Trailblazer of Civil Rights Dies Forgotten
originally posted by Imagine 2050 Editors for IMAGINE 2050 » American Identity [click here]
Mar 14th
A sad reminder of how easily the individuals who inspired generations and paved the way for expanded freedom slip into obscurity. Tragically ironic that this comes amid a vicious backslide on the civil rights won by individuals like Juanita Goggins.
The New York Times’ Robbie Brown wrote:
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Neighbors were chagrined last week when the police here found the body of a 75-year-old woman who had frozen to death, alone in her house, during unexpectedly frigid weather. Last year, part of Highway 5 in Rock Hill, S.C., was renamed for her.
But they were shocked this week when they learned that the woman, Juanita W. Goggins, had been a civil rights trailblazer who in 1974 became the first black woman elected to the South Carolina legislature.
Now residents of this normally neighborly Southern capital say they are feeling regretful, and slightly guilty, for allowing one of its most revered figures to disappear into a sleepy ranch house with little company. Possibly mentally ill, living without running water or heat, Ms. Goggins is believed to have died on Feb. 20 — when temperatures dropped below freezing — but her body was not discovered for 11 days.
Several neighbors in her elderly, mostly black community in downtown Columbia said they had learned the full scope of Ms. Goggins’s accomplishments only from her obituaries. At the peak of her political career, in the 1970s, she twice visited President Jimmy Carter at the White House and was the first black woman appointed to the United States Civil Rights Commission.
In the legislature, where she represented Rock Hill, on the northern border of the state, for three terms in the 1970s, Ms. Goggins, a Democrat, helped pass key legislation for improving elementary school education and public health. Last year, a stretch of Highway 5 was renamed in her honor.
To read more about Juanita Goggins, click here. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/us/12frozen.html
Rewriting History in Texas
originally posted by Michelle Chen for RaceWire [click here]
Mar 13th
Rewriting history sounds like a daunting task, but an elite group of educational “experts” in Texas makes it look easy. In the Lone Star State, all you need to dictate education policy is an abiding faith in dead white men, an unshakeable belief in “free enterprise,” and a coveted spot on a conservative-packed panel.
As we reported last summer, Texas educators and politicians have been embroiled in a fierce battle over standards for the state’s history, government and economics textbooks, which come up for renewal every ten years. On Thursday, the right-wing-dominated 15-member Board of Education voted on a set of new guidelines for the next decade that seem to actually go back in history, harkening back to somewhere between, say, the Alamo and the War of Northern Aggression.
The 10-5 vote cemented an ideological revisionist campaign that activists decry as an assault on civil rights and historical reality. The guidelines, to be finalized and adopted in May following a public comment period, will enlighten students as to the following:
- America was founded by great men committed to molding the Republic according to their vision of biblical providence. Don’t believe any of that hippy-dippy church-state separation stuff. (And don’t assume that the First Amendment is any more important than the right to bear arms).
- Capitalism is a sacrosanct principle of society, but shall now be referred to as “free enterprise” (the New York Times quotes board member Terri Leo: “Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation… You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ”). And American “imperialism” will heretofore be described as “expansionism.”
- Discussions of sex should not focus on gender identity, because that could lead to conversations about transgender people and other things conservative board members find icky.
- When studying civil rights history, children should learn about the “unintended consequences” of major progressive social policies like the Great Society and Affirmative Action.
- Pioneering activists like Dolores Huerta of United Farm Workers and Archbishop Oscar Romero don’t deserve to be studied as influential political leaders.
- Hip hop, due to its degraded content, should not be considered a genre of music in high school history curricula.
Last summer, the board considered proposals to shove social justice activists into history’s dustbin. Children don’t need to learn about figures like Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez, the logic went, because their contributions to American society didn’t merit a place in a history curriculum. Some of the more egregious ideas, particularly efforts to erase mentions of race, gender and inequality, were passed over in the final haggling. This week’s debates nonetheless devolved into an ugly war of words, disputing everything from terminology used to describe America’s system of government (they prefer “constitutional republic” to “democracy”), to whether to acknowledge the Federal Reserve in a discussion of economic history.
The “updated” standards, which bear the stamp of Christian-right ideologues (background checks via Texas Freedom Network) could have a ripple effect across the country, since the state’s huge student population makes it a major textbook market.
But more importantly, the guidelines offer a glimpse into the minds of enormously influential people who operate outside the education bureaucracy and the legislature, whose dictates are underwritten by a hardline culture war. The collateral damage falls on Texas school children, who are mostly children of color, locked in a intensely segregated school system with huge racial disparities in academic achievement. Their minds will be sculpted by a right-wing cabal who reside in a myopic world that couldn’t be further from these children’s communities. The new textbook standards reveal that the authors know all too well that a young mind is a terrible thing to waste—especially when it can be pressed into the service of reactionary politics.
Image: “The Settlement of Austin’s Colony, or The Log Cabin” (Texas State Library and Archives Commission).
Crosspost: Gut Check for GOP on Immigration
originally posted by Imagine 2050 Editors for IMAGINE 2050 » Immigration [click here]
Mar 13th
Robert Creamer from Huffington Post talks bi-partisan support and the choice before the GOP when it comes to immigration.
There is a quiet battle underway within the Republican Party that may soon break out into the open — and it will heavily impact whether the GOP can continue as a national political party in the decades ahead.
The conflict is over how the Party will position itself with respect to the question of immigration reform — and just as importantly — the fastest-growing demographic group in country: Hispanic Americans.
President Obama has made it clear that he is intent on fixing the broken immigration system by passing immigration reform. He would do it with a package that combines smart and effective border enforcement with a crackdown on illegal hiring and unfair labor practices, and by modernizing the legal immigration system and requiring those who are undocumented to register with the government, pass background checks, study English, pay taxes, and get in line to work towards citizenship.
That would make sure that those who are here, are in the system legally; that all workers and employers are paying their fair share of taxes; and that those immigrants who come in the future do so legally.
But, more than with most any other issue, passing immigration reform requires bipartisan support — both as a question of legislative math and politics.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been deputized by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) — himself a strong advocate of reform — to be point man on this issue for the Democratic Majority. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has worked with Schumer for months to hammer out the specifics of a bi-partisan bill.
Most of the substantive issues appear to be close to resolution. The major outstanding problem is entirely political: will other Republicans be willing to join Graham and provide support for a truly bi-partisan effort?
Read more here.
Family Values on Capitol Hill
originally posted by Ian Thompson, Washington Legislative Office for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
Mar 12th
Earlier this week, Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) introduced the Every Child Deserves a Family Act (H.R. 4806). This legislation would help to reduce the number of children languishing in state-run facilities by providing them with loving, permanent homes. It would do this by limiting federal funding to states that discriminate in adoption and foster care placements based on the potential parents’ sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status.
It is estimated that at any given time, there are roughly 500,000 children in the child welfare system, with 125,000 waiting to be adopted. According to the Family Equality Council, there are approximately 1 million lesbian and gay parents raising about 2 million children across the United States.
This may help to explain why the nation’s leading child health and welfare organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Child Welfare League of America, have all expressed their strong support for allowing gay and lesbian couples or unmarried LGBT individuals to be adoptive or foster parents.
With such an obvious need for loving and supportive parents and homes, passing this legislation would seem like a no-brainer. The Every Child Deserves a Family Act is really, at its core, aimed at advancing child welfare by providing some of the most vulnerable members of society with a greater opportunity to attain the stability of a permanent home with loving parents.
On Thursday, the Family Equality Council and a number of other organizations hosted a briefing on Capitol Hill to help make the case for why the Every Child Deserves a Family Act is such a needed piece of legislation. The ACLU’s own Leslie Cooper discussed the current state of play with respect to litigation challenging state laws that deny children adoptive or foster placements with gay parents. In particular, she discussed ongoing ACLU lawsuits in Florida and Arkansas.
The star of the congressional briefing was, without question, ACLU client Martin Gill. Martin and his partner of 10 years have been raising two boys – brothers originally placed in their care through the Florida foster care system – for six years. Because of Florida’s law, which is the only one in the country to provide a blanket ban against adoption by LGBT individuals, they have been unable to formally adopt the boys. This is despite the fact that, after arriving to them in a state of neglect, they are thriving and very much a bonded, happy family. With the help of the ACLU, the Gill family has challenged Florida’s nonsensical law, which is so restrictive that it even prevents children in the foster care system from being placed with their own family member if those family members happen to be gay or lesbian. Far from valuing and protecting families, this law tears them apart.
It’s hard to put into a few short words how powerful Martin’s presentation was. It’s clear that Martin and his partner are very good dads, and for Florida to deny their children the security and permanence that would come from formal adoption is not only unfair, it is profoundly cruel. A state judge ruled last November that Florida’s law is unconstitutional because it both fails to promote children’s welfare and actually works against it by denying children good families. The case is currently working its way through the appeals process. Hopefully it won’t be too long before Martin and his partner can formally adopt their two boys.
Cooper also discussed the ACLU’s challenge in Arkansas to what is known simply as Act 1. Passed by voters in 2008, Act 1 bans adoption and fostering by anyone cohabitating with an unmarried partner. Among the plaintiffs in the challenge to Act 1 is Sheila Cole. Because of Act 1, Sheila was not permitted to adopt her own infant granddaughter who had been taken into state custody because of severe abuse by her parents. The reason the state is denying Sheila and her granddaughter the security that would come from adoption? Sheila lives with her same-sex partner and the child they are raising together. The challenge to Act 1 is scheduled to go to trial in May, so be sure to check back to aclu.org for frequent updates.
Listening to Martin at the briefing, I thought about the politicians who frequently like to pontificate on the floor of the House and Senate about family values and the need to protect families. Well, senators and representatives, there is now legislation before you in the Every Child Deserves a Family Act that aims to do just that. To those who like to talk about family values, I say it’s time to put your words into action. Show your support for family values by actually valuing families – all of them.
Arne Duncan to Investigate Civil Rights Failures in Schools
originally posted by Julianne Hing for RaceWire [click here]
Mar 12th
On Monday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a speech in Selma, Alabama–to coincide with the 45th anniversary of Bloody Sunday–announcing that the civil rights division of the Department of Education is going to start investigating civil rights transgressions in schools.
The Washington Post is reporting that the Office of Civil Rights is planning to conduct 38 so-called “compliance reviews” of more than three dozen issues. Duncan and the OCR’s assistant secretary, Russlynn Ali, acknowledged that civil rights infractions in schools had long gone unpunished. The OCR investigations are meant to determine whether policies are in place to protect students and what impact those policies have on students. Duncan announced that the investigations will focus on discrepancies in unfair disciplining of students of color, and racial disparities in college-prep course offerings in high schools.
Duncan showed he’s been doing his homework when he cited troubling statistics–that half the dropouts in the United States come from just twelve percent of high schools. But 75 percent of Black and Latino students come from those schools. That Black students without disabilities are three times as likely to be expelled as their white peers, and that Black students with disabilities are twice as likely to be expelled as their white counterparts.
The Wall Street Journal hinted that these investigations would eventually be used to enforce civil rights law among schools that receive federal funding, especially the highly coveted $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” money that is expected to go out to states soon.
All this is welcome news, to be sure. But it’s ironic that the same Arne Duncan who wants to defend kids of color and fairness in education also wants to reform schools by bolstering charter schools, a move widely seen as a further disinvestment of public education. Even though charter schools have achieved some serious (and legitimately fantastic) wins for students of color, they’re not the cure-all they’re sometimes credited as being.
Indeed, the UCLA Civil Rights Project recently declared charter schools a “civil rights failure.” Duncan’s also a big fan of the dramatic tactics that call for the total shutdown of struggling schools and mass firings of teachers. His plan for education reform also includes new teacher pay structures that link pay to performance, and new teacher evaluation methods that judge performance on students’ test scores.
But is this the kind of education reform kids need, or just the dismantling of public education? How exactly Duncan expects to hold schools accountable for enforcing civil rights law while he continues to tout education policy that doesn’t help the students of color who need it most is still uncertain.
