According to the Courant, West Hartford town officials are scrambling to come up with a “solution” to the problem of severely racially imbalanced elementary schools. The town was put on notice by the State of Connecticut that remedial measures of some kind are necessary because there is a greater than 25% discrepancy between the percentage of minority students in the school district (now at 36%) and the student populations of Smith and Charter Oak elementary schools (70% and 81% respectively).
These schools have already been designated as magnet schools in town and that seems to be the primary focus of official discussions about how to shift these numbers in order to avoid racially isolated schools. However, the Courant article points out one of the reasons for the failure of the magnet school concept in this case. Minority parents who are moving to other parts of West Hartford are electing to send their kids to Smith and Charter Oak precisely because they are considered more diverse and more welcoming to students of color. This should give the all white school board and town council reason to pause.
Right now the focus of the discussion is entirely on ramping up the magnet school qualifications of Smith and Charter Oak – including one proposal for tearing down Charter Oak and spending $45 million to rebuild it as a newer. better magnet. Building better school facilities is always a good idea but in this case the motivation – more white parents will want to send their kids – turns the equation upside down. Officials are treating the problem of school segregation as something that must be solved by appeasing whites not by providing optimal educational opportunities for students of color. And they are ignoring the message that parents of color are sending: the majority white elementary schools in the town are not welcoming places for their kids.
It is ironic that the school board recently voted to cut out the one (part time) position in the district whose job it was to facilitate communicatons between latino parents and educators, while some are discussing spending millions to recruit white students for these schools.
The road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. No doubt the school board wants to see students of color getting equal access to educational opportunities. But it needs to consider whether there is good reason that the majority white elementary schools in West Hartford are regarded as not welcoming to students of color.
Filed under: Fighting oppression
IMHO, every discussion about the economic crisis needs to be framed as “for whom.”
Light at the end of the tunnel …
for whom?
Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said the end of the recession was in sight, and on the same day, Microsoft, long a symbol of the strength of the U.S. economy, which until this year had never had any formal layoffs, announced plans to eliminate 3,000 jobs and said more cuts could be on the way.
Both developments, though seemingly in conflict, indicate that in many ways this recession is playing out in a typical fashion, with job losses continuing to add up even as the economy shows signs of having turned a corner. As a lagging indicator of an economic slowdown, unemployment typically starts out relatively low at the beginning of a recession, increasing as the downturn deepens, and not peaking until after the recession is officially over. After opening his remarks on Tuesday with a positive perspective, Bernanke went on to say that job loss would likely continue after the official end of the recession.[continued here]
Filed under: Economic crisis
This morning the media is hyping the “downward plunge” in new unemployment filings as a sign that maybe, just maybe, the recession has hit bottom and things are on their way back up.
In a word: Bullshit.
The “downward plunge” is a reduction in the number of new unemployment claims filed last week to only 610,000 . . . not much lower than the 635,000 anticipated by economists. Even if you thought this number on its face might have some significance, compare this to the number of new claims in the same week last year – at the early stages of the recession – 372,000. Hmm, doesn’t look so significant all of a sudden, does it?
Even the corporate media can’t get away with putting a happy face on this reality though, even as it speculates about recovery:
But the total number of people receiving jobless benefits climbed to 6.35 million, setting a record for a 14th straight week.
And of course this figure does not include the unemployed who are not receiving benefits because they’ve run out or are otherwise ineligible. Nor does it include the so-called underemployed, who are working in part time jobs because they can’t get full time work.
Filed under: Economic crisis
About Angola Penitentiary, Louisiana:
“a hundred black men are in the field, bent over picking tomatoes. A single white officer on a horse sits above them, a shotgun in his lap … It’s the same as it looked 40 years ago, and 100 years ago.”
Read the rest of the article here.
Filed under: Fighting oppression, Justice, justice, Prison Industrial Complex
Think the economy is recovering?
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Home values in the United States extended their fall in the first quarter, with more than one in five homeowners now owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, real estate website Zillow.com said on Wednesday. [continued here]
Filed under: Economic crisis
It would be in the spirit of May Day for me to comment on the working class demonstrations around the globe, especially those that are challenging the attacks on working people being brought on as a result of the global economic crisis.
But my favorite news story today is about a 15 year old Korean immigrant in Keswick, Ontario. Seems that when a white bully punched him in the mouth and called him a “***ing chinese,” the youth responded by breaking the bully’s nose. Repeating the story that we have all heard a hundred times before, local police arrested the youth and charged him with assault for defending himself from a racist attack.
But that wasn’t the end. “[P]olice reopened the case as a possible hate-crime after 400 mostly white students walked out of the high school Monday in protest of how the Korean youth was treated.”
That’s the spirit of May Day. Solidarity, forever!
Filed under: Fighting oppression, Justice, justice
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