Using Public Schools To Make Sure White Supremacy Continues

One of the things I pay a lot of attention to in the parish where I live is the fifty-year long process of refusing to racially integrate the public schools so that every student will get the same quality of education. By this I mean adequate books, libraries, equipment, fully trained culturally competent teachers and administrators representing all ethnic groups in the region, and school disciplinary policies that reflect a commitment to embracing all children to maximize their potential as future citizens. This is not currently happening and has at no point ever happened here, as 5th Circuit Judge Ivan Lemell will attest.

It's not reassuring to discover that we're not the only ones. And, unfortunately, it's not encouraging that we're hearing more about what is being called the "re-segregation" of the public school system nationally. I have long since realized that the public being aware of stupid, mean-spirited, classist, sexist, and White Supremacist practices and policies will do exactly nothing to fix social problems until that same public understands that these practices and policies are causing and will continue to cause problems for all of us in several ways.

Ya basta! It is enough!

A friend of mine, watching a special on Martin Luther King, Jr. the other day with her oldest grandson, was startled when he turned to her and asked point blank, "If Martin Luther King died so I can have equal rights, why am I still treated differently in school because I'm Black?"

This child doesn't need a blog post to tell him what his daily experience of life is. And the look of pain in his eyes wounded her so badly, she could hardly discuss the conversation.

The story reminded me of the statement the Zapatistas released when they first rose up against their own government's collusion in signing the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994: "We have nothing to lose, absolutely nothing, no decent roof over our heads, no land, no work, poor health, no food, no education, no right to freely and democratically choose our leaders, no independence from foreign interests, and no justice for ourselves or our children. But we say enough is enough! We are the descendants of those who truly built this nation, we are millions of dispossessed, and we call upon all our brethren to join our crusade..."

The boy's question also reminded me of a post written by Dana Goldstein about school de-segregation and the federal stimulus dollars. Goldstein suggests that fancy federally-funded urban magnet schools are the answer to the problems she so well describes. I don't agree. That may work in Connecticutt, but it hasn't worked most places because "magnet" programs (full of White kids) are typically run like separate schools with different buses, different lunch times, different entrances, and so forth (to make the programs fit the guidelines, while also being palatable to White parents who really want the benefits without having to actually have their children interact with...you know...those children).

Still, the post does draw attention to damning research on the fairness of schools for children of color, something Jonathan Kozol has beaten fairly to death in his many books and articles on what he termed Savage Inequality in one title. Goldstein also links to a new report by UCLA's Civil Rights Project that outlines why Black children are more likely to be attending a majority Black school now than they were in 1988. Sigh.

Martin Luther King, Jr., may have had a dream about little Black children and little White children, but so far, big White parents are managing to make sure those children meet as little as possible under positive circumstances. But then the U.S. Supreme Court only mandated full and speedy de-segregation of all public schools in this country as a matter of constitutional rights in 1956. U.S. citizens of color can't expect to have their constitutional rights recognized and protected -- just because they're U.S. citizens -- in only fifty-four years. Right?

A Call to Action

Sometime last fall, I was making my rounds of the blogosphere (something I've been embarrassingly remiss in doing over the past year), and I came across a post that raised some questions I haven't been able to shake. It was written by Nezua, the Unapologetic Mexican, and while it's taken me a bit of time to get back to it for a response I fully intended to write months ago, I am here and stirred and, after this weekend, more convinced than ever that I must do so.

What caused me to drag out my notes (yes, I do, on occasion, make notes as I read something I know I'm going to have to respond to) and then re-read the post because the notes no longer made sense even to me, was a statement made by a local minister of some renown and great influence as he briefly addressed a group of Black leaders and assorted others at a meeting this weekend. What he said -- quite strongly and more than once in a short span -- was: "We are not activists!"

The "we" he was referring to was a newly formed Interdenominational African-American Ministerial Alliance that has elected him President (a major honor and, from what I can gather, the by far and away most appropriate choice by the organization). The group was formed to address a couple of things. First, the long-standing strangle-hold on all the power and the money in this parish by an elite of White families and individuals since reconstruction or before. And second, the accepted practice by a few Black ministers of knowing which side their bread was buttered on. Business as usual in this parish has long-since come to be represented by a stand-off involving the White power-structure on one side of the tracks and the mostly poverty-stricken African-American community on the other.

But four years ago, a woman named Pat Morris accepted the presidency of the local branch of the NAACP and more or less simultaneously kick-started a renewed commitment to see a court decision from 1979 that was supposed to de-segregate the schools actually de-segregate the schools. Understand, this is about considerably more than de-segregating the schools. In actuality, it's about leveling the playing field by giving children of color in this parish the same education and therefore ultimate access to the same opportunities as White kids. And it's about identifying and redirecting multiple millions of dollars that have either been routed disproportionately to "White" schools or somewhere else entirely. This is a slap in the face to every red-blooded redneck in the region. You're offended by the word "redneck"? Well, I'm offended by the fact that this court order has never been implemented and tens of thousands of U.S. citizens raised in these parts have been hung out to dry for an additional thirty years as if at the end of figurative nooses so that they not only cannot compete with their White counterparts, but worse, believe it's their fault and they don't deserve better.

Anyway, when Morris jacked up the local school board and announced that it was a new day hereabouts, nobody initially took much notice. School administrators didn't feel threatened. Local elected officials didn't look up from their paperwork. The newspapers ignored her. And even the Black community leaders barely shrugged. But eventually, she virtually single-handedly raised enough money to get the lawyer who won the case in the first place to petition successfully for the re-opening of the case (something that has not to date been accomplished anywhere else in the country).

An uneasy ripple made its way across the parish. Hush money was proffered and accepted by some. Not by Pat Morris, though the amount reached $50,000 at one point. Her captains were offered dreams come true, but they also refused. And she put out the word: "I am not for sale, nor are those at my hand."

Even a college degree and some grad school couldn't get her a job flipping burgers anywhere in the parish -- not that she has time to work for pay anyway with all the work she does literally daily keeping tabs on ever unfolding injustices in one school or another, up-dating the website she maintains (that's up to half a million hits a month now), and staying on top of the on-going court proceedings in New Orleans. Her basic needs from month to month either go unmet or get met by friends who manage to keep her head barely above water and not all the time. Why she doesn't give up is a mystery to most. But she hasn't.

And so the threats began. Clandestine and bitter phone calls threatening her life in various ways backed up by occasional attempts. Loosened lug nuts on all her tires at the same time, for example, only discovered because of a flat tire in her driveway one morning. And now sugar in her gas tank, not once, but twice. The threats and harrassment have escalated over time and the pressure of it all takes a toll on Morris' health. She has started quoting Martin Luther King's mountaintop speech about having seen the Promised Land and after two years of following her around, doing what I can to help, I've decided she couldn't stop if she wanted to. And I understand this personally. Which is why I follow her around. And why she lets me.

Morris and a handful of die-hard supporters -- including a legal team with serious flaws, but smart minds, thick skins, and strong backbones -- have, thus far prevailed somehow. Part of it is that we are on the side of right. And part of it is that the time has come. But the opposition is monied and powerful, entrenched, unapologetic and pretty desperate to keep the shadows where they are for a variety of reasons.

More recently though, the aforementioned Ministerial Alliance formed, elected their President and released the news that they were going to work together to implement change across the board, that they were committed to justice and fairness for all in the parish and would seek to see the African-American community organize in its own best interests -- finally. When I watched the news video of the announcement, I was thrilled. For them. For the community, both White and Black. For the children, particularly the children of color. For all of us.

And then, Saturday, the Alliance President made his statements about not being "activists."

I knew where it was coming from and, though surprised to hear it, was not critical of his attempt to clarify their intent. I'm sure phone calls and visits and offers have been made. I'm sure sweet deals appeared in forms that were -- on some level, at least -- acceptable (not that they were necessarily accepted). And I'm sure there were some threats implied wherever a weakness might most easily receive one.

One of those threats is usually the threat to be seen as a "troublemaker." As less than reasonable, less than stable, less than worthy of respect and, worst of all, less than acceptable to the greater community. In other words, as an "activist" rather than a "minister."

Ministers have always been the power figures in the Black community. It's why Martin Luther King, Jr., let himself be talked into studying for the ministry instead of following his first inclination to be a lawyer. And certainly there are those who criticized King resoundingly for speaking out against the war in Vietnam and for getting himself arrested. But, if you look into the Bible (since we're talking here about Christian ministers), almost everybody whose story appears there was way, way out on front street in the era in which he, or even she, lived. And what does activism mean other than taking action, doing something rather than just talking about it?

Which brings me back to the Unapologetic Mexican's post. In it, Nezua asks, "Do you ever feel we are not even having the right conversations?" And I thought when I read it, "Yes!" And he goes on at some length to articulate in grand fashion many of the ideas with which so many of those of us who work for justice struggle.

He talks about the "tiny revolts" inside ourselves so necessary to moving forward, what Bob Marley called "emancipating our minds from mental slavery" because "only we can free ourselves."

"What behaviors do I maintain in thought and action that keep me rooted in one place? Or moving too slow or in the wrong direction? What tiny revolt is needed in my own life?" asked Nezua last fall. It is so easy to see what's wrong -- out there -- and so hard to decide what to do about it and how to get it done without first beginning to do what some of my friends call "the inside job." There is often such a sense of hopelessness when speaking truth to Power or putting my personal fears aside (including the fear that I'll be ridiculed or lose the opportunity to do something else I think is important).

Nezua writes how thankless and ineffectual voting, writing letters to editors or even blogging often seem to be. "Visualizing peace" hasn't brought it, he notes. "Taking shorter showers" won't solve global warming, he suggests. So what combination of actions (because it is only action -- of some kind -- that will accomplish anything) should we try? Even when I speak (and I do so as often as I can), I am urging to action, trying to inspire action. But what action?

Nezua suggests that we need to unleash a virus, a virulent positive undermining correctional therapy that will eat the ugliness and the injustice and the selfishness and the brutality and replace it all with...well...their opposites. But what would this virus look like and how in the world (literally, since it's becoming increasingly apparent when we connect the dots that the survival of the whole human race is at stake here) could it be developed and by whom?

And here's where I throw in my two cents, I guess (or maybe one cent, because it's not a very thoroughly crafted thought yet). I think one crucially needed action (or activism, if you will) is to demonstrate to the young how to walk with integrity, which requires standing (an action) for what one believes to be true. The youth are angry and frustrated and heartsick over the shape things are in. And not just poor youth either. So many of them have watched their elders accept the status quo even when the status quo is desperately damaging to our communities, our society, our environment, and our future well-being as a human race. And they don't respect that. And they don't know what to do about it. Because so much damage has already been done, they're not sure there's any possibility to move in a more positive direction. And they need people to follow.

I have a twenty-eight-year-old daughter. She makes three times what I do in a field she loves. She lives a good life and she tries, I truly believe, to be a good person. She's kind and she's intelligent and she works hard and she cares about pretty much all the right stuff. But she's not sure, she tells me, that the human race has a future because of the decisions and the actions of those who have gone before her.

What am I supposed to tell her? That as long as her life is okay, nothing else matters? That if she just keeps doing the next right thing herself, nobody else is important? That the choices and the decision-making of the Powers-That-Be are unaddressable by the 98% of us who are not making those choices and decisions even when they determine the state of our own lives and the lives of our children?

I cannot sprinkle pixie dust on her world. I cannot wave a magic wand and turn this place we live into a utopia. But I can live in such a credible way that she will have some hope to cling to in the darkness of our present age. I can model for her a kind of humanity I would hope she would want to espouse for herself, one that would reassure her deepest sense of rightness in a world gone wrong. I can demonstrate for her -- and all the children everywhere -- how to invest in a future that would bring to fruition what I believe we are capable of as individuals and as a collective whole.

And all of those are actions. It is this "activism," in fact, that is my legacy to her and to every manifestation of life on this planet we call Earth. It is this activism I dedicate to all who live now and all who came before us and died that we might serve our purpose here more fully. And it is this beautiful activism I offer in partial payment of the debt I owe for the gift of another day of life.

A favorite quotation often repeated by those who press for change dates back to a member of the British Parliament in the 1700's, Sir Edmond Burke: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." What most of us don't realize is that Burke -- whose most famous published treatis was written against the French Revolution -- has been called "the father of conservatism." In other words, those who champion the entrenchment of Power over People know perfectly well the undeniable importance of "activism." When are enough of the rest of us going to grasp to our bosoms this critical -- nay, crucial -- truth?

Readin', Writin', 'Rithmetic and Racism

As some of My Faithful Readers know, one of the things I think a lot about and have focused on fairly continually since I arrived in Louisiana is what's happening in this parish’s public schools where children of color are concerned. I realize – and mention often – that White Supremacy is the default position in this country from coast to coast, but I live here and currently, the only open public school de-segregation case in the country is alive and well right here in River City.

It’s not the case alone, however, that keeps me so focused. Rather, it’s what I see happening to our children when they get to me at the college level that holds my gaze and makes me willing to get more and more and more involved in the process of trying to raise consciousness about this here. Or anywhere else it’s applicable, for that matter.

I say “our” children despite the way I look because, for starters, I have a bi-racial daughter who just turned twenty-nine a couple of days ago and that’s been a real adventure from time to time (no matter where we were living). But she’s made the journey from being on welfare as a child to having an apartment in Manhattan and I almost never worry any more that the socially-constructed political notion of “race” could yet rear its ugly head in her life, even though her significant other is a European-American man and some folks still have a real problem with that.

I say “our” children, however, because I see them daily, standing in the doorway of my office at the university. African-American parents and leaders in this community count on people like me to catch them as they’re crashing through the gates of Hell, so many of them so ill-prepared educationally, psychologically and emotionally for the task before them.

They grin and shrug because they don’t know what to do. The schools many of them attended are calculated to produce exactly that result. They make sure children of color cannot compete with children educated in other, better schools. Equipment, activities, enrichment programs, even the physical structures are invariably given short shrift as compared to those schools that are visibly committed to providing a different experience. One hardly has to be an expert to recognize it. A quick drive-by screams the collusion. And watching the young people entering or leaving the buildings at the start or the end of the day will demonstrate in no uncertain terms to which group the differences have been applied.

Some of the teachers and administrators at the less well funded institutions are highly trained and skilled. They are often talented, adept and committed to their task. But it’s hard to hang in there when the setting is depressed and depressing, when the basics are not provided, when the children are likely to be struggling with issues of poverty and a process of socialization that teaches them to see themselves as incapable, inappropriate and unworthy of success. And, whether we like to admit it or not, many of the teachers and administrators over these kids are absolutely convinced that they really are incapable and they communicate it both subtly and overtly all day long and for as long as it takes to make the child buckle.

By the time the students get to me, they cry.

My colleagues ask, “How many of those kids are you failing? You’ve got them in your office crying all day long.” But I’m not failing them. I’m telling them the truth. They’ve been robbed. They’ve been the butt of a bad, mean-spirited joke. It’s a set-up, an okey-doke. They’ve been infected with the virus of internalized oppression and it’s so wide-spread and effective and ignored, nobody’s told them.

The result? Only one African-American student in six, by current numbers, will graduate from the university where I teach.

“My baby’s in college,” a local parent will boast proudly.

“My grandbaby’s a college man,” I hear reported at community meetings.

But the bulk of the students of color on our campus are freshmen. They appear every fall, dressed to the nines by and large, hanging with each other, eating Popeye’s chicken at lunch and swilling frappacinos just like the others. But the gay abandon is a little desperate, a little studied; the laughter is a little forced. Because they’re scared they’re not going to make it. They’re scared to tell their folks or anybody else what they secretly fear. They’re even afraid to face their fears themselves. Because they’ve been taught to believe they’re inferior and their greatest fear is that this is the truth. That college is not “for them,” that they do not deserve and should not expect to make it. And I’m confident that this is not unusual among most majority White college campuses in the U.S.

I look out into the classroom and I see them taking notes. Or not. Sometimes I see them staring into space or at the desk, hundreds of years of sorrow in their eyes. Sometimes I see them nod off with the strain of staying awake after working to all hours at night to pay for tomorrow’s gas for their forty-minute commute. Sometimes I see them texting each other, maintaining the relationships that keep the fears at bay, that create the illusion that all is well because there’s a plan in place for the evening that will help them forget for a few hours the glaring grin on the face of a society in which they are only marginalized characters at best.

A young Black man taking one of my classes his first semester on the campus finally allowed the tears to stream down his cheeks mid-conversation in my office. I had just finished explaining to him that he could do it or he wouldn’t be there. I said, “It isn’t a personal problem. You’ve been taught to believe you can’t do it, so you'll stumble, so you won’t try, so all the goodies will go to folks who look like me. And then they can blame you for what you don’t achieve.”

I explained the in’s and out’s of campus life. How to take notes, how to study for a test, how important it is to communicate to teachers (though many may be racist to one extent or another), how to juggle time and set priorities, and above all, how to find and identify allies among the student and faculty populations. And then he started to weep.

When I asked him why, he replied, “I never believed there was hope.”

This particular young man is half-way through his junior year now. The last time I saw him, striding across campus, head high, I said by way of greeting, “Hey! How ya doin’?”

“Excellently!” he shot back, grinning, as he charged off to his next class.

But I can’t catch them all.

The result of this process to socialize children to see themselves as inferior manifests itself tidily in the U.S. Census figures. African-Americans in this parish average half the income of people that look like me.

So, somewhere in this parish tonight, a young woman will put her children to bed hungry because she was under-prepared to provide for them. Somewhere in this parish tonight, a young man will risk his life to sell drugs on a corner because he thinks there’s no other path for him, even if the one he’s on is guaranteed to send him to Angola – maybe for life without parole. Somewhere in this parish tonight, a woman will put on make-up and go to a club because being baptized in lights and music is the only way she knows to forget the bleak existence that constitutes her life (and besides she needs help with her light bill). Somewhere in this parish tonight, a child will sit on his bed trying to figure out how to get the supplies he needs to produce the project due at school on Monday, but which his family can’t afford to buy.

The week rarely goes by that I don’t hear at least one African-American student say, “Well, it’s always been this way and it’s always going to be this way.” I counter that it’s only been this way for about five hundred years and nothing is ever going to be any particular way forever. Social change is constant and inevitable. It may make things worse, instead of better. It may move us in directions we don’t want to go. But change will come. And if we want to see a future we can be happy about, we need to plant the seeds that will produce it.

Those with the power to define and make the rules in this parish have made it clear that this is no accident and they intend to continue these practices. On a grander scale, the tack we take in the U.S. that denies the existence of this problem has the same exact effect as if we cold-bloodedly intended for it to continue. So what are we going to do about it?

We have the ability to demand that life in this parish and in the United States changes whether those with the power to define want it to or not. These are precarious times economically and many of us are doing our own struggling. I drive a car I’m embarrassed to get into. But I’d be even more embarrassed to face our children on my campus not having done everything I can to keep them from falling off the cliff from which they have been pushed.

School's Out (Of Whack)

I've mentioned from time to time the re-opened school de-segregation case in the parish where I've lived for the past two years. I'm still neck-deep in this effort and considering that the original court order in the case was issued in 1979, I'm not anticipating a major shift any time soon. Apparently, the gears of the Courts (even the Federal Courts) in Louisiana grind slooooowly indeed.

I certainly don't want to run the risk of putting my two cents so far out there as to compromise the best interests of the case, which is why I don't discuss it more often. And besides, there's a continually updated website that gets half a million hits a month, so it's not necessary for me to chime in. But there's an issue that's been unfolding of late that I think has more general applicability and that's what this post is about.

What you need to know about the case to understand what I'm going to write is that the defense (the parish school board and its appointed administrators) have drafted a plan that will supposedly de-segregate the schools enough to satisfy the Court's order. It should be obvious to even the unpracticed eye that anybody who unapologetically maintains a system demonstrated to damage the psyches of children (of whatever skin tone) for more than thirty years after they were ordered by a Court to change their ways is NOT going down without a fight. And fight they have.

First of all, they've drafted a plan so full of bells and whistles even an expert might miss the many ways the "new" is really old. For one thing, The Plan is heavily imbued with "magnet schools" that we are encouraged to believe will pull little White children from all over the parish to avail themselves of these special opportunities. Skip the fact that magnet schools have not been demonstrated to de-segregate schools successfully anywhere else. Skip the fact that they built into The Plan conditional acceptance criteria such as that those who qualify for free or reduced lunches (many, if not most, of the children of color) will be last on the list for inclusion in the magnet schools or precluded from entrance at all. And skip that, in any case, magnet schools still lock in a dual system that marks some children as worthy of "better" and some as worthy of "less," a designation that has always been made graphically clear to African-Americans of every age for five hundred years to the present in every area of our society.

And then, of course, my personal favorite aspect of this unmistakeable boondoggle is the simple fact that they have caaaarefully left "certain" schools either untouched or even Whiter than they were before (as if that would be explainable in any type of reasonable terms). One of these schools, already 94% White would actually become 97% White under The Plan...! And apparently, we're expected not to notice that this is the case when -- ostensibly -- the whole point of this debacle is to de-segregate. the. schools. Their excuse: that by law a "de-segregation plan" doesn't actually have to de-segregate ALL the schools or in this case, the schools where the little kiddies' Whiteness is already being most protected intact.

The Court, as might be expected, has asked both sides to consider what a "settlement" of the case would look like, which sounded to me like, "How little would you be willing to accept and still call it enough?" I, needless to say, wrote "Justice?" on my legal pad and the lawyer scribbled back, "That's why there are Appellate Courts." But why, after thirty years -- and fully fifty-five years after Brown v. the Board of Education -- should we be discussing "settlement" at all? In a just society, the men and women who've unapologetically maintained a racist system of relegating Black children to inferior schools to make sure they eventually "prove" their own inferiority belong in jail! I'm just saying is all.

Anyway, none of this, odious as it may be, is the real topic of this post. It is rather that the plaintiffs (who are lobbying to see implemented a fairer system of education) have somehow gotten off on a jag of pressing the Court to make comprehensive, state-of-the-art vocational schools part of The Plan. Now, on the surface, this would seem to be a no-brainer. Why not have vocational schools for all those students who, for whatever reason, "choose" not to go to college? (And the stats, of course, document that few of the youth in our parish opt to do the latter.) What bothers me about this, however, is that I see only too clearly how this can be used by the jerks who put this racist system in place back in the covered wagon days to keep Black youth (and even poor White youth) from taking the only track guaranteed to offer them a decent life in the future.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not invested in the idea that everybody wants to go to college. For example, I didn't. Or at least I didn't have a vision for myself that included college once it was made clear to me that I wouldn't get "one red cent" for college because "women are for sex and cooking." (I kid you not. In those words.) It took me twenty years to get over than one. And even then, I didn't enroll because I wanted to. I enrolled because it became apparent to me that I wouldn't be able to get a job good enough to support two children without a college degree of some kind. And that was in 1986.

The fact is that the United States has a number of values on which it operates as a society. One is White Supremacy, of course. And one, as I just explained, involves the Patriarchy. But another is a practice sociologists call "credentialism," which means requiring formal educational "credentials" for better jobs. And believe you me, they're not talking about high school diplomas or vocational school certificates any more.

When my father graduated with his Bachelor's Degree in the 1950's, it really meant something because people could still get a good job with a high school diploma. Hell, I myself filled great, highly responsible positions in my twenties and early thirties as only a high school grad. But during the 1980's, when we went from being a manufacturing economy to being a service-oriented economy, things changed. Not only did you need a college degree to get a "decent" job, but those jobs didn't pay enough to cover the bills even if you did have a degree. It didn't have anything to do with what you learned in school. It had to do with that little piece of paper. And today, the process is not moving toward vocational schools. It's moving toward Master's degrees.

I tell my students -- many of whom are struggling as the first college students ever in their families, many of whom are holding down full-time jobs while going to college, a ridiculous number of whom already got shellshocked in Iraq two or three times so they could go to college -- that they're not wrong. They don't have to want to do this. They need to do it. And when I tell my African-American students that Black men are four times more likely to be unemployed than White men at every educational level, I tell them that this just makes their college degree that much more crucial. In fact, in this parish, while European-American per capita income annually is over $20,000, African-American per capita income annually is under $10,000.

Not very pretty, is it?

And yes, it's possible for people to make a living wage with some trades. But that doesn't mean that a certificate from a vocational school is automatically going to put you in those jobs, assuming those jobs remain in place. At ten per cent unemployment -- and rising -- why do we think that there are any magic answers? The bulk of the tracks in vocational training do not provide a living wage in a country where a full-time, minimum wage job will bring in a whopping $237 a week after taxes. And that's assuming that the jobs don't fall to technological advancements or go to people with college degrees who are going to become "over-qualified," but increasingly desperate as the economy gets worse.

But if a well-organized and fully entrenched team of White racists recognize anything, it's how to play both ends against the middle and get what you wanted in the first place. So they're gonna jump on this vocational school bandwagon like, well, White on rice. And when the dust settles, thousands upon thousands of young people -- most particularly African-American -- will be "tracked" into vocational programs with promises that they'll be easier and faster and get them good money and that college probably isn't "for" them, anyway. (I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard a young man or woman of color say this to me since I arrived in Louisiana. White kids don't say it. Now, why is that?)

Am I trying to push college on a bunch of underprepared children with no self-esteem and horrific work ethics and no vision for themselves or their futures? Well, what do you think? I have to teach these kids. I watch some of them crash and burn (educationally, psychologically, emotionally, and sometimes even physically). I watch some hanging by their fingertips somehow course after course. And I spend literally more time in my office trying to keep individual students from falling through the gates of hell than I do in the classroom. So what is my point?

That -- and I really want to break into capital letters here -- a LOT more children would opt for and be successful in college if they were prepared in schools that gave them a solid basic education. They don't need bells and whistles. They don't need gimmicks. They need teachers who give a shit about them, who believe in them, who are NOT themselves racist (especially without knowing it). They need admininstrators who are educators themselves, highly trained in the challenges that have developed because of their lack in the past and committed to spending money on quality education for all children rather than on inflated salaries for administrators, and who hold teachers responsible, not for front-loading to a standardized exam, but for turning children into learners. Believe me, this is NOT the stretch we're told it is by the racist Powers-That-Be.

Maybe we do need a community college level vocational school or two in this parish to pick up the slack for the thousands of Black and poor White young people who've already been hung out to dry by this school system. But the answer to our greater dilemma -- on-going institutionalized oppression in the name of racism -- will not be addressed and eradicated in this way. And giving the parish school board a get-out-of-jail-free card is NOT my idea of a law suit well won.

77% of the White people over 25 in this parish have a high school diploma (which is something like the national average), while only 55% of the Black residents over 25 are high school graduates. Poor White kids aside, because this is, after all, a racial de-segregation case, suggesting that Black kids "need" vocational schools because they don't "want" to go to college is just one more verse in the same old racist school song.

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NOTE: Last night, after writing this post, I was talking with Albert "Shaka" Woodfox (one of the Angola 3) on the telephone and before I even got into what my post was about, he volunteered: "The two primary tactics defendants use in trying to avoid school de-segregation are, first of all, vocational schools and then, magnet schools." Why am I not surprised?