Let's Talk About Race, Baby! Conclusion

Continued from Part 2 (http://beyond-the-political-spectrum.blogspot.com/search/label/Race)

As with most things concerning the issue of race in America, the incident between Henry Louis gates and the Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Department, everything was and is about individual and group perceptions. And perhaps no single issue with regarding race illustrates this more than the hot button topic of affirmative action.
Depending on one’s personal views, the policy is either a remedy to redress the socioeconomic inequalities wrought by the historical practice of systemic, institutional, and social discrimination, or a means to further polarize race relations by way of reverse-discrimination. And why should one particular view trump another? Who’s to say which view is valid? Does choosing a side equate sanctimony?
To explore this notion of perspective, Beyond The Political Spectrum interviewed Ward Connerly, the former University of California Regent, and spearhead of a movement to do away with affirmative action as a federally-supported policy.
What makes Connerly’s view all the more controversial—at least to those who oppose him—is that fact that Connerly is an African-American, although he himself frown on racial and/or ethnic-based labels. With consideration to Connerly’s time and space, Beyond The Political Spectrum limited the online interview with Connerly to four questions in regards to his position and opposition to his position.



Former University of California and chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI), Ward Connerly. The ACRI is a non-profit organization created to oppose race- and gender-based programs in government hiring and university admissions.








BTPS: Mr. Connerly, I and the rest of America have read or heard a lot about you, including praises from your supporters and aspersions by your critics. In your own words, can you tell Beyond The Spectrum what is your ultimate goal(s) as to Affirmative Action as a public policy, and what motivates you in your goals, both philosophically and personally.

CONNERLY: When discussing “affirmative action,” language is of vast importance, primarily because affirmative action comes in many forms, some of which are admirable – requiring public agencies to open their recruitment, employment, and admissions processes to the largest base of prospective applicants as possible, for example – and some of which are quite odious – applying different standards to applicants based on their “race,” gender and ethnicity or setting aside contracts based on those same factors.

Because you acknowledge no such distinction in your question, it is imperative that I make sure that you understand that my perspective about “affirmative action” differs based on how such policies and programs are structured. I am a proponent of trying to use the levers of government in an “affirmative” way to expand access to low- and moderate-income people and those who have never had a parent go to college, for example – socioeconomic “affirmative action,” if you will. On the other hand, I am opposed to contracts that are aside for “minority-owned” or female-owned businesses or admitting a black applicant to college who has only a “C” grade point average and 780 on the SAT but requiring a Chinese student to have an “A” average and an SAT score of 1480. Practices such as those that I have described that treat people differently have been acknowledged to be “race preferences” by the United States Supreme Court.

It is my objective to do all that I can in the years that remain available to me to eliminate distinctions, in the governmental sector, made between American citizens on the basis of their race, skin color, ethnicity, gender or national origin.
I am motivated by the fact that I am a man who was born in Leesville, LA in 1939 and who has experienced discrimination based on my identity, and I have always considered that unfair and irrational and not in the best interest of a society that professes to be an equal opportunity society.

One would hope that most individuals have something about which they believe strongly and to which they devote their lives. I believe strongly in what is called a “colorblind” government. None of us has a choice about whether we pay taxes or not. Thus, I believe that the government should not treat us differently in view of that circumstance. I am at an age in life in which I think carefully about how I want to use my time and what influence I want to have upon the world that I leave for my children, grandchildren and loved ones. I want them to have an equal chance, not one in which they are treated differently because their father was a “black” man or because two of them have a mother who is half-Vietnamese. That is the driving influence behind my actions.

BTPS: Granted, your aim is to get both the federal and state governments out of the affirmative action business (so to speak), wouldn't that leave the much larger private sector open to instituting or continuing the policy? In that event, would you champion the eradication of affirmative action in the private sector too?

CONNERLY: My objective is to get all government – federal, state, local and public universities as well as privates that use public funds – out of the business of discriminating against or granting “preferential treatment” in the guise of “affirmative action,” as I have defined it above.

I am a libertarian in many respects. Thus, my tolerance for private conduct of which I might disagree is high. Accordingly, I would not champion the eradication of “affirmative action,” however it might be defined, in the private sector.

BTPS: Despite having become the darling of political conservatives with your anti-affirmative action initiatives, The American Conservative magazine's September 2008 issue seemed to impugn your motives with regards to your drive to promote anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives, including innuendos of hypocrisy of your private consulting firm, Connerly and Associates, having benefited from being "registered with the state as a minority- and woman-owned business." To what do you attribute this revelation (as it were) to?

CONNERLY: During my lifetime, I have learned that no political ideology has a monopoly on being wrong. For example, when I led the effort to give equal health benefits to same-sex couples while serving as a Regent of the University of California, I assure you that I was not regarded as the “darling of political conservatives” by the many “conservatives.”

It is fundamentally flawed to view all “conservatives” as being alike. Some conservatives support affirmative action. Some use litmus tests and if you fail the test on specific issues, they seek to distance themselves from the individual whom they regard as being out of step. There are also those who believe that the author of the column that appeared in the issue of the American Conservative magazine to which you make reference had an agenda in writing his piece. I would also hasten to add, however, that American Conservative magazine is a small, struggling publication that is not in any way the voice of conservatives. The attitude conveyed by the author and the “innuendoes” he imparted are not shared by more mainstream conservative publications such as National Review and Weekly Standard.

More significantly, the claims asserted by the author of that article are inaccurate. First, Connerly & Associates, Inc. is not, nor has ever been, a firm “registered with the state as a minority- and woman-owned business.” This could have been verified. The fact that it was not casts considerable doubt on the good faith and credibility of the author. Second, the claim was made that I am a registered lobbyist. I have never been a lobbyist in my life. This, too, could have been verified. Third, it has been claimed that my firm and the American Civil Rights Institute are somehow doing the bidding of major construction interests. In fact, I have been inactive in my firm for over four years and ACRI receives less than three percent of its financial support from construction and/or real estate interests.

It is worth questioning why my motives for opposing race preferences are sometimes questioned, but the motives of those who support preferences are presumed to be noble. Moreover, why is the issue of motives even relevant? Assuming that either mine or those who oppose my position are foul, what bearing would this have on an issue that is raging throughout the nation, even at the level of the United States Supreme Court? There is almost the impression that if I were not “driving” this issue, it would somehow go away. In fact, however, “race” is always a contentious issue and those who oppose distinctions by the government on the basis of such a factor have history and the law on our side. Thus, our motives for wanting to advance the cause of equal treatment should not be questioned.

BTPS: It seems your working toward the dismantling of affirmative action policies is something of a top-down approach. Philosophically speaking, given the preponderance of socioeconomic inequalities found throughout many areas of society, wouldn't a more philosophically & politically unassailable tactic be to work from the bottom-up, working to create better public school educational programs, working with employers to limit discriminatory practices, and/or to work with established organizations that oppose your stance...and then eliminate affirmative action?

CONNERLY: There is a strong bias in your question that places the burden of equal treatment on a host of other factors: elimination of “socioeconomic inequalities,” elimination of employer discrimination, and gaining the support of other organizations that oppose my stance as a precondition to urging enforcement of the laws that command equal treatment for all citizens “without regard to race, sex, color or national ancestry,” which happens to be the requirement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. There is also the implied acknowledgement in your question that “affirmative action” is more than equal treatment; it is remedial in nature, something that the Supreme Court is increasingly viewing with disfavor. Equal rights and equal justice are not “top-down” or “bottom-up” values; they are not contingent on other socioeconomic conditions. Having said that, I am actively involved on many fronts in an effort to assist those who need assistance in improving their economic conditions, but I feel no obligation to unilaterally correct social disparities as a prerequisite to the pursuit of the objective of equal treatment for all.

Without spending too much time on Connerly’s view, even if one disagrees with his position, one must be impressed with both the eloquence by which he is outlines his position, as well as his overall goal of eliminating racial distinctions. Although in principle, I totally agree with his view that the best qualified students and job applicants should be the ones hired selected for slots and positions, can one truly hope to “eliminate distinctions?” Realistically-speaking, in all but the rarest of situations, our very names convey our ethnicities as well as our genders. And given how we as groups and individuals see ourselves in relation to our individual and group pasts, our collective experiences, and our sense of solidarity, is it even possible to eliminate the nuances of race- (or gender- for that matter) based identity? Lastly, how much sense does it make to allow--assuming that Connerly is successful in eliminating affirmative action--a segregated system of preferences in the private sector, while prohibiting them in the government sector? The simple matter is that even if people aren't allowing one another a non-competitive edge based on race or gender, they will invariably find another reason to favor one individual over another...perceived competency, the ability to dribble or throw a ball, manufactured charisma, one's alma mater, a mutual love of a particular sports teams...the reasons are potentially endless. Despite Connerly’s laudable goal of eliminating race-based distinctions in government and education, one can literally drive several trucks between his perceptions and ideas of what and how affirmative action should be and what the reality is for many people on the ground as it were; one can spend endless hours listening to those individuals of color who have war stories—similar to those black males who can tell them, a la Professor Gates’ experience—of how they did not get the position they were qualified for (all other factors being equal) due to the hue of their skins.
As with most issues in America, too many people are too quick to wed themselves to a particular structured, in some cases rigid political ideology. This dynamic tends to create a sense of allegiance to a particular ideology rather than to the search for meaningful answers, or to real solutions that offer a hope of real promise. In Connerly's case, he identifies with being a libertarian (although I suspect that he perceives his adherence to that particular ideology to be flexible). In the case of others, its being liberal, conservative, moderate, or what have you. In the worse scenario, adopting an ideologically-slanted view of an issue tends to forge a mindset of equating one's view with being "right," as exemplified by the aforementioned conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, who apparently has never met an ideal outside of conservatism she liked; one can only pity such a narrow view.
In an ideal world, race would not matter in employment, in education, and in encounters with the police. However, given the realities of an imperfect world and our individual perceptions, it does matter...whether we want to admit it or not. Faking indignation at that fact doesn't change its reality. Wanting to believe the best of America's promise in relation to its past doesn't erase perceptions in those who hold opposing views. For individuals like Connerly, the notion of "Civil Rights" is predicated on the idea that everyone should be treated equal, despite race. For many blacks and others who adhere to the traditional application of the idea, it implies the notion of cut us some slack...haven't we been through enough already?
With regards to race, for most of us, perception is the only "reality" that matters.

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Let's Talk About Race, Baby! Part 2

Continued from Part 1 (http://beyond-the-political-spectrum.blogspot.com/search/label/Race)

If anyone wants to see how truly polarizing the issue of race is in this country, one needn’t venture any further than the Internet. Brimming with vitriol and diatribes about how whites are unrepentantly racist “devils,” and how blacks should “get over the past,” the ‘net is an excellent barometer for measuring the depth of discontent which lies below the surface of the thin veneer of social calm we perceive, especially in light of the election of the nation’s first African-American president. Indeed, I have seen several Internet postings with regards to the Henry Louis Gates arrest that suggested that African-Americans “have their black president now…time to move on.”
Such remarks reveal the inability (or undesirability) to understand in any appreciable way the experience of being a racial minority in America from a historical perspective. And what’s truly sad is that such individuals will be the first to tell you that “some of their best friends are fill-in-the-blanks.” Part of this mindset is due to the attitude that some racial groups, blacks in particular, are being placated in order to prevent inflaming our over-sensitive natures in regards to perceiving any slight as having racial under-or overtones.
For blacks, who seem to often exhibit the highest numbers of many socioeconomic ills, we fail to understand that whites and others see us as not doing our part to create the lives for ourselves that they and others have succeeded is doing for themselves. The “I-did-it, why-can’t-you-do-it” mentality is how we are viewed and judged. And it only roots this perception in the white psyche further when high-profile figures such as comedian Bill Cosby and black conservatives point out that we indeed are the masters of our fates, and captains of our souls, to paraphrase the fine line from the poem, Invictus.
Even when noticeable numbers of individuals in each group prove these competing perceptions can be somewhat valid, their numbers are underplayed; guilty whites will often act indignant when confronted by the reality of their insensitivities, and blacks in denial will tell you that the social pathologies such as exceedingly high teen pregnancy, crime, drug use, and dropout rates that are a way of life for many in inner-city neighborhoods represent “only a few of us.” We simply cannot put ourselves in the mindsets of how and why we view each other.
It doesn’t help the underlying issue of race relations when others take further advantage to help polarize sides. Conservative Asian-American commentator, Michelle Malkin wasted little time in adding fuel to the fire of the Gates incident by castigating the “Anti-police bias of the Liberal Left.” With respect to Ms. Malkin’s position, her dividing of the incident along politically and ideologically dogmatic lines is every bit as divisive and unethical as the “race baiting” which she accuses others of doing with regards to the incident. And doing so ignores an entire history of police abuse in black and minority neighborhoods. It’s partially why the militant Black Panthers were formed in the mid- to late 1960s….to combat not the perception, but the reality of police brutality which was at one time rampant in the black communities of major urban areas.
Sadly but understandably so, what happened to Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Oscar Grant, and Rodney King strikes a resonate chord in many black males like myself. And to reduce vocalizing rational fears that permeate throughout black and minority neighborhoods to gutter-level labels like race-bating smacks of not only ignorance, but of insensitivity to the perspective of others, no matter how valid. But in the days since the Gates incident went on to become a national media obsession, homemade signs have popped up in front of Gates’ Cambridge residence, reinforcing the notion that Gates is a “race-baiter,” how he should be “ashamed,” and the like. Clearly, history has given blacks and whites a different view of not only race relations, but of their civil liberties in regards to the law and to the police; not many black and minority citizens would have the courage to create and place demeaning signs in yards of well-to-do or affluent neighborhoods for fear of arrest.


Was Professor Henry Louis Gates--on his own property surrounded by several police officers (including Sgt. Jim Crowley, the arresting officer)--any more belligerent or "disorderly" than this overly-irate driver, on a public highway, with a single officer who couldn't have been aware of the driver's intent? Could a black or minority driver had gotten away with this behavior without having been pepper-sprayed, tasered, or arrested? Does the officer represent professional or exemplary behavior (is this what it means for an officer to be "thick-skinned?")



To Be Concluded...

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Let's Talk About Race, Baby! Part 1

It’s been said that there are three sides to every story…yours, mine, and the truth.

In America the issue of race, much like a social disease, is one of those things that people would wish would just go away. But like herpes, it’s a chronic pathology with occasional outbreaks which remind the body public that there is an underlying problem in our society.
Its also one of those subjects—like certain diseases—that has been studied, explored, analyzed, and scrutinized; one would be hard-pressed to reject the notion that just about anything and everything that one can say or write about the issue has been done so. So why is it that, such as in recent weeks, whenever we are reminded that the country has unfinished business insofar as confronting the legacy of its volatile racial past that we fall back into our usual, predictable roles? Take for example the arrest last week of noted Harvard scholar and preeminent expert of African-American history, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The resulting public opinion polls, blogsophere commentary, and radio/television talk shows revealed nothing surprising; opinions were divided mostly along racial lines.

Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., shortly after his arrest and the dropping of the "disorderly conduct" charges

While many African-Americans—especially males—could relate to Gates’ experience, whites generally were to quick to defend the actions of the police officers who arrested Gates, some embracing the idea that Gates' behavior solely controlled the outcome of the situation. Other opinions go so far as to label Gates a "race-baiter" with regard to the incident. The problem is that very few individuals are able or willing to think or consider perspectives that are not influenced by their own experiences.
Just as men and women tend to think and perceive experiences differently, so too do African-Americans and whites. Many blacks, myself included, have war stories about our less-than-pleasant, legally questionable treatment at the hands of the police. Our experiences are often such that we know that a threat to be arrested for “disorderly conduct” is nothing more than punishment for failing to acknowledge or for questioning a police officer’s authority. For many of us, strength of personality or propensity to assert our civil liberties in the face of questionable situations involving the police are offenses punishable by arrest. It’s pretty much like when certain government agencies or officials use the phrase “national security;” it’s a catch-all phrase used to maintain autonomy in the face of an equal, challenging, or superior authority, in this case being us--the public whose very taxes pay for the police to serve and protect us. And in a few of the cases that I’ve personally been privy to, arrests are often justified by some colorful embellishments of the truth on police reports (and no, this reality does not in any way mean to imply that every African-American has only negative experiences with the police).
For many whites—unless they are known criminals—the experience of being pulled over or of being confronted by a police officer tends to yield different results, as well as different perspectives of the police altogether. This is obvious by the way in which whites tended to assume to role of devil’s advocate for the policemen involved in the Gates incident. This point is further supported by the way whites generally reacted to the words of President Obama, as he opinioned that the Harvard police "reacted rather stupidly." This is not to say that the officer in question, Sgt. Jim Crowley, did not act within the scope of his authority…after all, neither you nor I were there to witness events as they unfolded. But Crowley’s authority as a representative of the law, his unblemished service record, and his police academy responsibility for teaching police how they can avoid racial profiling not only give him nearly unfettered credibility in this case, but also entrench already divided opinions on the issue. Throw in the black historical experience in America, and sides are often chosen up without the benefit of reason.

Sgt. Jim Crowley, after the arrest of Gates

According to opinions flooding the blogosphere, most whites generally believe that the entire episode was blown out of proportion, and that blacks are being overly sensitive. And it's probably a sure bet that blacks feel the same way over whites' heated responses to President Obama's remarks....that they're simply being overly "sensitive" to someone's opinion. Could Gates have been as belligerent and unruly as the police report states? Sure. Is it possible for some officers of the Cambridge Police Department to have embellished the actual events leading up the Gates' arrest in a light favorable to them? Quite possible. For both blacks and whites, we see our perceptions of race mostly through the prism of our individual and collective experiences, which is the only source of "truth" that matters for most or us.

To Be Continued...

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The King is Dead...Long Live the King!

In the eyes of the adoring, he was undeniably innocent. In the eyes of the cynical, he was undeniably guilty of robbing innocence...but no one can deny his impact!

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The Iranian Protests...a Historical Primer.

Note: This article was originally published with the American Chronicle on 06/25/09
( link: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/107619)


It’s one of those ironies of life that no matter how much education, experience, or power a person has, they will always seem to make wrong choices…especially when their perceived self-interests or emotions impact these wrong choices. That’s exactly the dynamic we are witnessing as events are playing themselves out in Iran following the residential elections of 2 weeks ago.
Many political leaders from both major ideological branches in America (but most vocally led by conservative Republican Party-affiliated lawmakers) have criticized President Obama for not speaking out more vocally in support of the opposition-led mass protests that have been occurring almost daily in the streets of the Iranian capital, Tehran since the disputed election results over two weeks ago…and the deadly violent government attempts to halt the protests. His rationale rightly so, was that publicly coming out essentially on the side of the Iranian government’s opponents would hand incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a propaganda tool for use to justify both government’s violent response to the protests, and to play to his supporters’ fears that the protests are “proof” of “American intervention” in Iran’s domestic affairs. Indeed, foreign reporters have had their visas revoked, have been threatened with arrest if observed openly reporting on the protests, and government officials such as Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi has asserted that the “bias” by which foreign media (e.g., the various Western news outlets such as the American networks and the British BBC) has “exaggerated” the scope of police/protestor clashes and numbers of opposition supporters represents the political stance of those Western governments.
A few days ago on June 20th —maybe as a result or in spite of these criticisms—the president called for the Iranian government to “stop all violent and unjust actions” against the protesters. The full-court pressing by conservative lawmakers seemingly put the president on the defensive; both Arizona Senators John McCain and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham made the rounds on the Sunday morning talk show circuit to state what amounted to their party’s viewpoint on the president’s hesitant approach on the issue of the unrest in Iran. For his part, Graham, a de facto opponent of all things Obama, stated that “The president of the United States is supposed to lead the free world, not follow it. He's been timid and passive more than I would like."
Yesterday, June 23rd, the president gave an address in the Rose Garden of the White House which, despite protestations to the contrary, seemed to be a capitulation to the pressures of the growing chorus of criticism that his response thus far to the situation in Iran has been too passive. This apparent caving-in to pressure is even more problematic for the president considering that during the 2008 election, he made his intentions clear to at least open the door to a conditional dialogue with the Iranian government, partially in the hopes of assuaging the Iranian government’s quest to acquire nuclear capability—a complete 180 degree turn from the previous Bush Administration’s approach of confrontation and military action innuendo. While President Ahmadinejad would have probably won re-election by a slim lead—as he has a substantial level of public support—its obvious that officials went too far in trying to portray his re-election as consensual mandate by the people of Iran; chief opposition candidate, former Prime Minister Hossein Mousavi seemingly “lost” the election overwhelmingly even in his hometown district, an unlikelyhood that is at odds with the numbers of supporters who have gathered in the streets of the capital since the election “results.”
The fraudulent elections, the violent suppression of the mass protests, the propaganda offensive against the opposition and their “Western ‘supporters’” have caged President Obama up his own policy tree in his intentions to deal with the Iranian government. He is now faced with the options of either continuing ahead with his intent to start a dialogue with the Iranian government toward a resolution of the nuclear (weapons) crisis, or abandoning this intent in lieu of the behavior of the Iranian government over the past couple of weeks. On June 15th, 3 days after the disputed elections, the president noted that America would “continue to pursue a tough, direct dialogue between our two countries, and we’ll see where it takes us.” But that was before the growing chorus of criticism against his stance on not commenting openly about the election results and the popular response. Undoubtedly, his continual intent to open talks with the Iranian government will create an open sea for his policy opponents within the Republican Party to attack…and the criticisms already unleashed toward his initial response (or lack thereof) have the sharks circling.
These recent events surrounding the question of Iran are somewhat perplexing to me, in a negative sense. I honestly don’t know what’s more annoying…the obvious politicization of protests in a country that has been out of favor with America since the late 1970s, or our woeful ignoring of America’s foreign policy history as it relates to Iran.
In 1953, the CIA was instrumental is squashing the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people when bringing back to power the Shah of Iran. Under an autocracy every bit as suppressive as the current government (and backed by the American government), the Iranian people slowly began to sit aside their differences, and eventually managed to overthrow the regime of the Shah in 1979 by way of popular, non-violent, democratic mass uprisings among the Iranian people, culminating in the popularly renown Islamic Revolution. That resulted in the installation of a government run mostly by religious clerics, who were rabbit adherents of a conservative and strict interpretation of Islamic law that suppresses many civil liberties of the people, purportedly sponsors known terrorist groups, and is openly hostile toward both state America and Israel in particular, and the West in general. That history is what opponents of the current Iranian government hope to see occur now, either through natural internal combustion, or external intervention.
But external intervention—American intervention—is why we currently have an issue with Iran. The election crisis, the nuclear issue, and Iran’s hostility toward the West would probably never have even emerged had the religious government not come to power after 1979. Things could, and probably would be radically different today. Had America opted to promote the emerging democracy in 1953 instead of working selfishly behind the scenes to suppress it, Iran might instead have become a thriving Western-friendly democracy in the Muslim-dominated Middle East.
Any inclination to intervene in the internal affairs of Iran would ignore the lessons of our last intervention there. It’s not a stretch that, given the events that immediately followed the America’s questionable invasion of Iraq, destabilizing the government of Iran could make a bad situation worse. Without the few controls there are under the current regime, more radical elements could rise to power and create a crisis which could make the current ones pale by comparison. In a worse-case scenario, attacking Iran could marshal the support for the radical government in the Muslim world…a place where the US already has precious few friends as it is. Even support for opposing forces within another country limited to vocal support could be a disaster in the making. Who could forget the first President Bush’s urging for the Iraqi people to “rise up” against a militarily defeated Saddam Hussein after the end of the 1991 Gulf War, only to ignore pleas for tangible assistance as what was left of the late Iraqi president’s military machine brutally suppressed the resulting revolt in the country’s Southern region, and killing untold numbers?
It is a rather disconcerting notion that in America, politicians and political leaders can and do politicize such a potentially volatile situation for no other reason than to one-up their political rivals. And yet, those same individuals don’t hesitate to call “expose” someone publicly who they feel engage in the same practice, but under different circumstances, such as the Republican propensity to call traditional Civil Rights activists “race hustlers.” Not only is such a practice philosophically hypocritical, but ignores the possible perils of future repercussions as well as the cautions of ignoring history.
I know it’s a bit idealistic, but we send our representatives to Washington to work in our—the electorate’s—best interests, not their own. They should have the ability to think for us, not work against the interests of the people. And we the people should be smart enough to know what is in our interests, and what is not. Read people. Learn to understand the historical basis for what is occurring in the world! Learn, and think…stop spouting off some party line just because it runs contrary to the party line!

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Paying Students to Learn…Another Bad Public School Policy!

One reason why in recent years there has been a proliferation of Internet blogs, talk radio/T.V. programs, and printed punditry is because there are so many bad policies either in proposal or in effect that people like myself have enough ammunition to fire off salvo after salvo of witty rebukes, cynical insights, and constructive counter-proposals well into perpetuity. Now bear witness to such an example.
Last evening, as per my normal daily routine to stay informed, I was flipping back and forth between the major networks’ evening news broadcasts. I stopped when I heard Katie Couric’s notification of an upcoming story I saw on CBS’s evening offering about paying students to learn (yeah…I did a double-take too when I heard that).

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/10/eveningnews/main5078980.shtml

After anguishing through a plethora of commercials that revealed that there were in fact effective (if not profitable) treatments for sexual dysfunction, sleep deprivation, and migraines, I sat in absolute astonishment for the next 2 minutes and 11 seconds. I listened to the arguments—pro and con—of actually paying students to acquire basic skills necessary to function in a world where learning and knowing could literally make the difference between want and abundance, knowledge and ignorance, or life and death.




I had heard about the idea before, but still, I decided to watch the story with an open mind. After viewing this story, I decided to acquaint myself more background information about this notion of paying students to learn. What I learned was that it’s not just a “New York City” thing.
From Georgia, to Illinois, to Texas, many school districts are preparing or have started pilot programs that either pay students to get high test scores which (theoretically) reflect learning and retaining lessons taught, or to attend school and/or other academic-based programs.
The idea has more than it’s fair share of proponents, liberal, moderate, and conservative alike-- one of them being the former U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Newt Gingrich (if you don’t believe me, please refer to Mr. Gingrich’s very own website, http://newt.org/tabid/102/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/3140/Two-Georgia-Schools-to-Pay-Students-to-Study.aspx).
Last year, two Georgia schools began studying the measurable outcomes (academically) of a 15-week pilot program that pays students $8 an hour to attend math and science tutoring for 4 hours a week. Also in 2008, the Chicago Public Schools paid more than 1,600 students to get good grades. As reported in the Chicago Tribune in October of last year,

…1,650 Chicago Public Schools students [cashed] in on a new district program offering money to freshmen at 20 schools for getting top—and even average—grades in five core subjects including math, English and science. District officials said students earned $265,986 this time, with the money coming from a Harvard University education research laboratory and private donations.

The arguments in favor of the idea are many. They range from idea that the increased grades spurred by payments serve as self-esteem boosters for students in low-performing districts, to preventing students from dropping out of school to work minimum-wage jobs in lieu of studying by giving them an immediate payoff to hard work.
From what I’ve read in and around the blogsphere and Internet news sites, most have come down on the side of sanity on this issue; it’s a philosophically and pragmatically insane idea. First, it undermines the ability to tell good teachers and administrators—those capable of actually motivating their students to learn—from those who are just trying to survive their post-honeymoon periods as teachers, and are merely holding on until retirement.
Second, it commandeers the responsibility of a child’s first and primary (at least supposedly) educators, their parents. Public schools should be a supplement for an education that a student is supposed to receive at home. Concepts such as manners, the instilment and understanding of rules, structure, respect for authority, and (insert gasp here) the value of performing to the best of one’s abilities for the sake of expanding one boundaries and to promote personal growth (and on this point, if a parent can teach the child that for most things, there is not always an immediate payoff, so much more the better for society as a whole).
Third, the money to fund such programs overwhelmingly comes from private donations and other like contributors. What happens when the money runs out? Do already cash-strapped school districts decide to use already limited funds to continue the programs, or do we watch as our kids must suddenly go cold turkey to their addiction to getting paid to for learning (come to think of it, such a prospect could conceivably teach our kids about the dangers of addiction)? There is a great deal of research that indicates that tangible evidence undermines intrinsic motivation.
Lastly, it does nothing to help dispel the globally-held belief that Americans are a people motivated simply by love of money. And to use money as a tool to motivate our youngest citizens to learn can’t possibly do anything to weaken that notion. It seems that if money were the answer, we wouldn’t have a problem with poor academic performance in the first place. How else can one explain the fact that American public school students have for years continually poorly when compared to students from countries that spend a lot less on their public school students, and who have stronger curriculums?
Now, ready for some common sense solutions? How about parents stop using the lack of time, scheduling conflicts, misplaced priorities and other such nonsense as excuses for failing to promote their children’s academic well-beings. If parents have the time to procreate them, then they have the time to raise their children. Working to pay bills is not an acceptable excuse for a parent’s failure to be actively involved with their children, which means it’s not up to television, the Internet, or computer programs to either baby-sit or help them with their homework (at least not solely). And on that note, it’s in our children’s interests for parents to be educated themselves. For adults to bring children into the world without the benefit of knowing enough about the world themselves so that they can prepare their children adequately is the height of irresponsibility! A parent should have, at the very least, a high school education—every bit of research supports the conventional wisdom that education and parental involvement are two of the biggest contributing factors to a child’s overall life chances (while I freely admit my belief that America will never totally be a society of “equal opportunity,” I am of the mindset that there are things we can so to limit inequalities).
How about we abandon this absurd notion of paying children to learn? Paying students for academic performance undermines the idea of a meritocracy—an already questionable concept even under the traditional course upward mobility—predicated on finding and shaping the best and the brightest. Consider our leaders and potential leaders; President Barack Obama and Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor both have compelling life narratives which would be less inspiring to those who would emulate their success if money were their chief motivations for succeeding.
And if are going to make it a policy of paying students for attending school and exceeding their own expectations by way of bribery, why stop there? Why don’t we pay them to not do drugs? Just as we pay them to obtain a certain number of A or B’s, we could pay them by the number of times they say “no” whenever they are asked if they want to “take a hit.” And why not pay them to play sports, abstain from sex, and even for not texting while driving. The point is that most of us belonging to certain age groups, namely Baby Boomers and their children, Generation Xers, did what we were supposed to do because it was simply the right thing to do…not because we were bribed to do so. We were not motivated to excel or be better individuals simply because someone offered us money…we did so because we wanted a better standard of living than our parents, and realized that the only way to obtain more was to do better and be better than they were. If we have to bribe our children to simply learn to push themselves past all social, economic, and personal expectations, then we cannot blame them…the fault lies with the adults. We have only ourselves to blame if our children have lost their motivation to learn and excel for the sake of learning and exceling. Maybe someone should pay us to be more responsible adults…maybe then we will raise students.

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Female Reproductive Rights…and Wrongs (or “Lunacy Made Easy”)

A week ago today (Sunday) during church services in Wichita, Kansas, a church usher was shot dead. In this particular case and as church ushers go, this usher’s professional notoriety was a stark contrast to the relative anonymity of church ushers in general. The usher killed was Dr. George Tiller, a family man by reputation, and a medical doctor by profession. To the point, Tiller was an abortion services provider—late-term abortion specifically—and as such, was no stranger to being a public target for both religious and ideological-based animus.
In 1986, Tiller’s clinic was firebombed. In 1993, he was shot in both arms by an anti-abortion protester. And earlier this year, he requested the FBI to investigate instances of vandalism at the clinic, including sabotage of the facility’s video surveillance system. One can only suspect as to the motivations behind someone willing to provide such a service that evokes such militant hostility towards its providers, and so politically and socially polarizing to nation at large.

Dr. George Tiller was shot to death during a church service last Sunday

This is not an easy subject for me to explore. Back in the 2002, married for only 6 months, I was going through a rather sour divorce; we were just too different. I was brought up (at least during the first 13 or so years) under a household of limited resources, but structure, rules, corporal punishment, and parents who were authority figures first, and “friends” second. That was the proper way of raising children as far as I was concerned. Her childhood was one educated parents, a stern disciplined father, and liberal understanding mother, material excesses, no spankings, and of children spoiled with things. As far as she believed, that was the way of raising children to be productive citizens. At the same time we were going through divorce, she became pregnant, already a mother of 2 boys from a previous marriage (something neither of us expected since she had already undergone a tubal ligation). She has wanted a girl, but that was not the design of fate. I told her that it was my wish that she would carry the child to term, and that I would take custody of it and go my separate way. She pleaded with me not to do so (in the even that it was a girl), but I was adamant about my wishes; I had no intention of allowing a child of mine to grow up around her unrelenting hedonistic ways which included marijuana smoking. But because of my intent and her questioning my ability to raise a child, she aborted it; as a man who couldn’t use the phrase, “It’s my body and I can do with it as I wish,” I had no say-so in the matter.
As you can imagine, it would be a little hard for anyone who’s gone through such an experience to be objective. But my personal view of life gives me a certain level of objectivity on the issue of abortion…all life is sacred, and should be protected. As far as I am concerned, Providence alone brought us here, and it alone should be allowed to remove us…not some structured system of jurisprudence that seeks to play God, and certainly not someone who gets paid to terminate life under the color of “medicine.” Even more than a philosophical basis, abortion is wrong is the sense that it is patently unfair to the silent participant in reproductive issues, namely men.
In my case, if my ex-wife had made the decision to keep the child—whether I wanted her to or not—I would have been stuck with the consequences. Based on what she alone would choose to do with a gestating child, I could have been forced to pay child support for a child I did not want, or standing by idly, with no legal or other recourse, watch her remove something which I helped create from existence. Throughout America, most men are faced with similar consequences borne of similar situations. The last time I checked, women could not unilaterally decide to bring a child into the world sans the man’s participation, no matter how much will or prayer they exert toward the endeavor. Being the case, why should they unilaterally decide to what they want to do with the child? Although men help create children, they have come to have absolutely no say-so in their birthing, except evidently when it comes to killing abortion professionals.
And oddly enough fervent anti-abortion crusaders, those who purport to champion the cause the “rights of the innocent” and all things “Christian,” are willing to resort to murder to prevent the “murder” of the unborn. I have seen and read the blogs and websites within the conservative sphere of ideological thought where comments frame the murder of Tiller as some form of divine retribution, Karma, or some such. The lack of philosophical consistency notwithstanding, I find it odd that these same would-be “Christian” crusaders are not forming a line to adopt any children that would be spared the fate of all unwanted unborn (and while in a better world it would be nice to see all undesired children carried to term and raised in proper nourishing environments by way of adoption or foster care, the reality is given the overabundance of children available for adoption, adoption’s prohibitively costly expense, and the already overburdened and under-funded foster care system, advocates of abortion do not entirely have a meritless position).
Abortion is not an easy subject for anyone who harbors intense passions to discuss, but discussion is exactly what is lacking. The airwaves are brimming with rants, soliloquies, and worthless opinions about how either un-Biblical or immoral abortion is, or how much it is necessary to protect a “woman’s right” to be able to decide to terminate and unwanted pregnancy. There is no talk about how hypocritical it is one whose faith is predicated on the notion of human compassion and mercy to murder in order to express how dedicated they are to those same notions (which seems to indicate a level of self-centeredness, not selflessness). There are no policy proposals about how to deal with unwanted children who are allowed to come to term, such as the anticipated need for institutions to house the parentless or increased funding for foster care (and I’m sure there would be blabber about how government shouldn’t be in the business of raising children or questions of where do we get the funds to the increase in foster care need?). There is no talk about how to foster better parenting among parents who do decide to carry and bear their children (no talk of establishing a stable network or support group not subject to dissolution due to lack of funding). And—as previously hinted—there are not nearly enough people willing (or able) to adopt any children allowed to live, especially in a troubled economy where families are stretched financially thing as it is (come now Christians, where is the faith to feed the Multitudes?), so where are the propositions from the self-righteous?
It’s obvious that the lack of dialogue indicates a lack of ideas on the issue. And given the insanity of many aspects of the child support system (jailing biological fathers who can’t/do not pay child support…hard to pay when you’re in jail/prison; creating felons for the offense…which doesn’t make them any more employable; and suspending any licenses they may have…again, which doesn’t help them any toward paying their obligations) any ideas in regards to creating a remedy would probably be just as "logical" or “effective” (yes defenders of the child-support system, that is sarcasm).
Of a certainty, the policies regarding reproductive issues are polarizing, and tend to spur much in the way of ideological rhetoric…but that’s all that comes of them. Women are made to be tokens of ideology, men are emasculated from a lack of say-so, and human life stripped of its humanity; it’s reduced to simple decision to be made rather than a sacred gift to be appreciated. Sides are chosen and only token gestures are made in regards solutions.
For individuals like myself, there should be a system of rules and laws in place which gives us some input into whether or not we choose to be parents. I’m sure to make enemies with this suggestion, but perhaps pregnant women should be made to obtain a waver from the father in order to get an abortion--just like in adoption--with the stipulation that the father WILL be an active participant in the child’s life (and not just in a financial obligatory sense), or even be willing to take full custody of the child.
Men who father children by women of limited means, and who have a legitimate level of concern about their child’s well-being should also be given the option of deciding to have the child placed in the custody of some (other) legal custodian, or into forcibly removed in lieu of adoption.
Those wishing to see all unborn children spared the machinations of the abortionists (most notably Christian Conservatives) had better be prepared to remove the phrase “fiscal restraint” from their ideological lexicon, as it will no doubt take a great deal of money to deal with the infusion of unwanted children into a welfare bureaucracy that many are already calling for a reduction of.
Most obvious, individuals need to learn and adopt the concept of foresight…learning to anticipate the consequences of their actions. We need to look beyond our hedonistic desires for momentary pleasure and measure the repercussions they have for ourselves and the lives that may result from them. The decision to eradicate a life should not be made with the same abandon as the decision to create one, not without consideration of whether or not we are willing to be adults and accept the consequences of our actions. And in accepting consequences, learning the lessons that restraint can teach us about how to deal with ourselves and each other.
Insofar as "punishing" those who would take a human life, that particular endeavor should be left up to whatever system of justice the universe was designed to mete out, in the way that it was designed to do so, not us.

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