What does a Presidential candidate do when his campaign in languishing due to lack of funds, interest, and support? Why, play the race card of course... in this case, in the form of "white guilt."
Shamnesty proponent and floundering GOP Presidential wanna-be Sam Brownback is trotting out dead horse- he and an "unnamed" Democrat will be offering a resolution in the Senate this week calling for the United States to apologize for slavery and segregation.
Brownback was never going to generate any interest with the base because of his support for the Kennedy/McCain immigration travesty, so now he's pandering to another racial minority group and those suffering from "white guilt." This is nothing but the death rattle of a comatose campaign, a pathetic attempt to jump start a campaign that was dead before it ever started.
Thanks for playing, Sam. Now get yourself ready for life after politics, when the good voters of Kansas toss your butt out of office for pandering to special interest and trying to cede our Country to illegal invaders from south of the border.
_____________________________
From The Boston Globe:
Brownback to pitch proposal apologizing for slavery
Says he expects a fight, won't call for reparations
By Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff | October 16, 2007
Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican trying to inject new life into his beleaguered presidential campaign, plans to offer a resolution this week for Congress to apologize for slavery and segregation.
Brownback, of Kansas, told The Boston Globe's editorial board yesterday he will join an unnamed Democrat in sponsoring the proposal. He said he expects a tough fight on the resolution, even though it will not include any call for reparations.
"They were federal policies," he said. "They were wrong. The only way for us to move forward . . . is at the end of day acknowledging those, taking ownership for it, and asking for forgiveness."
Brownback, in a wide-ranging interview yesterday, conceded that his campaign has languished since finishing a disappointing third in August in the Ames straw poll in Iowa. The 51-year-old Kansas senator remains in the trailing group of Republicans in the polls and in fund-raising, and says he will drop out of the race unless he places in the top four in the first-in-the-nation caucuses in Iowa.
"We're trying some different plays," Brownback said.
He divulged his plan for a bipartisan slavery apology just days after reaching across the political aisle to join a Democratic presidential hopeful, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, in pushing a proposal for a federal system in Iraq - with strong Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia regional governments - as a way to end the bloodshed and allow US troops to withdraw from combat patrols.
"This is a system that can work," Brownback said. "You devolve power out in order to keep the country together. I fundamentally believe this will be the final status politically of Iraq."
Brownback, an outspoken opponent of abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage, has tried to court the social conservative base of the Republican Party. But conservatives have yet to unite behind a candidate, and some evangelical leaders have suggested supporting a third-party candidate.
Brownback's bipartisan gambit may be a way to attract some Democrats and independents, said Blease Graham, a political science professor at the University of South Carolina.
"This softer approach may make a Republican candidate more attractive," Graham said. "But in a partisan political world, I'm not sure how much resonance these issues are going to have among a Republican constituency."
In Iowa, people can register as a member of the party whose caucus they plan to vote in on the day of the vote. In New Hampshire, independents can vote in the first-in-the-nation Republican primary.
Mychal Massie, chairman of the National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives-Project 21, a think tank in Washington D.C., criticized Brownback's plans for a slavery apology resolution as "absurd and ridiculous." Project 21 does not endorse presidential candidates, but Massie said he personally is backing Republican presidential hopeful Duncan Hunter.
"Brownback finds himself in a failing campaign with no hope under the sun of being elected and he is reaching out and exploiting blacks and using them to try and get a few votes," Massie said. "It's not going to work."
Brownback's visit to Boston included a speech Sunday to members of the Catholic Lawyers Guild on abortion and the need for a more expansive view of life. Last night, he addressed Boston University students on US-Africa relations and its effect on America's security interests. The United States needs to do more to stop the spread of Islamic governments friendly to Al Qaeda that could provide havens for terrorists, he said.
Brownback also praised Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, for helping lead the push for the immigration bill.
"It's been very hard," he said. "I have never been beat on so much in my entire life as during this immigration debate."
Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Showing posts with label segregation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label segregation. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Friday, October 12, 2007
Resegregating the Public Schools- An Idea Whose Time Has Come?
I was amazed to read the following in the ultra-left St. Pete Times, and you might be amazed that the editorial was written by a black man.
_______________________
School integration is not the answer
By BILL MAXWELL
Published October 11, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Several years ago, I ran into then-Pinellas School superintendent Howard Hinesley at the concession stand during a local high school football game. We had a moment of small talk but soon got around to the potential "resegregation impact" of the district's ambitious school choice plan.
As we walked back to our seats, I asked the superintendent to tell me what he saw in the bleachers. He quickly saw what I was getting at: The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of students in the stands, along with their parents, were segregated along racial and ethnic lines.
Whites sat together in groups, and blacks sat together in groups. It was a virtual Balkans in the bleachers.
My point to the superintendent was that he and his teachers and administrators could not do what society at large does not do: force people, in their natural state, to associate with people with whom they prefer not to associate.
In other words, people in those bleachers had naturally chosen to be with others with whom they had a lot in common - with whom they felt most comfortable. The self-segregation that Hinesley and I witnessed was the most natural thing people do. Yet, we mandate that our public schools re-engineer the very self-segregation we practice in our daily lives away from our schoolhouses.
Look around. Our housing is mostly segregated along racial lines. Eleven o'clock, in church, on Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour of the week. Black kids hang out primarily with other black kids at our malls. White kids hang out with white kids. Interracial marriages still raise eyebrows. And, yes, even in our public schools, you almost always will see white and black kids sitting at separate tables in the lunchrooms.
Still, we have placed the unfair burden of societal change on our public schools. I understand the inclination. In theory, we view the classroom - the academy - as a place of enlightenment.
It is where intelligent and ethical scholars teach and demonstrate the core principles, such as justice and equality, that make our democracy special in the world. It is the place where civility is praised as a virtue and is not mocked as a character flaw. It is a place where future scholars, practitioners and public servants are born.
For these and other admirable reasons, we invest untold amounts of tangible and intangible resources into efforts to prevent our public schools from resegregating. We continue to implement magnet programs, choice plans, majority-minority transfer schemes and other well-intentioned strategies to stop "white flight" and black saturation.
As a democracy, we instinctively, albeit uncomfortably, believe in racial integration in our schools. And for a long time, many of us believed that busing was the way to integrate and that integration was the panacea for a just, peaceful and educated America.
Now, four decades later, we should acknowledge that when court orders requiring desegregation are lifted and we are left to our own devices, we naturally resegregate.
In Pinellas, many blacks, especially NAACP members, reject the proposed student assignment plan that permits students to attend neighborhood schools. A real fear is that whites naturally will attend schools nearest to their homes, and blacks will do the same, making some schools majority white and others majority black.
Black opponents of the new plan believe that majority black schools will lose out on resources across the board, including teacher and staff quality. Their fear may be well-founded. I suspect, however, that a fundamental, more troublesome fear is at work: Too many blacks believe that for their children to learn effectively, they must be in class with white children. To them, racial integration is the only way for their children to learn, never realizing that they are indicting themselves as failed, nonessential players in their children's intellectual lives. In other words, integration has become the surrogate parent for some.
White liberals who see integration as a moral obligation argue that school integration gives white children the opportunity to be in the presence of black children, a relationship that gives the races a chance to learn about each other. The end result, such whites believe, should be that black children will become smart, and white children will become smart and U.S. society will become better for everyone.
Perhaps they are right. I do not know. What I do know is this: School integration has not benefited black children as positively as it has children of other races and ethnicities. When we speak of the achievement gap, we are referring to black children. Integration is not closing the gap and will not close the gap without exceptional effort on the part of blacks.
A school is as good as the students who attend, as good as the parents who send their children to school, as effective as the teachers who teach the children, as efficient as the principal who runs the place. A mostly black or all-black school can be as good as its white counterpart. That said, parents should have the right to send their children to a majority black or a majority white school for the best education.
As the product of an all-black, Jim Crow era school in a small town, I am convinced, however, that racial integration is not necessary for a high-quality public school education. If the school district would sign an agreement guaranteeing equal resources in majority black schools, black parents should have no reason to demand integration.
Evidence tells me that integration, which we have had for nearly a half century, has not rescued most black children from the behaviors and culture that trap them in the cycle of failure. We need to try something different.
_______________________
School integration is not the answer
By BILL MAXWELL
Published October 11, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Several years ago, I ran into then-Pinellas School superintendent Howard Hinesley at the concession stand during a local high school football game. We had a moment of small talk but soon got around to the potential "resegregation impact" of the district's ambitious school choice plan.
As we walked back to our seats, I asked the superintendent to tell me what he saw in the bleachers. He quickly saw what I was getting at: The overwhelming majority of the hundreds of students in the stands, along with their parents, were segregated along racial and ethnic lines.
Whites sat together in groups, and blacks sat together in groups. It was a virtual Balkans in the bleachers.
My point to the superintendent was that he and his teachers and administrators could not do what society at large does not do: force people, in their natural state, to associate with people with whom they prefer not to associate.
In other words, people in those bleachers had naturally chosen to be with others with whom they had a lot in common - with whom they felt most comfortable. The self-segregation that Hinesley and I witnessed was the most natural thing people do. Yet, we mandate that our public schools re-engineer the very self-segregation we practice in our daily lives away from our schoolhouses.
Look around. Our housing is mostly segregated along racial lines. Eleven o'clock, in church, on Sunday morning remains the most segregated hour of the week. Black kids hang out primarily with other black kids at our malls. White kids hang out with white kids. Interracial marriages still raise eyebrows. And, yes, even in our public schools, you almost always will see white and black kids sitting at separate tables in the lunchrooms.
Still, we have placed the unfair burden of societal change on our public schools. I understand the inclination. In theory, we view the classroom - the academy - as a place of enlightenment.
It is where intelligent and ethical scholars teach and demonstrate the core principles, such as justice and equality, that make our democracy special in the world. It is the place where civility is praised as a virtue and is not mocked as a character flaw. It is a place where future scholars, practitioners and public servants are born.
For these and other admirable reasons, we invest untold amounts of tangible and intangible resources into efforts to prevent our public schools from resegregating. We continue to implement magnet programs, choice plans, majority-minority transfer schemes and other well-intentioned strategies to stop "white flight" and black saturation.
As a democracy, we instinctively, albeit uncomfortably, believe in racial integration in our schools. And for a long time, many of us believed that busing was the way to integrate and that integration was the panacea for a just, peaceful and educated America.
Now, four decades later, we should acknowledge that when court orders requiring desegregation are lifted and we are left to our own devices, we naturally resegregate.
In Pinellas, many blacks, especially NAACP members, reject the proposed student assignment plan that permits students to attend neighborhood schools. A real fear is that whites naturally will attend schools nearest to their homes, and blacks will do the same, making some schools majority white and others majority black.
Black opponents of the new plan believe that majority black schools will lose out on resources across the board, including teacher and staff quality. Their fear may be well-founded. I suspect, however, that a fundamental, more troublesome fear is at work: Too many blacks believe that for their children to learn effectively, they must be in class with white children. To them, racial integration is the only way for their children to learn, never realizing that they are indicting themselves as failed, nonessential players in their children's intellectual lives. In other words, integration has become the surrogate parent for some.
White liberals who see integration as a moral obligation argue that school integration gives white children the opportunity to be in the presence of black children, a relationship that gives the races a chance to learn about each other. The end result, such whites believe, should be that black children will become smart, and white children will become smart and U.S. society will become better for everyone.
Perhaps they are right. I do not know. What I do know is this: School integration has not benefited black children as positively as it has children of other races and ethnicities. When we speak of the achievement gap, we are referring to black children. Integration is not closing the gap and will not close the gap without exceptional effort on the part of blacks.
A school is as good as the students who attend, as good as the parents who send their children to school, as effective as the teachers who teach the children, as efficient as the principal who runs the place. A mostly black or all-black school can be as good as its white counterpart. That said, parents should have the right to send their children to a majority black or a majority white school for the best education.
As the product of an all-black, Jim Crow era school in a small town, I am convinced, however, that racial integration is not necessary for a high-quality public school education. If the school district would sign an agreement guaranteeing equal resources in majority black schools, black parents should have no reason to demand integration.
Evidence tells me that integration, which we have had for nearly a half century, has not rescued most black children from the behaviors and culture that trap them in the cycle of failure. We need to try something different.
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