Tag Archives: Racism

Statement on the Loudoun County Public Schools “Equitable” Assessment

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Our County is discussing a report about how “equitable” are our Loudoun County Public Schools.

The Report says that we have not been “equitable” or “sensitive.”

After all this nation has gone through on civil rights, how is it possible that Virginia still is trying to figure this out at this late date, so long after the war between the states?

Eric Williams, the Superintendent of our billion dollar school system, concluded that the school staff has “a low level of racial consciousness and racial literacy.”

Amazingly, the report says, in this day and age, that “people are unclear and fearful on how to participate in conversations about race, let alone respond to racially charged incidents.”

I taught High School for several years in the late 60s and 70s.

There is nothing mysterious about how to be fair and impartial to students unless you are neither fair nor impartial.

The Report makes it clear that there has been disproportionate discipline for students of color but especially African-American students.

Students reported that they were the targets of “racist comments and acts of violence from both their peers and teachers.”  Not just other students but their own teachers.  What kind of teacher treats a student this way?

And here’s the rub.  “Nothing happens!”  So, the aggrieved students report.

White kids use the n-word and deny they did.

Persons of color are humiliated about their skin color and their hair.

One student said the teacher “told me to go back to my country.  I was in shock, I was born here.”

This is not computer science.

This is common sense.

Sanction the students who use the n-word or threaten other students with assault or abuse.  These offenses are serious infractions and there must be punishment up to and including expulsion.

The teacher who told a student to go back where he came from, well that case is simple, fire that teacher.  The teacher and student will both learn something from such punishment.

If persons can get away with this kind of misconduct without any rule or regulation or discipline that punishes their misconduct, we can expect more of the same.

The schools must act firmly and quickly so that this misconduct ends now.

This report is a shame and a disgrace – it scars the reputation of this County and its citizens.

We have to clean up this mess and now.

Hate Literature in Lovettsville

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A sample of the hate literature

A sample of the hate literature

The Southern Poverty Law Center has made it clear that “The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the most infamous — and oldest — of American hate groups. Although black Americans have typically been the Klan’s primary target, it also has attacked Jews, immigrants, gays and lesbians and, until recently, Catholics.”

The KKK has found its voice in Charlottesville, Virginia and has been emboldened to circulate its hateful literature under dark of night in communities to the North, in Lovettsville and also Brunswick, this past weekend.

If Freedom of Speech is the KKK’s defense for its hate literature, the citizen’s response, in social media and public statements, is to speak up freely and warn friends and neighbors of the menace they know the KKK to be.

One comment was as direct as you could imagine: “So this racist crap storm has now hit my little town that begins with LOVE as well as our neighbors in Brunswick, MD. … If you are not outraged and remain silent, you are part of the problem. Gloves off racist cowards!!! Your hate is not welcomed here.”

Another remark spoke to the context of these hateful literature drops – “It’s as if these groups feel empowered by a national figure or something.”

The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed that KKK Propaganda flyers were reportedly located on various streets of the New Town Meadows community in the Town of Lovettsville, alongside driveways, near mail-boxes and on sidewalks in the community.

All of the flyers were placed in plastic bags containing birdseed.

The baggies circulated

The baggies circulated

There was another drop in the area of the 39000 Block of Catoctin Ridge Street in Paeonian Springs.

Lovettsville Realtor Kris Consaul argued the community should not treat this literature drop lightly just because the KKK has been “leaving their recruitment flyers in sandwich baggies weighted by birdseed.”

“Each one of those KKK Flyers,” Kris said, “contains the weight of the thousands of black bodies hung by a noose from trees and telephone poles. Each one of those flyers carry the weight of enraged whites screaming, no, snarling at black children going to school. Each one of those flyers carries the weight of burning crosses and terror in the night.”

Kris said, “I’m going to join our neighboring towns and communities in the ‘Love Your Neighbor’ Orange Ribbon Campaign. The first amendment covers my right to respond to cowardice and hate with courage and love. I invite you to join me.”

Councilman Nate Fontaine said, “The material does not reflect the values or thoughts of the people of Lovettsville. We are a close knit, caring community who will always support the people of our town and surrounding areas.”

(Anyone with any information regarding these cases or with possible surveillance video, are asked to contact Detective Joseph Hacay at 703-777-0475.)

The conscience of an American

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Birmingham_fire_hoses_1963When I was 14, my friends and I were playing at Richard’s tenement apartment in the South Bronx, and Richard’s Mom asked quietly if I would leave and get my friends to go as well.

I must have looked puzzled when I said I would because Richard’s Mom said in a whisper, “You can come back later but don’t bring Stevie.”

Stevie was black.  He was one of my friends.

It was my first encounter with racism.

This is how an individual conscience awakens to bigotry.

In the neighborhood, among us kids, we were from lower middle class families, nobody had gone past High School, not the parents, nor the kids, we were a mixed lot of Irish, Italian, Jewish, Black and Puerto Rican boys mostly.

We played stickball, sewer to sewer, hand ball, swung from the hanging ladders off the fire ‘scapes at street level, ran up and down alleys, through basements and court yards.

We were friends with unnoticed differences, who talked trash, had fist fights, but got along.

Senator Patrick Moynihan might have considered us a species of his “melting pot” but we were hardly homogenous.  We celebrated our differences while remaining companionable.

There’s a lyric in the musical, South Pacific, that “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.”  We neither did hate nor fear. Continue reading →

Land of the free? About our national anthem!

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Flag_wavingOn Friday night, my wife Holly and I took out the Iron Horse (little Harley) and had dinner at Anthony’s in Purcellville.

A Starbuck’s friend at the next table over asked what I thought about the quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, with the San Francisco 49ers, who wouldn’t stand during the national anthem.

I said I had no problem with his protest.  And I don’t.

I think there is good cause because of our poor race relations that we promote discussion about race and equality – so that we might thereby achieve the equal rights for all Americans, male and female, and fulfill the promise of equality that has eluded this nation’s grasp since we declared our independence.

Blacks failed to become full “persons” in our much revered Constitution at the birth of our nation; they were recognized as fractional three-fifths “persons” for purposes of allocating political representation among the several states, but not allowed the vote.

Still, we have folk insisting on the “original” meaning of the constitution, what our founders “believed.”

What our founders “believed” was that it was necessary to compromise individual rights to ameliorate regional differences.

In 2011, there was some congressional embarrassment when our U.S. Congress thought to read the Constitution on the floor of the House so that we could focus on our nation’s “original” meaning.

The “reading” deleted certain “original” passages from the Constitution including the language in Article I, Section 2, that references slaves as “three fifths” persons.

Many are beside themselves that anyone would protest the Anthem?  But we should examine the context and content of the Anthem.  I have never done so, not from the perspective of being black, or having had ancestors who were slaves.  When you do, you can’t ignore that our Anthem contains these words, “No refuge could save the hireling and slave, from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.”

Continue reading →

A King who cared for labor

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Labor marching to honor Martin Luther King in 2015 (photo by JPF)

Labor marching to honor Martin Luther King in 2015 (photo by JPF)

The Reverend Martin Luther King compared himself to Moses who led his people out of slavery, saw the Promised Land, but never got there himself.

In April of 1968, Martin Luther King was in Memphis, Tennessee supporting a garbage workers’ strike. Dr. King cared about workers.

On the evening of April 3rd, Dr. King told the congregation, “I don’t know what will happen now.” He said he’d “been to the mountain top” and “seen the Promised Land” but “I may not get there with you.”

His promise, however, was that “we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

Toward evening, that next day, April 4th, King stepped out on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

A rifleman shot a .30-06 caliber bullet that broke Dr. King’s jaw, cut through his neck and spinal cord, and the slug lay spent in his shoulder blade. King died.

Robert Kennedy said in Indianapolis to a crowd that had not yet heard of King’s death that we must “tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.”

We have an annual March in Loudoun County to honor Martin Luther King. Savageness, however, still abides in the body politic. Continue reading →

Tywanza!

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tywanza“You don’t have to do this,” said Tywanza Sanders, 26.

That’s what Tywanza said in a Charleston, South Carolina Church.

A 21-year-old man, Dylann Roof, holding a gun, didn’t believe that.

Looking at Tywanza, a black man, standing before him in a church at a Bible study meeting, Dylann said, it was a “fact” that “black men are raping our women and taking over the country.”

The rich residue of bigotry and violence, accumulated over the history of our young country, makes for a deathly brew.

It began with rivulets, formed into rivers, a soulless flood, coursing through our nation’s veins, its institutions, and the minds and hearts of America.

Early vestiges of its source occurred when founding fathers failed to condemn slavery in our Declaration of Independence.

When we wrote our Constitution, we embraced slavery, making men chattels and partial persons.

Even now when discrimination is outlawed, it is still widely practiced, with a wink and a nod, and finds ease and comfort in the oleaginous political rhetoric of our most unworthy leaders. Continue reading →

Justice left behind

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Judge Jerry Baxter

Judge Jerry Baxter

There is a case out of Atlanta, prosecuting and sentencing educators like they were made members of a mob syndicate for changing test results to make their schools and students look better so the authorities wouldn’t close the schools or the teachers or educators lose their jobs.

The State Judge, Fulton County Superior Court Judge, Jerry Baxter, handed out twenty-year sentences that real mobsters and murderers don’t get, nor do corrupt bankers, insider traders, or self-dealing politicians.

So what does this recent injustice have to do with anyone outside of Atlanta?

It’s about the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, why it’s not working, and how, in the bargain, Justice got left behind.

David Berliner, a former dean at the School of Ed at Arizona State University, quoted in a recent New Yorker, said that educators were asked to compensate for factors outside their control: “The people who say poverty is no excuse for low performance are now using teacher accountability as an excuse for doing nothing about poverty.”

Some have observed that these educators would normally be considered first time white collar offenders – if they weren’t black.  I believe it is more about defending a corrupt system that doesn’t work, and making these educators the scape goats, so we’ll lose sight of what’s really wrong here – the failed and failing educational construct.

The Atlanta prosecutors said that the children were cheated of an education, by having their scores changed, so the educators could get raises.

Really?  How do you feed instruction to a food hungry student, compensate for a disrupted family or the lack of community roots, in neighborhoods where violence is everywhere and suffered up close and personal?

These educators were fighting against a system that allowed for no excuses if the test scores faltered, including the practice of having students and educators of poorly performing schools seated in the bleachers at games, humiliating and punishing schools and students, rather than helping, and so, teachers were let go, students were sent out of their neighborhoods to other schools, and, the worst, schools were taken over or closed.

Test erasures had become more obvious, year to year, and this is true across the nation.  An investigation of the Atlanta system uncovered 44 schools cheated, and 200 educators.  35 educators were indicted, cuffed, and pictured in perp walks, like they were the Mob’s “Teflon Don,” John Gotti. Continue reading →

Equal Justice? Not Yet!

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UVA Student, Martese Johnson, beaten

UVA Student, Martese Johnson, beaten

We beat up a black student in Virginia – an honor student.

We hung a black man in Mississippi – his feet floating 2-3 feet off the ground.

And we’ve got a local Leesburg councilman from Loudoun County who doesn’t see the point of a diversity commission because Jesus freed the slaves and Jesus would have told us to create such a diversity commission if we really needed one.  (Listen to what he said – https://youtu.be/Texh0_bjvLk )

Well we need more than a commission in America – and a lot smarter thinking public officials than our local councilman.

Sure, it rubs some people wrong to say “we” – you and I – beat up or hung someone.  But our society’s sins of omission make us all responsible for these vile acts in Virginia and Mississippi and in Staten Island in New York and elsewhere, symptomatic of this nation’s historically “uneasy” association with slavery and discrimination, re-emerging more visibly and offensively in recent days.

The failure to act makes us all accomplices after the fact.  John Donne once wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself” because we are “involved in mankind.”  Another way to put it is – a bad man is a good man’s problem – and we have our work cut out for us these days. Continue reading →

Racism rears head in mayoral run

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I’m reprinting an op-ed from the Cleveland Jewish News titled Racism rears head in mayoral run because the pattern of fear-mongering, hate and corruption is all too familiar. We have allies fighting the same battles all over the world. Bravo to Cliff Savern for the brave post. It isn’t easy for Jews to stick up for Arabs in Israel.

Posted: Thursday, August 15, 2013 10:00 am

BY CLIFF SAVREN |

RA’ANANA, Israel – Israel defines itself as both a Jewish and democratic state. One of the most interesting aspects of this is how the country resolves potential conflicts between the two. I think it’s fair to say that overwhelmingly, the legal system resolves them in favor of democracy, but one public official, Shimon Gapso, is advocating a swing in the other direction in his ugly campaign for re-election as mayor of Upper Nazareth. Continue reading →

The Promised Land

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Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Reverend Martin Luther King compared himself to Moses who led his people out of slavery, saw the Promised Land, but never got there himself.

In April of 1968, Martin Luther King was in Memphis, Tennessee supporting a garbage workers’ strike.

On the evening of April 3rd, King told the congregation, “I don’t know what will happen now.”  He said he’d “been to the mountain top”   and “seen the Promised Land” but “I may not get there with you.”

His promise, however, was that “we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

Toward evening, that next day, April 4th, King stepped out on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

A rifleman shot a .30-06 caliber bullet that broke Dr. King’s jaw, cut through his neck and spinal cord, and the slug lay spent in his shoulder blade.  King died.

Robert Kennedy said in Indianapolis to a crowd that had not yet heard of King’s death that we must “tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.”

King couldn’t have agreed more and his prescription to reach the Promised Land was to challenge “the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.”

We know today that the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott, deciding that a man was property, was wrong.

But we don’t’ seem to appreciate that a Supreme Court that compromises voting rights is also wrong. Continue reading →