Is the emerging debate about the relationship between Senator Obama and former Weather Underground leader and now Distinguished Professor of Education Bill Ayers simply about the past?
I believe that that is not the only question at stake - at stake is the possibility that Bill Ayers continues to play a significant role in influencing the candidacy and potentially the presidency of Barack Obama, in particular on vital questions of educational policy. In particular, as this blog post will explain, at least one advisor on education policy to the Obama campaign advocates a form of reparations to black and other minority Americans for hundreds of years of alleged “education debt” owed them by white Americans. And Bill Ayers is an advocate of the same policy.
That history nonetheless deserves full exploration because it lays the ground work for understanding the current Ayers-Obama relationship. Incredibly, however, the MSM continues to ignore the crucial fact that the ties between Ayers and Obama pre-date the November 1995 “meet and greet” held for Obama at the home of Ayers and Dohrn in Hyde Park.
For example, unnamed “Obama aides” told the New York Times that Obama was “introduced” to Dohrn and Ayers at that event. Ignore the obvious, of course - would they have agreed to sponsor the event without a prior meeting? Presumably not. But the Times refused to follow up even after I alerted the reporter to the fuller story. In fact, I wrote to another Times reporter, Larry Rohter, who has written on the Ayers links, about the longer term relationship weeks ago. No reply.
Of course, as I explained in an
earlier post here, the link between Obama and Ayers had to pre-date the November 1995 event because
Obama was already Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge grant program. The Annenberg Challenge was a $50 million grant (to be matched by additional donors 2:1) to a new Chicago non-profit entity to make grants to schools in Chicago. The grant proposal was conceived of and written by Bill Ayers. Ayers was named Chicago’s “Citizen of the Year” for his efforts. He was featured on the PBS News Hour to discuss the grant. In every assessment of the program Ayers was given credit for leading the charge on the program. He began the design of the proposal in late 1993 and the grant was awarded in January 1995.
Thus, it would make sense that the relationship is older than that. Why? There are two related reasons.
First, the Annenberg Challenge was not a random school improvement effort. The purpose of the Challenge was to help shore up the ongoing reform effort then underway in the Chicago public schools. It was a counter-attack by Ayers in what some commentators called the “Chicago school wars.” The reform effort was floundering and facing increasing opposition from business groups and others. The reform was built on a 1988 law that imposed “local school councils” (LSC’s) on the school system to create a new power center that would challenge both the Chicago teachers’ unions and the school system administration. Both Ayers and Obama were supporters of these 1988 reforms. (One little discussed fact about the reform effort - when it targeted the union and the school administration, it was taking on two institutions that had been a new and important source of attractive professional jobs for black Chicagoans.)
But it was not clear that the LSC’s were helping students learn more. In 1995 a new law would pass in Springfield re-centralizing power, but this time in the hands of the mayor (Richard Daley) through a new CEO for the school system. This gutted the power of the LSC’s. Bill Ayers opposed this re-centralization (I believe because Ayers saw the LSC’s as a potential means by which to impose his authoritarian “social justice” education agenda).
To lead the Challenge Ayers would certainly have wanted a board chairman who was sympathetic with his goals. That suggests that Obama and he had already established a relationship that convinced Ayers that Obama was the right man for this key leadership role. As I have said here, it is possible Ayers and Obama first met during the campaign for the creation of the LSC’s in the wake of the 1987 teachers’ union strike, an event that galvanized community and business support in Chicago for the LSC idea. Both Ayers and Obama were active in that campaign for the LSC’s.
The second, related reason that I think it likely that the relationship between Ayers and Obama is older than is currently being admitted by the Obama campaign and the MSM, is that Obama in 1994 was only three years out of law school and had only practiced law for about two years. He was still largely an unknown figure on the Chicago political scene.
True, he did spend the first year out of law school running a very successful voter registration drive that got him some notice among political figures. But despite the notoriety that came with that effort, it would have been a very big leap for a young lawyer to become Board Chairman of the Annenberg Challenge. The board would have had to have helped raise the additional $100 mn that the grant required which meant that connections to wealthy and powerful individuals and corporations would have been required.
Obama had very few such connections at that point in his career. In fact, I have suggested that it was the position of chair of the board that actually helped Obama secure those connections (such as to the Pritzker family) that would be so important to his political career. Serving
on the board with Obama, for example, were bankers and prominent Chicago figures. So for Ayers to pick Obama for board Chair really meant that Ayers was helping to give Obama’s career a significant boost.
Why would he do that? Presumably the two had, and have, very similar views on educational policy.
Fast forward, then, to the current scene. What is the state of Senator Obama’s education policy? No major statement of education policy has been issued by the campaign. But Senator Obama did name as his education advisor
Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, a prominent national figure in education who teaches at Stanford University’s School of Education. Darling-Hammond has not, as far as I can determine, issued any official blueprint or proposal for education policy on behalf of the candidate. However, on April 23 she did issue such a blueprint for an independent entity called the
Forum for Education and Democracy (FED). Presumably she had some kind of tacit approval from the Obama camp to go ahead with that very public pronouncement. Thus, it is worth considering that FED blueprint as it may be influential in the thinking of Senator Obama.
When one does look at the
FED blueprint I think we begin to see the fingerprints of Bill Ayers and of the Ayers’ world view. It is not a pretty picture. The blueprint makes four recommendations for federal policy which I will discuss in a moment.
But the FED argues first for these 4 reforms by contending that the U.S. education system is further behind now than it was in 1983. That seems to me a remarkable statement. I have no problem accepting that for certain segments of our population things have not gotten better and have likely gotten worse when it comes to education (particularly in the inner cities and poor rural areas that have been left behind) over the last 25 years.
But, certainly, it does not take too much effort to recognize that something is also amazingly right about the US education system. How else can one explain the desperate efforts that millions of people around the world make to get into this country, from India, China, Vietnam, Mexico, Ireland, and eastern Europe, from Africa and Latin America?
Just last week I was at an academic conference in southern California. It was held on the Cal State Pomona campus. I had never been there before. It was a remarkably lovely campus situated in the hills of southern California west of Los Angeles. Several new large buildings have been built there recently (including a huge library addition) and they rest side by side with lovely older campus buildings. The students on campus seemed friendly, industrious and happy - it was a classically beautiful warm southern California day. In the cafeteria I saw one corner where a woman was tutoring another student in calculus while in another corner a group of students were engaged in online games via wireless connections. I am certain that that campus would be the envy of major universities in dozens of other countries, yet in California the state college system is several tiers below the top of what is on offer (like the very top tier: Stanford, where Professor Darling-Hammond has an endowed chair)! That is how deep our educational resources go in this country.
Of course, the FED report is largely aimed at the K-12 system and rightly so since that is where inequities seem the most pressing (although one must ask how bad could K-12 really be if the college system is so robust - after all that robustness depends in part on the quality of the high school students who go to college).
But at this Cal State Pomona conference I attended a session on “social justice” teaching in K-12. I have blogged on that recently but let me remind my readers of what I saw and heard. One of the panelists was a high school teacher from South El Monte High School in a predominantly lower income hispanic city bordering on Los Angeles. She brought with her the school’s AP history class. These 30-40 young people were largely hispanic. When asked by a panelist how many were likely to attend college, all but 2-3 raised their hands. When he asked how many had parents who had attended college, only 2-3 raised their hands. This suggests that working class, probably immigrant, hispanic parents had, in a single generation, found a way to get their children into the finest higher education system in the world. Something must be going right in the K-12 system!
What does the FED report say needs to happen to right the allegedly sinking ship of America’s K-12 schools? Well, back to that four point program:
Priority #1: Repay the “education debt”
And, what, you might ask, is the “education debt”? According to Professor Darling-Hammond it is a concept invented by Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings, of the University of Wisconsin and a “convenor” together with Professor Darling-Hammond of the FED. It is aimed at replacing the concept that has dominated much education reform discussion in recent years called the “achievement gap.” As Darling-Hammond has
written:
“[T]he problem we face is less an ‘achievement gap’ than an educational debt that has accumulated over centuries of denied access to education and employment, reinforced by deepening poverty and resource inequalities in schools. Until American society confronts the accumulated educational debt owed to these students and takes responsibility for the inferior resources they receive, [Gloria] Ladson-Billings argues, children of color and of poverty will continue to be left behind.” (Emphasis added.)
With that reference to centuries of denied access, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings appear to be analogizing their concern about education resources, or the lack thereof, to the demand by some in the black community to reparations for 400 years of slavery and discrimination. In fact, in her major article exploring the concept of educational debt (Educational Researcher, Oct. 2005), Ladson-Billings came close to making the analogy explicit:
“What is it that we might owe to citizens who historically have been excluded from social benefits and opportunities? Randall Robinson (2000) states: ‘No nation can enslave a race of people for hundreds of years, set them free bedraggled and penniless, pit them, without assistance in a hostile environment, against privileged victimizers, and then reasonably expect the gap between the heirs of the two groups to narrow. Lines, begun parallel and left alone, can never touch. (p. 74)’”
The book by Randall Robinson to which she refers is
The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, which is an extended argument for reparations to be paid by America to blacks for the impact of slavery and discrimination.
Ladson-Billings also made this argument in her
Presidential Address to the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2006. AERA is in the news lately because Bill Ayers was recently elected as its Vice President of Curriculum Studies. Ladson-Billings is a specialist in “critical race theory” and “culturally relevant pedagogy.”
Perhaps even more strikingly, Darling-Hammond has argued that there is in America “a growing number of ‘apartheid’ schools that serve racial/ethnic minority students exclusively-schools that have little political clout and are extraordinarily impoverished.” Presumably it was at an apartheid school that the young hispanic students I encountered at Cal State Pomona figured out how to get into some of the world’s best 4 year colleges. (Emphasis added.)
I want to point out here that I actually believe, as a legal scholar, that there is, in fact, some credible basis to argue that the current black American population, almost all of whom are descendants of slaves, and many of whom continue to suffer from the legacy of that experience as well the many years of discrimination that followed the end of slavery, should receive financial compensation for the impact of that experience. However, the argument faces significant hurdles, some legal, some intellectual and many that are political.
To extend the argument, as Ayers, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings do, to a broad call for the repayment of an alleged educational debt, strains credulity if not worse. The logic of the argument itself escapes me. It obviously would not easily apply to many in the school system who suffer the same resource inequities as black students.
And for Senator Obama to call for such a race-driven approach to a national education policy would obviously unleash a backlash that at a minimum would be a distraction in his campaign but, in the context of his large losses in states like Kentucky and West Virginia together with the Reverend Wright controversy, could very well sink his campaign altogether.
And yet, there was Professor Darling-Hammond, at the same National Press Club venue as Rev. Wright, calling for - as point number one of a four point plan - for repayment of the educational debt.
And what of the other three points of the FED plan? Well, of course,
#2 was a multi billion dollar “Marshall Plan” for our schools - no doubt to pay down the debt (or is it on top of the repayment of the debt?);
#3 was more money to support research and innovation (hey, who can be against learning more about learning? but there is plenty of doubt about the research methods used by the “social justice” milieu in the education world and for a taste of the problems I highly recommend this book review by Nathan Glazer: The “Crits” Capture Presidential Power: Top education researchers denounce scientific research” Education Next, Winter 2007, a review of a book co-edited by Ladson-Billings with a chapter by Bill Ayers); and, to top it off,
#4: Engaging and educating local communities (which sounds a lot like the Local Schools reform effort that Obama, Ayers and the Annenberg Challenge tried to save in Chicago).
This suggests to me that some advisors in and around the Obama camp may have their own agendas with respect to education policy, perhaps at odds with the beliefs of the Senator himself, perhaps not. We do not know. But we should certainly ask and the campaign should explain.
And what of the links to Bill Ayers? Bill Ayers received his Ph.D. at Columbia where Darling-Hammond was on the faculty before joining Stanford. Ayers, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings are recognized widely as leaders of the “social justice” movement within the world of education schools. Darling-Hammond is co-editor of a volume called Learning to Teach for Social Justice. A chapter called “Education for Democracy” by Darling-Hammond appeared in a volume co-edited by Ayers called
A Light in Dark Times. A chapter co-authored by Ladson-Billings on “racing justice” appeared in a book co-edited by Ayers called
Teaching for Social Justice: A Democracy and Education Reader. Ladson-Billings wrote the foreword to Ayers’ book,
To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher. Ayers and Ladson-Billings are co-editors of City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row just published. Ladson-Billings contributed a chapter in a book edited by Bill Ayers, Rick Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Jesse L. Jackson called Zero Tolerance: Resisting the Drive for Punishment published in 2001.
On Bill Ayers’ website he has posted a book review by his brother Rick Ayers, who teaches in (where else?) a Berkeley, California public school. Rick Ayers writes:
“As Wisconsin education professor Gloria Ladson-Billings has pointed out, we should not define the problem as an ‘achievement gap’ as much as an educational debt that has accumulated as a result of centuries of denial of access to education and employment – which is exacerbated by deepening poverty and the lack of funding for schools.”
More fundamentally, Bill Ayers world view is rooted in what I consider a racialist, if not racist, view of American politics.
[I use the first term - racialism - to describe ideas or perspectives that use race-based approaches which I think overstate the race component but that do not really rise to the level of racism. I have a hard time, for example, concluding that someone like Reverend Wright is, at heart, a racist in the sense that, let’s say, George Wallace was. But he certainly uses race in a divisive way that I think overstates the role of race. That is what I consider “racialism” as opposed to racism. There is, of course, the danger that one can go so far in that direction or view the world that way for so long that actual racism takes hold – perhaps Louis Farrakhan is an example, though I do not spend much time paying much attention to him. Maybe one way of getting at this issue is that while a white person can actually show up at the church of Reverend Wright it would not have been possible for a black person to show up at certain churches in the American south in the 1960s and expect to get home safely.]
Since the days of Weather Underground Ayers has advocated a viewpoint that argues that the fundamental issue in American life is “white skin privilege” - that white Americans benefit from being white at the expense of blacks. As Ayers’ wife Bernardine Dohrn wrote in the introduction to a 2002 book she co-authored with Ayers and their fellow Weather Underground member Jeff Jones:
“One cannot talk separately about class, gender, culture, immigration, ethnicity, or biology without being intertwined with race, as Katrina and the systematic destruction of a major black U.S. city reinforms us. We were waking up [in the late 1960s]. What to do once we had knowledge of the dimensions of white skin privilege? How to destroy white supremacy? Well, that is another matter. And as burning today as it was then.”
“The dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, black and white. ‘Across the US,’ the National Governor’s Association declared in 2005, ‘a gap in academic achievement persists between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts.’ This is the commonly referenced and popularly understood ‘racial achievement gap,’ and it drives education policy at every level. Interestingly, whether heartfelt or self-satisfied, the narrative never mentions the monster in the room: white supremacy….Gloria Ladson-Billings upends all of this with an elegant reversal: there is no achievement gap, she argues, but actually a glancing reflection of something deeper and more profound—America has a profound education debt. The educational inequities that began with the annihilation of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans, the conquest of the continent and the importation of both free labor and serfs, transformed into apartheid education, something anemic, inferior, inadequate, and oppressive. Over decades and centuries the debt has accumulated and is passed from generation to generation, and it continues to grow and pile up.” (Emphasis added.)
At a certain stage in American history it might have made some kind of desperate sense to make this kind of argument, perhaps prior to 1865 or 1965, but in 2008? Even then it was possible and there were examples of multi-racial efforts to fight for justice and equality for all Americans.
Of course, today when millions of white workers suffer conditions little different from those of inner city blacks it borders on the absurd to make such an argument. Nor is it clear that throwing more money at our public schools is the real solution. Yet it seems to be the kind of argument that is behind the new race-based approach argued by those in favor of paying off centuries of “educational debt.” The unanswered question today is whether or not Barack Obama subscribes to such a narrow and potentially destructive social perspective.
(List Price: $27.95 - Your Price: $15.47)
By Sarah Palin (Release date: November 17. 2009)
Doesn’t matter. Hillary Clinton just committed campaign suicide today. If it wasn’t done yesterday, it is done today! Bye all, thanks for playing!
OH suicide MY ASS. Everything to you nutcases is about Barky. Bug off.
:>))))
Hey Barky is going to the Bataan Death March Memorial in New Mexico on Monday, MONTHS after his boneheaded remarks about that event…but HRC immediately acknowledges her misstatement and Obamabots explode with indignation.
I had forgotten that faux pas. Obama makes far too many gaffes to remember. He has graduated from Bush level to Quayle level.
Lora -
You can only commit suicide once dimwit.
Oblowme and his hatefilled wife and minister and terrorists and criminal friends need you back at the mansion.
You forgot his dim-witted, drooling, Princeton quota-graduate brother-in-law.
True. She committed political suicide the first time she said it, in March, didn’t she?
http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/05/hillarys_bizarre_rfk_comment.html
Ugly little soul you got there. Lora
why don’t you shut your damn mouth you silly bxxxx!
Ooh! Ooh! Sexism!!!!!
hypocrites, every one of you.
Comment by Mike Howell | 2008-05-23 16:41:48
Lora -
You can only commit suicide once dimwit.
No sexism there. You’re just a gender neutral dimwit. And an insult to women if you truly are one… by now.
I’ve seen a pic of Oblowme in a hat and dress after all.
And Oblowme and his hatefilled: wife, dim-witted, drooling, Princeton quota-graduate brother-in-law, white hating minister and terrorists and criminal friends still need you back at the mansion.
P.S.: Which do you prefer in a gender neutral way Lora: the Manson mansion or Oblowme & MEchele’s terrorist funded mansion or terrorists Ayers & Dohrn’s living room where Oblowme announced his candidacy?
There is a website for the purpose of demanding Reparations. Guess who they want to sue and recover from? Bill and Hillary. Yes, it is true.
But I think that somewhere blacks have been given the word that if he becomes President he will sign an Executive Order giving them reparations. Maybe your house or mine? That could be called buying votes.
Hopefully it will never come to be that
the name ‘Obama” will become a new adverbial
description in the political jargon of the American lexicon of the English languague to characterize
‘political suicide’ as a mass phenomena.
Suicide or rather it will come to mean swindle!
‘OBAMA’=POLITICAL SUICIDE
‘OBAMA’=SWINDLE
‘OBAMA’= TO BE HAD
Another reason why people will be RUSHING to the polls to get rid of Barack Obama.
LOL I just heard obama’s most Used line: “That’s Not What I said”. Only it’s what he said.
That’s called a WORM, an acronym for, What Obama REALLY Meant.
every time I think we have seen the dangers behind an Uhhbama Presidency another giant Obomb drops on us..back to separate but equal according to Wright, who says children of color (but only one color in his mind not brown, just black) learn differently, the Bell Curve from hell is back and the advisers to Uhhbama seem to want to validate it..Uhhbama has made it clear he supports charter schools and vouchers, if we had real live journalists we wouldnt be in this mess..in the dark not knowing who the hexl this guy is what the hexl he plans to change and how he will govern, based on the advisers he has I dont want him a anywhere near the White House…
“…if we had real live journalists…”
Yeah, and if we had a real live Democratic Party who vetted candidates before crowning them “the one,” we wouldn’t be in this mess either. I blame DNC and Dean before the media.
I have a couple of degrees in education and taught in the inner city for a dozen years or so. Children are children and all can be taught with good teaching techniques.
This idea of leaning communities is not new. It was tired under a different name in the 60’s and 70’s and was a colossal failure.
It is no wonder Obama doesn’t want to talk specifics about his education policies. It would scare the death out of most Americans.
Rove was on Greta a couple weeks ago and said some thing like the following: Americans don’t know Obama yet. And when they find out, and they WILL find out, they will be shocked by what he wants to do and how he wants to change America and they will not support him.
I wonder if this was in Rove’s mind.
I suspect they will let this and much more out before November. They probably even have stuff on him that we “Clinton dead-enders” don’t even know. It’s going to be ugly.
Agree with you there…this will get so ugly it will look like America during Reconstruction….The only way Obama has a chance is to contiually play the Race Card….
Rove keeps his eye out for up-and-comers. That’s his job. He does it well. A good part of his “genius” is preparation. He was quoted as saying sometime in the 80s that the only promising candidate the Democrats had was the Governor of Arkansas.
Rove probably acquired the Obama tapes before Obama even ran for the Senate.
OK, let’s look at Diamond’s “precise and scholarly language”, shall we?
And that proves… what, exactly? That’s like saying “John Kerry and John McCain both advocated normalization of relations with Vietnam. Ergo, John Kerry supports McCain’s Iraq policy.
“It would make sense that…”
“That suggests that…”
“it is possible…”
“Presumably…”
This is not “precise and scholarly”. This is borderline tinfoil hat territory - nothing but speculation based on conjecture based on guesses. But I’m sure the argument appeals to the basest feelings of some of you - which was the entire point.
ohhhh they have been wire tapping Obama since before he gave his speech at the Democratic convention…
and they probably have the goods on who paid for his party at the Convention..the most expensive party at the dem convention..i might add..not bad for a guy who was running for the senate for the first time eh???????
fly..a 2004 Delegate who was at that party……and have been asking Questions about this guy..and who paid for the party … ever since!!
That nit-wit Rev. Wright — has no understanding of science or of different STYLES of learning. I’ve gone to fully integrated schools from first grade through graduate school and what I witnessed were individual differences in learning — not RACIAL differences. There is also a cultural difference in that the Asian students tend to be far more serious students than many of the other kids I went to school with. This is more cultural than race based. And yes some of my Asian classmates didn’t like to study — and didn’t fit the stereotype of studious Asians.
Politics and education don’t really mix — that is the Politicians dictating what and how children can be taught isn’t practical idea.
Personally I believe that the idiot Obamabots invading NQ and other pro Hillary blogs are proof that the “No child left behind” BS of Prez Bush is a failure. All that generation can do is study to pass a test — no critical thinking and no resistance to empty suits like snObama.
As someone mentioned — seems like every day we hear about one more nasty aspect of snObama’s hidden past.
Keep Obama AWAY from students of all ages — kids don’t need a false messiah.
By the way — I went to college in the California public college/university system. I also did some post grad work at a private university on the east coast. California has a superior college system — and seeing the output of Harvard — Bush & Obama. If these two jerks were in the California system — those two wouldn’t have gotten past the first semester or quarter at Stanford, Berkeley or one of the California Universities.
Because I was a product of the public school system during the 60’s - 70’s….I decided personally to do what I could to avoid the system for my child….This had more to do with academics and overcrowding…There have been a lot of advances in Education inmo…I chose to send my child to a very small Catholic School ( her 8th grade class was 18 students most of which she had been going to school with since Kindergarten ). I did this to avoid the huge populations in many public schools as well as to insure that she benefit from a proven approach to study that is unique to the Catholic Parochial Curriculem. The School was racially mixed and included students who were not Catholic. My kid was not diagnosed with ADHD until 6th grade. The School was not legally bound to offer accomodations but one teacher gave her much needed support and My kid was able to turn it around to the point where she was one the top three in her class. In our town our school district just won a huge bond election to improve schools…This despite School Board members bieng under investigation for malfeasance. I do believe in investing in Public Education and I do believe in fair opportunity…BUT I DO NOT BELIEVE IN THE SOVIET MODEL OR IN RACIAL PREFERENCE….In my daughter’s school the tuition was affordable as the parish was an urban one. In a lot of other countries the Schools are not government sponsored and this is part of the reason so many immigrants want to come to this country.
IMHO…Expecting the US Government to pay reparations for the crimes of slavery makes about as much fiscal sense as expecting the Italians to pay off those conquested by THE ROMAN EMPIRE…
Here is a question I have about these reparations….Since the current theory is that most folks whose families lived in the south prior to the civil war there is a very good chance that even in the most lilly white of these families there is african DNA….Would those CRACKERS GET THEM SOME REPARATIONS AS DESCENDANTS OF SLAVES….OR WOULD AA’S WHO HAVE CRACKER DNA BE EXCLUDED ? AND WHO DECIDES ? I’m just sayin that the whole mess seems to be steppin backward and if we go back down that road….Why should immigrants after the Civil War pay anything ?….AND WHO DECIDES THAT ISSUE ?
One More Question….What about Native Americans….Do they pay or do they get paid….Some of the Native Tribes owned slaves as did some Jews who lived in the South…How do you track down those folks ? I mean if this is to be fair it should be accurate….WRIIIIIGHT ? Or do we just arbitrarily decide that if your a CRACKER YOU OWE $$….Well that sounds kinda racist to me….Not racialist….Just Racist. Good Post Professor.
I’m Just Sayin…and like most opinions everybody has one….Just seems that especially in this economy to be pretty unlikely…
I wonder if this makes Obama more GRATEFUL for his white grandparents who worked hard and sacrificed for him so he could attend that expensive prep school in Hawaii.
He was abandoned by the Black side of his family.
But his White side gave him the chance to achieve, knowing education would matter.
Frankly, I want to know how many times people like Obama or Ayers or Dorhn or Oprah or Sharpton actually went down in those ghetto schools to HELP a poor Black student.
My guess would be, NONE.
I would say that you Mary are WRIIIIGHT….and my oh my those folks would not be comfortable with your Q & A at the LEFTIE FETE’….chuckle
It’d be nice if America could choose a President that was smarter than Bush sometime this millenium. Obama is like some kind of sick joke against the GOP to one up them on people who are unqualified.
Very astute analysis. I offer a homely response: YIKES!
Wouldn’t the Republicans have a ton of fun with this?!!!
Thank you for opening this issue of Obama, Ayers and the Annenberg Challenge. I went to ERIC to get a copy of the study that as done on the Annenberg Challenge in Chicago Public Schools—the one where Obama was Chairman of the Board. After all that funding which included the 50 million from Annenberg and matching funds from state, Federal and other resources the study concluded that there was “no measurable or significant gain” on the part of students. In other words Ayers and Obama promoted a program that spent millions of private and public funds and accomplished nothing. I would note that the rubric used for this evaluation included not just student gains in hard core academic achievement areas but also in soft areas such as self-image, personal efficacy, school attendance, persistence etc. Voters, bloggers, media analysts and msm should be asking an essential question: If Obama was the chair of this Board (I think for its duration adding up to about 8 years) and nothing was really accomplished to improve the achievement and capacities of children to learn, what makes us think he will be successful on a national scale? Compare this with what HRC and Bill Clinton accomplished in the public schools of AR. Who has the leadership to resolve these crushing issues in our public schools?
GREAT point jangles. The Clintom’s Arkansas education accomplishments were real and measurable. Just more proof, if any is needed, that the Dems are on the brink of nominating the weaker candidate.
I’m surprised that BOzo doesn’t have an education policy - or that he hasn’t been called on that already.
Oh, wait - too much for them to try and squeeze on a teleprompter if they included a policy from one of his “advisers”.
Ha! that would be racist to call him on not having an education plan.
Interesting — Obama didn’t have a background in education — he wasn’t a product of the public education system. He really doesn’t have a clue from being in any public school HOW the public school system works. I don’t seen anything in his background which made him uniquely qualified — EXCEPT that he was an place holder — a face to put in the Chairman’s seat.
electoral college hilary 315……obama 242, obama loses….proves the election is rigged and the dnc belongs in prison. it gets worse by the day and obums just look the other way when excrement flys out of his ass daily. unbelievable.
A very interesting piece, Steve. Thanks.
I imagine that very few people realize that black men were provided with educational opportunities before women of either race. That’s correct, along with the vote, black men were educationally enfranchised before women.
My only complaint about your piece is that it deserves a wider audience.
The MSM aren’t paying attention, YET.
That MaryJo is very astute….How about Reparations for FEMALES….
Exactly — this is the point I’ve been making about Mrs. Obama. She went to Princeton — which just shortly before she went there was a MEN ONLY institution — as was HARVARD.
Yet her stupid senior thesis at Princeton was about Black and White (her descriptions with Black & White capitalized.) One thing I know about the white folk — putting everyone who looks white into a White category is meaningless. Of all the black/AA I know — lumping them into one Black category is also meaningless.
There were no sports — athletic programs for girls in most public schools until fairly recently — there were no athletic scholarships for women until fairly recently. There were PE classes — but no big sports program. Girls were not encouraged to take science courses — short hand and “secretarial” were pushed on girls. The males of color in the schools I went to WERE encouraged to take science courses — girls were DISCOURAGED.
The discrimination against women has been huge and it still is.
Paying reparation makes good moral sense, but first in line are the American Indians and after we pay our debt to them there will be nothing left for anyone else.
Damned Right. If anybody deserves reparations it’s the Native Americans.
Everybody else needs to get a job.
John McCain is looking better every day.
Well if we go down that road…And we are fair as a nation…How much do I owe ? My family did not own slaves or fight the indians…1/2 of my family tree did not even get here until the turn of the century…So in all fairness I should only pay a fraction…Now one part of my family were Po’ White confederate sharecroppers…So if I took a DNA test There is a strong likelihood that somewhere I probably have African DNA…Like Thomas Jefferson and his brood…So do I get somethin’ or if an AA has a lot of Cracker DNA do they recieve less…This shit could get really stupid
*** AND WHO IS GONNA DECIDE THIS SHIT…A TRIBAL COUNCIL ? ***
I can’t do justice to Fred C. Dobbs; however, why haven’t America hating AA’s returned to their all perfect motherland?
Liberia in all of its equal splendor awaits them to say nothing of Sierra Leone.
They can still have slaves in some countries in Africa and they can stop blaming whites for their ignorance and crime!
Oblowme and his hateful wife can be the first to leave and they can take their terrorist friends and sympathizers with them.
Good Riddance!
AA’s ARE Americans, who have had to endure and suffer untold injustices, on account of their skin color.
It is wrong.
Even Lincoln understood this…
Obama is corrupt.
Tom Plumb -
Lincoln was our 16th President (1861 - 1865)! That’s 143 years and 27 Presidents ago.
The Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Irish, Jews, Native Americans, Mormons, WOMEN, handicapped, insane, etc. haven’t exactly had a cakewalk at times either.
PERPETUAL VICTIMHOOD IS ANTI-AMERICAN!
Forty years and billions of dollars to AAs for being AAs.
Maybe when their culture values PEOPLE as well as the English language AND EDUCATION, and values learning how to behave in polite society, they won’t feel so slighted.
I taught in Title one schools for 16 years and one thing I can tell you is that educational laziness crosses all genders, races and ages. Those who achieve do so beacuse it is valued at home and is inculcated in the student from an early age. Those who don’t have no motivation to do so. Throwing money at education is not an answer. Education has to be an intrinsic value and at the lower socio-economic levels it is not. Education is a long term goal and at that level, long term goals have no meaning. Immediate gratification is uppermost, based in psrt on a generation who grew up on video games,but also in part on a class of people who only live for today because “who knows about tomorrow?”
I’ve known lots of poor people who value education. And I’ve known AAs who do. I just haven’t seen AAs as a culture value education.
Then when you compare it to most other cultures - well there’s no comparison. First most people from other countries don’t have to hyphenate, but many descendants from Italy, Ireland, Germany, Asia, and India not only value education, but don’t carry on about being victims until you want to barf.
Sadly, I don’t know many kids who don’t play video games.
Well, sometimes money is the problem. California had the finest educational system in the country. Prop 13 passed and sucked all the money out. Now we are something like 49th out of 50 states in per-pupil spending with commensurate test results.
*****A
Agree completely, EDUK8R. I, too, was a Title I teacher for years, now retired.
The success of the hardworking, wanting to learn students had EVERYTHING to do with their homes, and how parents or grandparents encouraged them to study to succeed.
All the money in the world can’t change that.
And I, as a white citizen whose ancestors never owned slaves, am not accountable for their homes.
THIS is why Obama can’t get the “Appalachian” votes (and I hate that the word has now come to mean “racist”). Appalachians are the origninal Scots-Irish settlers who believed in hard work and academic achievement. Their children were NEVER taught to play the victim, or to expect any government to “fix” everything for them.
And here’s the irony: Ayers had the luxury of a very, very rich Daddy during his “rebellion” days in the 60’s. His rich Daddy hired the best and most expensive lawyers to keep his spoiled rich kid out of prison.
I don’t accept that he has one clue how to help poor kids–Black or White–work hard to move up and out.
No, it WAS wrong, and regrettable and a stain upon our national honor. That said, it wasn’t INVENTED in the US. And hardly practiced by anyone in this country now living.
Show me a living person who has been a slave in the US and I’ll buy him a mule.
That said, how long will it be a cause for the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth? Going to bitch about that forty acres and a mule forever?
Got a citation on Circular 13 and Circular 15 to discuss?
(BTW, “Forty acres and a mule,” was promised by William Tecumseh Sherman, USA, NOT Abraham Lincoln. Try a little scholarship here.)
Unless and until one can discuss the differences between Abolitionism and Emancipationism, one is not very well informed on the subject.
Remember: Lincoln only freed slaves in territories over which he was not President at the time.
My ancestors felt pretty strongly that they were getting a screwing by the English crown, so they LEFT Scotland, rather than sit around bitching for a hundred fifty years.
agree….So should we hand back The former Mexican Territories as well or just pay reparations…The only way this ends is to go all the way back to Rome…Welcome to the World Court…
And I thought the “Monster in the Room” was Larry’s wig! Shucks.
reggie -
It’s not a wig. I’ve spoken to him in person. Larry has alot of hair and doesn’t wear it like that anymore.
He doesn’t strike me as a David Cook kind of hair products guy. I think the pic was his Clooney hair phase, which should be reason enough to use a newer pic.
You asked him if it was a wig?
I’ve never asked anyone that, but I didn’t have to because you can tell that it’s his own hair.
It’s easy to tell if someone is wearing a bad rug or if it’s their own hair.
I can usually tell you if someone’s had plastic surgery much less is wearing a rug.
I thought Larry and Pete Rose used the same barber.
I thought they were doing gender studies in education and found that girls learning with other girls and boys learning with boys was a better method of learning especially for boys. Boys were less likely to show off and act up when they had only other boys around them. Both boys and girls were found to do better in math and the sciences when they were taught separately. What happened to those studies?
Feast on this now trolls. It hit on the slow news day for Hillary so you won’t get much mileage out of it. And she did not intend anything and has apologized. Go nuts if you want if it makes you feel better.
By the way it does keep Hillary in the news. The MSM wanted to forget about her. Guess they can’t now this weekend.
Meanwhile we will continue to lobby the DNC on the upcoming rules committee meeting. Obama won’t get enough out of that meeting to shut Hillary out. See you in Denver, trolls!
5/23/2008
Statement from Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton issued the following statement today in Brandon, SD:
“Earlier today I was discussing the Democratic primary history and in the course of that discussion mentioned the campaigns that both my husband and Senator Kennedy waged in California in June 1992 and 1968 and I was referencing those to make the point that we have had nomination primary contests that go into June. That’s a historic fact. The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy and I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that, whatsoever. My view is that we have to look to the past and to our leaders who have inspired us and give us a lot to live up to, and I’m honored to hold Senator Kennedy’s seat in the United States Senate from the state of New York and have the highest regard for the entire Kennedy family.”
Transcript from the Argus-Leader’s editorial board meeting:
HRC: People have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa.
Q: Why?
HRC: I don’t know. I don’t know. I find it curious. Because it is unprecedented in history. I don’t understand it. Between my opponent and his camp and some in the media there has been this urgency to end this. And historically, that makes no sense. So I find it a bit of a mystery.
Q: So you don’t buy the party unity argument?
HRC: I don’t because again I’ve been around long enough.
My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?
We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it. There’s lots of speculation about why it is.
Q: What is your speculation?
I don’t know. I find it curious. And I don’t want to attribute motives or strategies to people because I don’t really know, but it’s a historical curiosity to me.
MEMO TO HRC: STOP apologizing when you fart to windward of Kennedys. They won’t apologize when they piss on YOU!
Agree….Since when is Stating Facts offensive….SHEEEESH ! It’s like the God D*%# N LBJ remark….Jeeeezus I hate this stupid SOCIALIST PC CRAP.
This needs to get to Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Can anyone tell me if there is any way we can stop the DNC and their rigging of this nomination? Can Howard Dean and Donna Brazille be criminally liable in any way? For that matter the rest of their ilk.
she’s apologized.. lets move on..
if you wanna discuss something.. why not discuss the fraud’s statement in the May12th altantic concerning how Israel affects US foreign policy:
HIS WORDS:
“Israel INFECTS US FOREIGN POLICY”
will obama’s paid staff of CNN/MSNBC cover this, NO!
But the repubs will in the general if that arrogant empty suit is the nominee!
He called Israel an Open Sore too.
That’ll win over the Jews in Florida…WAKE UP JEWS ! OBAMA IS NOT YOUR FRIEND !
you wish
It’s over, Lora.
If you keep pushing this, you will cause another backlash AGAINST Obama for over-reacting.
What Obama needs right now is to HEAL the party he has divided.
You aren’t helping him with that.
It is a syrup, isn’t it La?
So his education advisor favors a program that includes slavery reparations. Great.
Sadly only the right-wing press will have the guts to print this. Even the NYT will shy away for fear of being called racist.
If the “Slavery reparations” goes to the school district and not the individual families, the money will be wasted by the “experts” like Ayers and Dohrn, especially in a corrupt city like Chicago.
The actual teachers in the Title I classrooms will never see a dime.
See the game?
And How many of those firms will be run by CRACKERS..sheeesh !
Why are we/they giving the HRC comment about June primaries and RFK so much air space and so little to the issue here of educational policy and addressing how we as a nation come up with solutions to the poor progress of AAs in our inner city public schools? Why are we not studying the success of Asian-Americans, who were sent to concentration camps in this country, had their property taken from them and have suffered cultural defamation but have high achievement rates in our public schools? Why do we focus on failure when we have before us similar populations with very different outcomes.
The national press is a disgrace. How are we ever to take them seriously about anything again? And the Obama camp’s faux outrage is downright exploitation of the Kennedy clan’s tragedy. His people should have labeled it another distraction — they’re good at catching those.
Americans don’t elect presidents who like to play the victim, constantly whining about irrelevant things.
They see it as weakness.
Social problems are solved bottom-up, not top-down. The Corporate State and New World Orderlies do not have an interest in the common weal.
I have been watching East Bay real estate prices continue to rise in areas with low crime and excellent schools where both whites and blacks are minorities.
When whites wake up to the fact that the Asians are outperforming us, are we going to piss and moan about having been:
* denied access to excellence because we
arewere [this is about to change] adversity-challenged;* deprived of character-building experience by our economic security;
* disadvantaged - hobbled and held down by decadence (too much of more than enough) for a couple of generations?
Are we going to complain that these bastards are prospering at our expense?
Probably.
I’m convinced this is a GOP/Republican sponsored website, listen to Rush or Hannity and the same talking points appear here every day.
Beware this is part of the GOP machine…
I should have done my homework on Larry Johnson a little more… dang.
mitchman -
What do Rush and Hannity talk about every day? Do they consult you? How do you find time to listen to them? Don’t you work? Who do you like better - Rush or Sean?
If you don’t like it here why do you come back day after day, month after month to say stupid shit that isn’t on point?
Do you listen to Rush and Sean in the basement before you go into your Mother’s closet and make out with your Oblowme poster or do you just hear their voices in your typical Oblowme loving head?
BTW Rush and Hannity and every other conservative is extolling the virtues of the oil execs and how little they make.
So like supporting Oblowme, you’re also wrong about this being a:
Piss off you lying sack of shit - mitchman
Well, even if it were, I’d still come here every day, because we have intelligent discourse here, not Orwellian propaganda.
And I’ll turn into a proud Republican if Obama is the nominee, because at least the Republicans love America.
If you want to insult us here, call us Obama supporters. Being called Republican is now a compliment.
57 States
Illinois is further from Kentucky than Arkansas is.
10,000 died in Kansas tornado.
The main language of Afghanistan is Arabic.
The main language of Brazil is Spanish.
The Great Lakes are in Oregon.
1965 “Bloody Sunday” in Selma happened before 1961.
etc.
- The World According to Barack ‘Dubya’ Obama. Just what the USA needs. Another pol who only knows fundraising and backroom dealing.
Oh, I forgot.
Obama gives a good speech.
Perhaps he’ll choose a teleprompter for VP.
LOL!! A teleprompter for VP, Love it!
bbbbbbut….I thought Uncle Jerry gets VP…..
Larry and Susan
please…CHECK OUT THIS LINK!!
http://www.millionsforreparations.com/theologicalresolution.html
note that obama’s church held member meetings
on writing this reparations.
was obama there?
did both barack and michelle lend their legal expertise to writing it?
Steve-Nice discussion of a difficult topic. After my PhD I worked as a program evalutor in Detroit public schools. The problems, the issues are not going to be solved with programs discussing self image, etc. I had lunch with a friend last week [she is the CEO of an AIDS agency in downtown Detroit] and we talked at length about Albert Shanker and the school wars in New York and how it relates to the Detroit schools. The program you described associated with Ayers and Obama, Steve, doesn’t begin to address issues of education. Programs such as that set education back, by failing to honestly identify the problems and seek solutions. People do want education to succeed. But the AA community must be held accountable for their role in the failure of the system. Nothing can move forward until parents, students, as well as teachers and taxpayers want excellence in education. Citing racism as a justification for rejecting the educational system is a no-win situation for everyone.
Hmmmm…..This kinda reminds me of the EBONICS DEBACLE….chuckle…
Truth is Our country is spiraling into the grip of ZENOPHOBIA…and this is increasing world wide….I’m just sayin’….We either unite or not..I don’t see how Obama is a uniter…Except uniting Americans against his encroaching Fascism
OBAMA AND THE ‘FORK SALUTE’
Obama who is nothing but a catamite of Ayers
and other state/foundation sponsored terrorists
networks of which we must consider the “Manson Family” as part of the stew.
Berhnadine Dohrn is the terrorist who came up
with the ‘Fork Salute’ an insane gesture of
solidarity with the perpetrators of the ‘Tate-La Bianca’ murders where a fork was used in the
ritual blood orgy of the ’sacrificed’ victims.
Dohrn said that she admired the ‘Manson’ methods
and objectives which were an attempt to create
a race war and overall apocolyptic despair and
chaos.
Obama and his elite terrorist minions want to put the ‘fork’ in Hillary and the American People, including African American’s so his elite sponsors
can continue their feast, but now under the cover
of their politically correct catamite.
Here it goes again: a special interest group trying to justify their existence, and is in yet another money grab to do so.
Then on top of it, they use another term: “Educational debt”. Which means, “We want another handout, suckers!”
Worse, even the author agrees that this debt needs to be paid.
At one time I agreed that Affirmative Action was needed, a handup approach to get minorities in the door. What I learned that changed my mind though, was that instead of getting in based on academic achievement, the system lowered standards so certain groups without academic merit can get in.
Meanwhile, across the aisle in Asian communities, there was a push to keep them out higher education (especially in California), not because of lower standards, but because they aced even the HIGHER standards, and outperforming even Whites.
It doesn’t jive folks.
The MOST qualified should get those choice seats at choice colleges. The MOST qualified are those, that instead of playing around in their youth — and not even bothering to crack a book, but use crack instead — slaved over their academics, and aced not only the exams, all other requirements.
Look what they’re doing to our school system today. In the metro Atlanta area, there’s a pilot program TO PAY STUDENTS TO LEARN. It shows that there’s not really a learning or resource divide out there — as Blacks from the 19th century onwards showed that if you took your education seriously, you could still get into college [Morehouse and Paine Colleges existed since the mid 19th century, folks].
The problem isn’t the lack of “getting there”, or there wasn’t colleges around for Blacks EVEN BEFORE JIM CROW, it’s the culture of under-achievement and handouts.
Look around and ask what the Black community sees as their heros and it’s value. It’s not the “house niggers” like Booker T. Washington and Washington Carver or even Thurgood Marshall, it’s 50 cents and any “kewl” dude in their bass thumping Mecedes with those gold chains, and “hos”.
You can’t help a community to lift up their lot, if they continue to put themselves down. No handout in the world will help them, as it MUST come from within their own culture and society.
This is a main ideological difference between liberals and conservatives. Where liberals believe the “State” can right wrongs, and especially with the help of money. Where conservatives believe you must not only pull yourself up, your community by hard work and dedication — the “State” isn’t sugardaddy, and money can’t buy braincells and self-pride. For liberals, everyone is equal in intelligence so everyone will benefit with throwing money around; for conservatives, they don’t see everyone as equal — as an 18 year-old Olympic athlete is going to trump a 18 year-old field and track player, as the Olympic athlete trained harder; and like Lance Armstrong, may have even been born with an advantage of unusually larger lungs and heart — some things are just inheritant.
Sigh.
I walked into Kindergarten able to read, write and was mildly numerate…couldn’t Divide yet, but had the rest of it down pat.
My advantage: my mother and father gave a shit. And, my mother worked, part-time, outside the home (commercial illustrator) while my father pounded nails.
No, “Country Day School,” for this little Scots-American. SAT’s were, nonetheless, a single point shy of 1500 combined, in 1966. Charge it off to a single Jewish grandparent with a brain the size of an asteroid.
School was boring as hell for me, all the way through my Sophomore year at university, when I was sent to the Southeast Asia Conference for a couple of seasons.
Given the degree to which all the curricula have been Dumbed Down (my daughter has an Engineering degree, cum laude, 1991, and I swear the kid can’t fold a road map) it surprises me not a whit that the Indians and Chinese are eating our lunch.
But they can’t touch us for sheer Jingoism, can they?
I find it so sad that a society that has fought for equality of the races and sexes can still be so mind numbingly ignorant. I abhor the thought that slavery even exhisted, but it did. However, I find it unthinkable that politicians would try to equate poor educations in 2008 to something that happened so long ago. Regardless of race, we as parents, are ultimately responsible for our child’s education. It is our jobs to encourage, assist, and enforce as needed to ensure our children (the future of our society) apply themselves and are educated. Race or even income level doesn’t determine a child’s education, it’s their drive to learn. Do children always want to do their part? No. As parents we have to hold our children accountable for the part they play in allowing themselves to be educated.
[...] Diamond, The “Monster in the Room”: Does Obama Support Reparations?, NoQuarterUSA, May 24, [...]