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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

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Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: Social Justice

We Didn’t Start The Fire…But…

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, University of Pittsburgh, Youth

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"We Didn't Start The Fire" (1989), #BlackLivesMatter, #ICantBreathe, Abdication, Anti-Racism, Baby Boom Generation, Baby Boomers, Billy Joel, Colorblind Racism, Denial, Derrick Rose, Die-Ins, Irresponsibility, Jesus, Pontius Pilate, Protests, Racism, Social Justice, Structural Racism, Systemic Racism, Verizon Center, Whiteness


Billy Joel, "We Didn't Start The Fire" (video screen shot), 1989. (http://denverlibrary.org/).

Billy Joel, “We Didn’t Start The Fire” (video screen shot), 1989. (http://denverlibrary.org/).

As the rest of this sentence goes, “we poured gasoline and kerosene all over it.” And by “we,” I mean everyone who has been or remains in denial of the role poverty, greed and systemic racism plays in our lives. Every. Single. Moment. Every. Single. Day.

As an eclectic music lover, as a historian and as an educator, there are few songs I hate more than Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire.” Well, maybe Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend” (1990) or anything by Chicago after Peter Cetera quit the group in ’85. The song was released in the fall of ’89, during my junior year at Pitt, when I’d become a history major. Every time I heard the song, I wanted to strangle Joel with it. This is the same man who wrote “Just The Way You Are” (1977) and “New York State of Mind” (1976), right? First, he wasn’t even singing in most of the song. “Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn’s got a winning team?” Wow, I bet the coked-up songwriters for Thompson Twins wasn’t booked that weekend Joel wrote these lyrics, no?

State of Denial (2006) front cover, by Bob Woodward, December 6, 2014. (http://amazon.com).

State of Denial (2006) front cover, by Bob Woodward, December 6, 2014. (http://amazon.com).

There’s one big beef I have with the song more than any other, one that’s relevant even a quarter century later. The issue of denying responsibility. Yeah, those poor White Baby Boomers, how terrible it must’ve been for so much to happen in your lives, with so little that you could do about it, too! It’s true, though. Whether it was “JFK” being “blown away,” or the “Russians in Afghanistan,” the song is about fucked-up shit that happened between the late-1940s and when the Baby Boomers approached middle-age by the end of the 80s.

The problem was and remains the reality that they’ve been putting fuel on this fire that’s allegedly been “always burning since the world was turning.” I mean, who voted for Nixon in ’72 or Reagan in ’80 or ’84? Who’s blindly supported every Israeli policy for as long as they’ve been able to vote, policies that have helped incite terrorism? Who’s been in constant denial of American violence and racism as a generation, despite contributing to it their whole lives? The very same generation whom Billy Joel and his idiotic lyrics represents, that’s who!

Die-in in front of Verizon Center, Washington, DC, December 5, 2014. (Samuel Corum, @corumphoto, via Twitter).

Die-in in front of Verizon Center, Washington, DC, December 5, 2014. (Samuel Corum, @corumphoto, via Twitter).

So now in 2014, with America and the world the way it is, with daily protests now over grand jury denials of indictments for police killing unarmed Blacks, with Gaza and Nigeria and Kenya and Ukraine, with wealth so heavily concentrated in so few hands, what do these “We Didn’t Start The Fire” types have to say now? “Trayvon, Michael Brown, Garner in a chokehold?” “Hawking, Gaza, twerking from Azalea?” As if we wee Americans can abdicate responsibility for their deaths, like Pontius Pilate did in effectively condemning Jesus to crucifixion, but washed his hands of his role in the process. Who’s been front and center in supporting a police state, in advocating policies that criminalize Black and Brown bodies for taking a breath, in turning the American Dream of a middle class into a get-rich-quick scheme? Hmm, let me think about this one…

Outside of the small minority of Whites who are truly upset about and are actively involved in protests against this latest round of American injustice, many Whites have expressed how enraged they are. About die-ins in front of the Verizon Center before a Washington Wizards game. About delays in getting to their destination because the Beltway or the Lincoln Tunnel or some other thoroughfare’s been blocked by protestors with “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe” signs. For this very-much-not-silent majority, these protests and the outrage and yearning for social justice they represent are major inconveniences.

Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose in pre-game warm-ups, dressed in his "I Can't Breathe" protest shirt, United Center, Chicago, December 6, 2014. (http://chicagotribune.com).

Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose in pre-game warm-ups, dressed in his “I Can’t Breathe” protest shirt, United Center, Chicago, December 6, 2014. (http://chicagotribune.com).

Well, that’s too effing bad! You spend your life in denial, in assuming that anything racial isn’t your fault. You deserve inconvenience, you deserve to get smacked in the face with reality while drinking your beer at a basketball game, expecting Black players to stay in their entertainer role. You don’t want to think about the real world and your role in maintaining stereotypes and oppression in it? Oh well! Grow a pair! Not of balls, though. Grow a pair of lobes! Because none of us wide-awake, “Black Lives Matter” types are going anywhere.

Aside

Caught Between Rage and a Working Faith

21 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Work, Youth

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Activism, Anger, Anger Management, Black Reconstruction (1935), Civil Rights, Eric Garner, Faith, Federal Government, Ferguson Missouri, Ferguson PD, God, Institutional Racism, James 2:26, Michael Brown, Murder, NYPD, Officer Darren Wilson, Police, Police Brutality, Prayer, Rage, Science, Social Justice, Structural Racism, Sunil Dutta, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wages of Whiteness, Works


"Officer Go Fuck Yourself" aiming rifle at protestors and journalists, Ferguson, MO, August 19, 2014. (http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/).

“Officer Go Fuck Yourself” aiming rifle at protestors and journalists, Ferguson, MO, August 19, 2014. (http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/).

We can add Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Kindra Chapman, Samuel DuBose, Joyce Curnell, Ralkina Jones, Raynette Turner and Christian Taylor to the list I started the post below with nearly a year ago. You could add Zachary Hammond to it as well, as structural White supremacy kills Whites dead, too (police state). There’s The Guardian‘s “The Counted” webpages on deaths at the hands of law enforcement. There’s also the Killed By Police website and via Facebook, and Fatal Encounters, among others, that track these death back much further (since The Guardian only began their webpages in June 2015).

The post I wrote last year was about what we could do, what I could or can do in light of living in a racist police state, otherwise known as living with the Gestapo. It’s still an open question, especially with reporters shoving microphones in the faces of the aggrieved asking them to forgive police officers who murder five seconds after learning the news. We’re supposed to be nonviolent, to forgive and turn the other cheek. Long before Malcolm X said during a radio interview in Boston in 1964, “In fact, it’s a crime for any Negro leader to teach our people not to do something to protect ourselves in the face of the violence that is inflicted upon us by the white people here in America,” this has been an issue. Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells (before she became Wells-Barnett) Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Nannie Burroughs, Marcus Garvey, among many others, raised this issue of what to do about state-sanctioned racism-based violence and murder years ago. We still don’t have any good answers, but we do have options. (A revolution, though, may well be necessary…)

+===================================================+

After the events of the past month — between Eric Garner and the NYPD, Michael Brown and the Ferguson, Missouri PD — I find myself of two minds. My primal mind says, “Fuck the fucking police!” Resist with rocks, with bricks, with bombs and grenades. Go buy a composite bow with composite arrows. Go buy a rifle with a scope, and take out as many of these motherfuckers as I can. Maybe they’ll think twice about putting someone like me in a choke-hold or shooting us with our hands up if they knew we could organize ourselves into vigilante groups, well armed and well adept at escape and stealth, ready to put the likes of Sunil Dutta out of their racist-ass misery!


– What we should be able to do to any corrupt cop or vigilante killing unarmed people of color…

Eric Garner in midst of dying from choke-hold via NYPD's finest, Daniel Pantaleo and (not pictured)  and Justin Damico, Staten Island, NY, July 17, 2014. (http://www.thegrio.com).

Eric Garner in midst of dying from choke-hold via NYPD’s finest, Daniel Pantaleo and (not pictured) and Justin Damico, Staten Island, NY, July 17, 2014. (http://www.thegrio.com).

The mind I live in and with every day, though, puts the kibosh on such evil yet well deserved plans of action. Because in light of so much police harassment, brutality and state-sanctioned murders, to say that this shouldn’t be a response belies everything all of us know about human nature. Yet my mind says, “No. This isn’t the way to fight. You’re a writer. You’re a teacher. You’re a believer. Use your tools!” So I pray, I always pray, for people to seek and find the light, to forgive and be forgiven, for peace.

But as the New Testament in James says, “Faith without works is dead” (look that one up, evangelical Christians committed to White privilege!). None of us can hope to change our own lives — much less something as intractable as structural and institutional racism — on prayer and faith in God, the federal government and/or science alone. We have to do, too. In my case, writing and teaching is what I do. Posting to my blog about the palpable rage that I know exists within me and many others who have faced brutality because of racism, misogyny, poverty, homophobia, Whiteness and fear. Teaching about “the physical and psychological wages of Whiteness” (thanks, W.E.B. Du Bois via Black Reconstruction [1935]). Being part of the social media crowd demanding humanity and justice for Michael Brown. This is who I am and what I do.

Me the Evil Blogger at home, Silver Spring, MD, August 1, 2010. (Donald Earl Collins).

Me the Evil Blogger at home, Silver Spring, MD, August 1, 2010. (Donald Earl Collins).

Is it enough to assuage my rage, my guilt for not being able to do more? Yes, most of the time. But I have to remind the perfectionist that remains within me, I can’t do much, but I can do something. And, that this isn’t about me, even with as much as I’ve experienced in racial profiling and abuse of power, at home and with police. It’s about all of us. So, if I do buy a composite bow with arrows, I will train to use it well. Just not on other humans, no matter how reprehensible.

There Are No White Liberals — Really

07 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion

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Tags

Affirmative Action, Anti-Racism, Centrism, Colorblindness, Conservatives, Egalitarianism, Jessie Daniels, Joe Feagin, Mark Naison, Progressives, Race Card, Racism, Radical Conservatism, Right Wing, Social Justice, Tim Wise, White Liberals


Stephen Colbert meets with members of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Washington, DC, June 30, 2011. (Yuri Gripas via http://slate.com).

Stephen Colbert meets with members of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Washington, DC, June 30, 2011. (Yuri Gripas via http://slate.com).

What I’ve learned in recent months from Twitter, Facebook, The Atlantic and The New York Times, from recent Supreme Court decisions, and from attempts to justify oligarchy and bigotry, is the following. That the term “White liberal” is a media falsehood, meant to create a distinction without any significant differences. That most White liberals are “liberal” by default, only because they’re not conservative — or really, reactionary — enough. That most Whites who see themselves as liberal also believe in colorblindness as a racial philosophy or refuse to acknowledge their own privilege of Whiteness and structural racism as major obstacles on the path toward an egalitarian society. And that people who look and write like me can and should be ignored, precisely because I’m Black and underprivileged by default.

There are in fact Whites who do acknowledge the privilege of their own Whiteness, who do understand the gigantic barriers of structural racism, institutional and individual racism. Some of those are leftists, many more, though, are racists who have fully embraced Whiteness as their cloak of superiority. Hence Donald Trump, Donald Sterling (heck, maybe even Donald Duck), Paul Ryan, Cliven Bundy, Tom Perkins, and, if you’re aware of recent racism rows in the UK, Jeremy Clarkson.

There are the rare handful, though, who are leftist enough to have also become active on the anti-racism front. I’m lucky to count quite a few of them as friends, or at least, colleagues. Some of these folks, whether Tim Wise or Mark Naison, Jessie Daniels or Joe Feagin, sure enough, do acknowledge that their rare enlightenment has its limits, that they, too, can and do get it wrong sometimes in discussing race and racism. They even acknowledge that they have Whiteness and other -isms, that they aren’t perfect or in need of a pedestal because they’ve managed to look past their privilege to be radical leftists.

Colorblind racism cartoon, February 27, 2013. (Gabriel Ivan Orendain-Necochea/Daily Sundial via http://sundial.csun.edu).

Colorblind racism cartoon, February 27, 2013. (Gabriel Ivan Orendain-Necochea/Daily Sundial via http://sundial.csun.edu).

That leaves this fairly large plurality of Whites who see themselves as “liberals,” but refuse to realize that they are liberals because they aren’t fearful or hateful enough to be right-wingers. Politically, they’re basically centrists, folks who don’t want to rock the boat on any issues involving social class, social mobility or structural inequality. They may care about a green planet, recognize that evolution is real and climate change is man-made, but will still see racism as an individual issue, and not one baked into the bricks and mortar of our society and its institutions.

These are the media standard “White liberals,” ones who care more about an individual White guy who uses the N-word on TV than they do about a White supremacist terrorist shooting up a community center or a place of worship. In fact, the media and these liberals will all but refuse to use the word “terrorist” in reference to systemic White violence against communities of color or those of different religious backgrounds. They’ll be the ones who’ll start with the sentence, “I don’t care if you’re black, white, green or red…,” as if racism were a simple matter of melanin, and not material and psychological advantages that begin at conception and end well after death. Not to mention, there aren’t any actual “green” or “red” skin-colored humans.

Yet, despite their colorblindness, they couldn’t possibly conceive of Blacks and Latinos smart enough to make it to an elite college without the handout of affirmative action, or of large numbers of people of color in positions of leadership in business and in  politics, or of a feminism without the contradiction of femininity. For that matter, so-called colorblind White “liberals” still find it easy to call race a “card” that people of color pull out only when it’s somehow convenient for us, or lament the need for historically Black colleges and universities or other Black institutions. Some have even argued for a White History Month, which is ridiculous, considering how Whiteness is ever-present (kind of like the way the most religious of Christians think about God).

So, after four and a half decades as a born and bred American, I’ve realized that the average White liberal is not only not a leftist, Marxist or an anti-racist. That not only that the media labels them as “liberals” by default. But that they are as much to blame for our sorry state of affairs regarding race in America as Frazier Glenn Miller, Wade Michael Page, the NYPD, the LAPD, evangelical Christianity and those Southern Democrats who became Republicans between 1964 and 1994.

My Christianity at 30

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Mount Vernon New York, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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Action, Activism, Atheism, Atheists, Christianity, Critical Thinking, Easter Sunday, Evangelical Christianity, Evangelicals, Faith, Frederick K.C. Price, Gospel of Prosperity, Hypocrisy, Renewal, Revelation, Salvation, Social Control, Social Justice, Spirituality, Wisdom


The full prayer kneel, April 8, 2014. (Donald Earl Collins).

The full prayer kneel, April 8, 2014. (Donald Earl Collins).

No, today’s not my thirtieth birthday — I’m still forty-four and twenty months away from entering middle age. But, it has been thirty years since I converted to Christianity, two weeks before Easter Sunday ’84, sometime between 8:55 and 9 am. You could say — and many would — that this marks three full decades since my spiritual rebirth, a milestone as significant as my birthday on the final Saturday of the ’60s at Mount Vernon Hospital.

In many ways, it was a renewal, a reboot, a beginning of sorts. To claim control over my life and my destiny, at least, as much control as I could muster. In the past thirty years, the issues of control and perfection, faith, knowledge and wisdom, and the expectations I have of myself, my God and those who either don’t see God as real or as real to me have remained constants in my life.

Perhaps this has been because of how I became a Christian in the first place, a bit more than three months after an aborted suicide attempt on my fourteenth birthday. With my abusive stepfather Maurice and his insistence that we were Hebrew-Israelites, I couldn’t be open about my conversion or the thought and faith process that led me to Christianity. At least, I didn’t feel strong enough back then to be open about it. I remained a clandestine Christian for five months before I stood up to the idiot after my first day of tenth grade — my first time not wearing my kufi since sixth grade — and dared him to kill me. He didn’t, and it was my first full victory against my stepfather.

As for my classmates, the splits between the denominational Christian, agnostic, atheist and Nation of Islam sets were ones I’d become aware of long before my conversion. And, by tenth grade, it was obvious that many of my immediate Humanities classmates were about as accepting of the spiritual as Bill Maher and the late Christopher Hitchens. Maybe not openly so, but the barrier of intolerance and disdain was there.

Break the chains, April 8, 2014. (http://www.flrministry.com).

Break the chains, April 8, 2014. (http://www.flrministry.com).

Over the years, my walk with Jesus’ life, death and resurrection has grown more complicated, with euphoric highs, quiet lows, and periods of almost evangelical revival along the way. Still, I remain faithful, even as I remain disillusioned, about my life, humanity, the universe and the afterlife. I still pray, and believe that God listens to my prayers, but understand that prayer without action is tantamount to talking to myself. “Faith without works is dead,” is what the good book actually says. Unfortunately, there are way too many alleged Christians in exalted places and in positions of power who practice neither faith nor the works of Jesus. All they do is talk about their Christianity while acting like pagan Roman emperors.

I no longer welcome debate about what and in whom I believe. I find those who smirk and call my walk the equivalent of someone with a mental illness or an imaginary friend about as bigoted as a Christian who believes that all atheists are the sons and daughters of Satan. There’s a certain hubris in claiming the nonexistence of the spiritual because the people whom are representatives of the religious are themselves flawed and full of crap. Then, I guess, there’s a certain hypocrisy in the universe, in evolution, in all life, and I don’t think any of us have enough knowledge to be that cynical and nihilistic.

I no longer regularly attend church. I’ve been to at least a dozen churches in the DC area over the past decade and a half, and combined, I’ve gotten less out of all of those services than in one service I attended at my mother-in-law’s church in Pittsburgh last September. Heck, I’ve found more wisdom and compassion and realness in some of the courses I’ve taught than at most of these churches. Church is a place for fellowship with other Christians, but I have a hard time with my own contradictions, much less those of others.

Bertrand Russell wisdom quote, April 8, 2014. (http://izquotes.com).

Bertrand Russell wisdom quote, April 8, 2014. (http://izquotes.com).

For my son Noah’s sake, though, I want to find a place or two where we can feel comfortable exposing him to Christianity. Places where the hypocrisy quotient isn’t so high, and with the understanding that this is a long spiritual walk, not a magical carpet ride of infinite miracles and treasure chests full of gold. I’m tired of the megachurches, the Gospel of Prosperity, the overly emotional, the attempts to strangle human behaviors, and the endless predictions of apocalypse based on homophobia, misogyny, Whiteness, and a terrible understanding of history.

But I do have a one-on-one spiritual walk that’s mine, that no one — atheist or evangelical — can take away from me. It’s a walk that has taken me far from the despair and abuse of my youth, warts and all.

The Hillary Question

20 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Marriage, Politics, Pop Culture

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2016 Election, Barbara Jordan, Benazir Bhutto, Clintonites, Femininity, Feminism, Golda Meir, Hillary Clinton, Hillary-ites, Liberal Politics, Political Experience, Presidency, President, President Bill Clinton, Progressive Politics, Shirley Chisholm, Social Justice, Triangulation


Hillary Rodham Clinton, official (67th) Secretary of State portrait, January 27, 2009. (Gage via Wikipedia, US Dept of State). In public domain.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, official (67th) Secretary of State portrait, January 27, 2009. (Gage via Wikipedia, US Dept of State). In public domain.

As it is Women’s History Month, it would be a real shame to let it go by without comment on the second attempt to crown former First Lady, US Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the next President of the United States. Only, this attempt at coronation has been underway literally since the week after President Barack Obama’s reelection in November ’12.

We have at least sixteen months before the campaigning for the ’16 election cycle heats up to luke-warm seriousness, and yet the Hillary-ites (my name for her branch of the Clintonites) have been out in force proclaiming Clinton to be the most qualified, the most deserving, with the most diverse set of experiences necessary to be the forty-fifth POTUS. And, by the way, she’s a woman, her supporters seem to emphasize at every turn, as if her gender alone makes her deserving of the office.

If it comes down to it in thirty-two months, I will hold my nose while voting for Hillary Clinton over her potential GOP opponent (as it’s as likely as a man-made black hole that the Republicans would put up a progressive the equivalent of a Teddy Roosevelt). But I cannot in good conscience support any effort to have her become the next president. It’s not about gender for me. Despite the Zionism she represented, I admired Golda Meir, not to mention, Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Benazir Bhutto and Indira Gandhi. Really, my issue with Hillary Clinton comes down to what two other people represent — the late Margaret Thatcher, and Mrs. Clinton’s husband, President Bill Clinton, our forty-second president.

My issues in detail:

1. Hillary Clinton’s election is a victory for American women. This bothers me more than any other argument. It’s similar to the argument for Obama that came out of the ’08 election — that this would be a victory for Blacks and forward-thinking Americans — especially for supporters who had no idea about his agenda. In Obama’s case, his agenda was a difficult one to know or articulate — he’d only been on the national stage for four years, and his excellent memoir Dreams from My Father (1995, 2004) didn’t often match his policy-specific proclamations (that is, on the infrequent occasions in which he made them).

Lilly Ledbetter discusses why Barack Obama (who would sign the equal pay act that is in her name) is the best candidate for working families, Pittsburgh, PA, October 9, 2008. (Blargh29 via Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

Lilly Ledbetter discusses why Barack Obama (who would sign the equal pay act that is in her name) is the best candidate for working families, Pittsburgh, PA, October 9, 2008. (Blargh29 via Wikipedia). Released to public domain.

In Hillary Clinton’s case, we have a record of her statements and policy prescriptions, going back to the mid-1990s. Despite the wishes of many Hillary-supporting feminists, Mrs. Clinton’s record on issues as far-ranging as reproductive rights, equal pay, women serving in the military, really, any progressive issues that affected women, has been inconsistent. Since the universal health care debacle she experienced in ’94, Clinton has spoken little in public about these issues. She proposed few bills related to women’s rights while serving one and a third terms (eight years) in the Senate, and wasn’t exactly front and center on issues like repealing DADT or DOMA or the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of ’09 during her time campaigning or during her years as Secretary of State.

Maybe there’s a really good argument to be made for supporting Hillary Clinton, but seeing her as a vanguard of feminism or progressive social justice shouldn’t be one of them. It seems that her supporters may be confusing femininity with feminism.

2. Hillary has lots of political experience for the office of President. Sure, she has experience, but I wouldn’t go so far to argue that Hillary Clinton’s experience is above and beyond anyone else’s. Despite her work on the universal healthcare bill in ’94, we shouldn’t count her time as First Lady. It’s not an elected or appointed office, which was one reason why Mrs. Clinton found herself in an antagonistic relationship with Congress and the American public.

So, that leaves her time in the Senate (which I commented on in 1.) and her time as Secretary of State. In the former position, there’s still the fact that she voted for action in Iraq in ’02. In the latter position, there’s the theme of inaction in terms of Iran, the Arab Spring, and yes, despite the right-wing hyperbole, Benghazi. It seems that John Kerry as Secretary of State has found himself doing a lot more in one year than Mrs. Clinton did in four. I’m not sure that Hillary Clinton’s experience is one that should be used as justification for a four-year-long victory lap conducted on her behalf by her supporters.

Logo of Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, December 13, 2008. (718 Bot via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws -- low resolution/critical commentary re: Hillary Clinton's possible 2016 Presidential run, a subject of public interest.

Logo of Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, December 13, 2008. (718 Bot via Wikipedia). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws — low resolution/critical commentary re: Hillary Clinton’s possible 2016 Presidential run, a subject of public interest.

3. Hillary Clinton has a unique set of experiences that make her preeminently qualified to be President. No. Not buying this argument. Without a gun to my head, I can think of people whose combination of direct political experiences and diverse set of life experiences would be good potential candidates for President, even in ’16. Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Patty Murray, and Tammy Baldwin, and that’s just the Vice President and the US Senate. That Hillary Clinton learned how to be President by osmosis from being married to Bill isn’t comforting at all. If she follows POTUS 42’s strategy of testing-the-wind-with-right-index-finger triangulation, we will all suffer for it. Plus, by this definition, shouldn’t Michelle Obama run for President in ’16 also?

Would Hillary Clinton be a terrible choice? No. But she would be an uninspiring one, one whose organizational and management skills would be in question from day one, precisely because of the political and other experiential baggage she’s carried for more than twenty years. The office of President is already one that’s been bought and paid for in recent decades. The coronation of Hillary Clinton, if successful, will continue this trend, and to the detriment of every ordinary American, male, female and transgender.

My and Diane Ravitch’s Path to Reign of Error

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Carnegie Mellon University, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, New York City, Patriotism, Pittsburgh, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Upper East Side, Youth

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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Book Review, Corporate Education Reform, Diane Ravitch, Fear of a "Black" America (2004), High-Stakes Testing, Humanities Program, Institutional Racism, Michelle Rhee, Multiculturalism, Neoconservative Movement, Politics of Education, Poverty, Privatization, Racial Segregation, Racism, Reign of Error (2013), Social Injustice, Social Justice, Teach for America, Writing Passion


Reign of Error (2013) by Diane Ravitch, front cover. (http://bn.com).

Reign of Error (2013) by Diane Ravitch, front cover. (http://bn.com).

I first began reading Diane Ravitch in July 1990, the summer before my senior year at the University of Pittsburgh. It was the summer in which I became interested in understanding magnet programs and their relationship with desegregation and diversity efforts, courtesy of my own experience with Mount Vernon, New York public schools and its now defunct Humanities Program. I read both The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973 (1974) and The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945-1980 (1985) that summer, with education scholar and Ford Foundation director Jeanne Oakes’ Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality (1985) sandwiched in between.

It was the beginning of a twenty-year period of constantly intellectual disagreement between me and Ravitch. Oakes’ work captured inequality in terms of race and socioeconomics so much better than Ravitch, whose writings back then often treated these inequalities and distinctions as afterthoughts. When I shifted my research area to multicultural education and multiculturalism, though, that was when I found Ravitch’s absolutist defense of so-called traditional American democratic education and all things e pluribus unum unbelievably stifling. With all Ravitch knew about the politics of education, in New York and with the US Department of Education, how could she possibly defend a system that did as much to control and exclude students as it did to provide something akin to an equal opportunity?

I chalked Ravitch up to being another out-of-touch neoconservative, scared to death of race and diversity and multiculturalism. I said as much at conferences like the American Educational Research Association meeting and other conferences. I wrote as much in my dissertation and in my first book, Fear of a “Black” America: Multiculturalism and the African American Experience (2004). Through it all, I always found Ravitch’s writing compelling, but her conclusions wanting, because they lacked perspective and empathy in the context of public schools and diversity.

Then, Ravitch wrote Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform in 2000. Though it contained some of her common themes — overemphasis on the mantra of reform, the need for more testing, support for school choice, denigration of a multicultural curriculum — Ravitch showed growth in this book. She was less hostile to a more progressive curriculum and seemed, for the first time, really, to understand how much race and poverty had shaped the direction and the harshness of school reform going back to 1900. I happily used Ravitch’s Left Back in my History of American Education Reform course at George Washington in 2002. For her book provided a comprehensive and even-handed overview of the politics of K-12 education in a way that any educator of any American ideological perspective could understand.

I’ve finally read Ravitch’s Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (2013). Reign of Error is Ravitch at her most passionate and energized. If I hadn’t read a couple dozen of Ravitch’s articles from the 1980s and 1990s and four of her previous books, I would think that this was her first book, as there is sense of urgency in Reign of Error that can seldom be found outside of epic memoirs and epic fiction novels.

Ravitch’s argument in Reign of Error is a simple one. Corporate education reform, if allowed to continue unfettered, will destroy public education in the US, and in the process, American democracy. Privatizing public schools (i.e., turning them into “public” charter schools), destroying teacher’s unions, constant high-stakes testing, bypassing school boards and forgetting about racial segregation and poverty — that’s corporate education reform’s agenda. As Ravitch said in Chapter 12 on the fallacies of merit pay for teachers, “Merit pay is the idea that never works and never dies (p. 119).” She could have also substituted the words “school choice,” “creationism,” “standardized testing,” “closing schools,” and “privatization” for “merit pay.”

But Ravitch goes further in her 400-page treatise. That though public education in the US has had its share of problems — the need for more teacher training and time for professional development, racial segregation and high levels of poverty while underfunded — that corporate education reform has compounded these problems several times over. That with corporate education reform, teachers, parents and students will have no say in public education, at least the ones without their own personal foundation with which to endow their own public charter school.

From a writer’s standpoint, this wasn’t Ravitch’s best effort. Her argument is repetitive, one where she likely could’ve cut the main chapters by a quarter (about 100 pages) and made the same points. I likely could’ve become inebriated if I had a shot of vodka every time the words “poverty,” “Gates,” “Walton,” “Broad,” “high-stakes testing,” and “corporate education reform” come up. But given my history with reading Ravitch and with this topic, of course Reign of Error was repetitive — it was like reading my own words on this same topic.

Ultimately, Ravitch’s Reign of Error is a primer for anyone interested in averting the social injustice that is the corporate education reform tyranny of wealthy philanthropists, money-grubbing entrepreneurs and politicians across America’s limited ideological spectrum. For those whom up to now this issue has been of limited interest, or for those who’ve felt the change in public education but haven’t quite been able to articulate those feelings, Reign of Error is for you.

For educators, parents and even students already involved in writing about or protesting against corporate education reform, this book is still for you. Ravitch provides so much ammunition that Reign of Error can be applied in numerous ways to numerous situations. At school board meetings. With #AskMichelleRhee hash tags on Twitter. In job interviews with Teach for America and with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In letters to the editor of the mainstream newspapers and in comments to mainstream TV and radio newscasters. In arguments with neoconservative parents who send their kids to private schools.

“Protecting our public schools against privatization and saving them for generations of American children is the civil rights issue of our time (p. 325).” is how Ravitch ended her Reign of Error. It’s not an exaggeration. But it does beg a question. If we can successfully fend off corporate education reform — and assume that the country will continue to ignore the poverty and racial segregation that Ravitch desperately wants addressed — can she and I then spend five minutes discussing multiculturalism?

Racism Doesn’t Care What Year It Is

09 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Movies, music, Politics, Pop Culture, Youth

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

"And The Beat Goes On" (1979), "I Have A Dream" speech, "We Shall Overcome", Bigotry, Civil Rights Act, Individual Racism, Institutional Racism, Internet, James Byrd, Jonathan Ferrell, Laws, Marissa Alexander, MOVE, Oppression, Philadelphia PD, Racism, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Social Justice, Social Media, Sophia Stewart, Structural Racism, Technology, Television, The Matrix (1999), The Whispers, Trayvon Martin, Voting Rights Act, Wachowski Siblings, Yusef Hawkins


Joel Ward in celebration with Washington Capitals teammates after scoring game/series winning goal in Round 1 of Stanley Cup Playoffs against Boston Bruins (all while fans chanted racial slurs), April 26, 2012. (http://www.flightunit.com/).

Joel Ward in celebration with Washington Capitals teammates after scoring game/series winning goal in Round 1 of Stanley Cup Playoffs against Boston Bruins (all while fans chanted racial slurs), April 26, 2012. (http://www.flightunit.com/).

One of the many throwaway sentences I’ve heard and read for almost all of my life has increasingly driven me more nuts over the years. In response to a racist statement or incident, an interviewee on the air or someone writing a column will say, “It’s 1984!” or “This is 2006!,” with “and we’re still putting up with this?” or “and we’re still dealing with” racism or bigotry to finish the thought. It’s the one phrase you can expect anyone White, Black, Latino, Asian and/or American Indian to use when interviewed or with access to a public platform. As if the year in which racial injustice and bigotry manifests itself actually matters!

Seriously, did people think that marches, speeches and laws alone would end up killing the complex and morphing structure of American racism that’s existed for more than three centuries? Did we really think that singing “We Shall Overcome” and quoting Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech would allow individual Whiteness and hatred to melt away? Was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 somehow supposed to end all race-based discrimination, even when fully enforced (of course, the federal government has never fully enforced these laws)?

Picture of Michael Griffith, killed by car after group of Whites in Howard Beach, Queens attempted to beat him and his friends with baseball bats on December 20, 1986. (Denis Hamill; http://nydailynews.com).

Picture of Michael Griffith, killed by car after group of Whites in Howard Beach, Queens attempted to beat him and his friends with baseball bats on December 20, 1986. (Denis Hamill; http://nydailynews.com).

Yes, we live in an ultra-modern age, where my generation and my son’s generation know more about the world, the universe and life than my mother and grandfather’s generations. But having more knowledge often means that we as humans tend to be more destructive toward each other before becoming wise enough to end that specific pattern of destruction. Or, as has often been the case in human history, until a new group comes along and topples one structure of oppression before implementing a new and sometimes kinder and gentler one.

To think about it another way, just because we’re technologically advanced and more scientifically driven doesn’t mean that humans in general — and Americans specifically — will act rationally and change their behaviors. Especially if it involves giving up an advantage — real or perceived — in the process.

Even though we invented the atomic bomb in 1945, it didn’t stop us from using it against the Japanese or racist White rednecks from beating to death Black veterans of World War II. Though we had television sets in nearly every American home in the 1960s, it didn’t stop Bull Conner from unleashing dogs and turning fire hoses on Black kids in Birmingham, Alabama, Medgar Evers from getting shot in Mississippi or Selma, Alabama marchers from getting beat up. And though we were poised to land on the Moon in July ’69, it didn’t mean that James Earl Ray wouldn’t take a moment to blow away Dr. King fifteen months earlier.

The first oracle from The Matrix (1999, 2003), played by the late Gloria Foster, February 9, 2014. (http://matrix.wikia.com).

The first oracle from The Matrix (1999, 2003), played by the late Gloria Foster, February 9, 2014. (http://matrix.wikia.com).

In my own lifetime, there’s been more of this lag between knowledge, self-interest and racism. From Yusef Hawkins in Bensonhurst in ’89 to James Byrd being beaten, chained and dragged behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas in ’98. From the Philly PD’s bombing of MOVE and the community around it in ’85 to Hurricane Katrina in ’05. Not to mention individual incidents and distinctions, like Trayvon Martin, Marissa Alexander and Jonathan Ferrell. As the ’70s hit by The Whispers goes, “And The Beat Goes On.” We have the Internet, social media, the ability to mobilize outrage and righteous indignation into demonstrations for human rights and social justice. But the human capacity to build oppressive institutions remains, as well as our capacity to hate.

But, to quote The Oracle from The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003), not to mention Buddha, “Everything that has a beginning has an End,” right? Of course, that quote might well have been inspired by a story written by Sophia Stewart in ’81, whom the Wachowski siblings apparently plagiarized in making their multi-billion dollar films. Again, why does the year racism manifests itself matter?

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