugh, though he does it from such a protected space, it seems somewhat cowardly as well: he is a source of news for way too many people who are disaffected by real "news" (although if you ask me, they haven't tried very hard to find news if they think there's nothing better out there than the networks, CNN or Fox. How about Democracy Now? More on this later . . .) And yet his reaction to attack by idiots in the media is always the safe and easy: we're a comedy show, we don't have a journalistic responsibility. This is true, but still . . . maybe his audience doesn't want to plug into "real" news because it's too serious? Which raises serious questions about how serious the audience is.

Which brings me to the American middle-class: particularly the so-called "liberal" middle-class. The liberal middle-class simply doesn't understand how serious shit is for those who are actually suffering in the recession. Middle-class college graduates who can't find a job have somebody to fall back on (better thank your mom and pops) when they can't pay the rent. But they won't get involved politically - it's not entertaining enough. Why get involved in fighting for workers' rights, more government spending to create jobs, and universal healthcare? It's so uncouth. It's so serious. It's such a downer, man. Why march in the streets when you can be a moral hero by watching John Stewart?

Meanwhile, the Right has rallied around the most simplistic, stupid, small-minded of issues: government spending is like a household budget (even though Keynes disproved this and the experience of the Depression and WWII showed otherwise), muslims are the enemy (see the so-called Ground Zero Mosque Controversy), immigrants are also the enemy (see the Minutemen, Arizona, etc.), etc. etc. etc. And then complain that they don't get fair play when their ideas are disparaged for being as stupid as they are.

So, to try to bring some coherence to this (though I will probably fail): 1) Juan Williams is an idiot who deserved to be fired. 2) Right-wing fear- and hate-mongers should be called out for what they are. 3) The American middle-class should worry less about being fair and more about being smart.

Mott's Workers Win

Hey everybody,

Thanks for boycotting Motts, but you can stop now. We won!

In other upcoming events:

1st: There's a major rally in DC on October 2 (for those of you in the Boston area, there's a fundraiser at BelaLuna in JP on this Thursday, Sept. 16 from 6-9. Also, 9/16 is Mexican Independence Day, so you can celebrate mi patria and support US labor at the same time!

2nd: Today was primary day in MA. How many of you eligible voters actually voted? Turnout was pathetic in my precinct, but at least it meant that I had that much more power! Suckers. Don't blame me when you don't like the government, you had your chance. Seriously, though, there are some pretty important things on the ballot in November - in particular Questions 1, 2, and 3. Those, I tell you, you should vote No on, if for no other reason than it makes no sense to write tax policy through the initiative process. You don't know what the MA budget looks like, why are you voting about how to the balance it? How about I decide that you can't afford that donut you're eating? How does that sound? Pretty stupid, eh? So is eliminating the alcohol tax (Question 1). Or reducing the sales tax by 60% (Question 3). And as for Question 2: if you support cutting affordable housing, then I guess you're just a heartless bastard who cares more about having a few bucks more so that you can buy a few more donuts to stuff into your fucking craw than other human beings having a roof over their head in which case maybe you should just kill yourself now and let the rest of us figure out our society you heartless motherfucker.

Seriously, though, maybe you should do your own research rather than taking my word for it, but vote NO on 1, 2 and 3.

Thanks. You may go about your business.

American Flag

My esteemed colleague, Somebody's Daughter, recently posted on her viscerally negative reaction to the American flag.

And there is a lot of sense in that reaction as well as emotion - the flag's represented a lot of pretty evil stuff over the years.

But it was funny because I read the post the day after I particpated in a Labor Day march for jobs and justice and was thinking to myself - why isn't there a single American flag? There should be tons . . . well, maybe not, I find that to be rather tacky - at least several and maybe one at the front would be tasteful. But, it gets complicated.

Here's take #1:

How the fuck can we let the Right (and/or specifically, the KKK) determine the definition of the American flag? If we want to engage in the (culture) war, if we want justice in America, then we need to be fighting about the definition of the flag, not conceding the definition. If we define the flag as representing the ideals of America, it's that much easier to call to account those who fail to meet those ideals. In reality, the stars and stripes are nothing more than stars and stripes, we create the meaning.

I wanted flags at the march because I wanted to challenge Glenn Beck's accusation that the only "true" Americans are WASP conservatives - I wanted to say that socialists and communists and unionists and Black nationalists and (do I have to say it?) liberals are Americans (I'd include anarchists, but I'm pretty sure by definition they aren't) and our values and beliefs are the real America.

Perhaps it's time I went out and bought me a flag . . . now if I could only buy one secure in the knowledge that my money wasn't going to the John Birch Society. (I say this in jest, not having looked into it yet, but with the experience of going to order pocket Constitutions for my students and discovering that all the reasonably priced ones were published by groups I cannot feel comfortable giving money to.)

Here's take #2:

One argument against the flag that I find to be somewhat persuasive is the argument that such symbols become a replacement for actual thinking, leading to the abuse of symbols in creating the quasi-religious veneration of the state (which is why I think the Supreme Court was right in Texas v. Johnson). It's a danger. It's why Katha Pollit is opposed to patriotism. (See my previous attempt at dismantling this argument.) But, on the other hand, the flag is certainly not the only symbol that invites this problem. Ultimately, it's humanity's propensity/need for belief that creates the problem, not the flag per se.

So, how do you deal with the fact that people tend to go a little nutters when it comes to beliefs? I've always thought that was the primary purpose of a good liberal arts education. You know - the kind of education that's gotten pushed aside for the more important stuff: test prep. The 3 Rs. Like education was in the good ol' days (see 1950s). That blissful American Eden where McCarthy was saving the country hunting Commies, Blacks knew their place, women were happy changing diapers and everybody was straight.

Which is all to say, let's take back the flag, but not go overboard. We don't need to wrap ourselves in it and we don't need to use it to replace thought. But we shouldn't let the Right use it against us, either. It doesn't have to be the focus of sycophantic veneration, but perhaps it can stand unostentatiously in the corner; present, but it's power tamed.