Black children are no different from any human children. Treating them as if they are different will turn them into adults who think race is a natural characteristic instead of a false concept to justify oppression. Racial discrimination has had the exact same result for hundreds of years upon black and white people. Repeating the behavior of racists does not end racist effects.
3
Margaret Thatcher — 'The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.'
3
Though they probably don't realize it, the afro-centric school idea is simply an imitation of the religious school. (yes, you can have a religious belief without acknowledging it) Though the tradition is long and storied and there are many "successful graduates of religious schools, this does not in itself reflect well upon the tradition.
I was subjected to a religious education and it damaged me - by creating a school exclusively for people like us, they taught us that we were better than others and inherently different in ways which frankly we are not — we were lied to about ourselves and the others in our societies. That most of the others who received this indoctrination will take these prejudices and misperceptions to their grave doesn't reflect well on our religion, despite the effectiveness of the brainwashing.
Worse still than the false superiority, we were manipulated by ideas of sin and fantasies of Hell, laugh if you will but Hell was depicted in all it's historical tradition as an active sadistic torture chamber and that is an idea that can devastate a 7 year old. need I mention how this isolation in a small set of beliefs affected the healthy development of our sexuality/ It simply didn't take place, or worse.
Touchy- feely revivals of pan african ideas from the 70s might look good on paper to some, but I caution that it is inherently abnormal to separate children from other children who are different. the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
1
I wonder how you design a school for a particular race? Perhaps by having role models might have an impact. Change the curriculum? Surely not!! If it actually delivers results I would be for it, perhaps we could use it where I live.
I applaud Mr. Miranda and his colleagues for their investment in the Drama Bookstore. It is a worthy act and shows that he wants to repay the opportunities offered when he was younger and less well known (and had fewer resources).
Thank you.
7
As a black person who was educated primarily in the New York City Public School system, I am appalled by the idea of Afrocentric schools. It's segregation by another name. Now, it's self-segregation.
"[D]ecades of research have shown that integration can redistribute resources across schools and thus boost academic performance, and experts warned that abandoning integration could backfire. 'Segregation leads to inequality,' said Andre Perry, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. 'You can’t just do that away. If you’re going to ignore this issue, it will come back to haunt you.'"
Let's await the academic results. But even beyond academics, students do not live in an all-black world. I believe that integrated schools should be truly welcoming to everyone, but creating virtual all-black schools is a step backward.
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Let me get this straight. Based on a single 20-year-old article, you are actually suggesting that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is copying Trump's tax idea?
I'm no tax expert, but am certain that taxing marginal income is an idea that's been around far longer than Trump. It's was implemented for 35 years after World War II, according to your own Economics Nobel Prize laureate columnist Paul Krugman.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tax-policy-dance.html
In addition, I did not understand that Ocasio-Cortez's plan was to be a one-time event. Has it even been articulated in such detail?
Do I need to read yet another silly attack on Ocasio-Cortez that also is not-so-subtly undermining her?
7
@Lifelong Reader I believe this inclusion was to illustrate the irony of the current occupant's move to lower tax rates which conflicts with his previous call to raise taxes. And any complaints he has about AOC's proposal should be nullified as a result. Yes, AOC's approach has been around for quite some time and it was only under "Saint Ronnie" that we aggressively moved away from the belief that to those whom great wealth is given great contributions are expected.
2
Re Ms. Ocasio-Cortez: You can see that she quickly figured out that if “they" want 30% and you want 50%, you have to shock them with 70%, and then look like you’re being really accommodating as you get to yes.
Tune of “A-B-C’ (Jackson Five classic)
A buh-buh buh buh-buh
(A buh-buh buh buh-buh)
A-O-C,
Knows that the G-O-P
Knows when she says “Se-ven-ty”
They get she
Will agree
The rate will never be that.
Shake up Congress, shake it!
Shake up Congress, shake it!
A-O-C!
Seventy!
Maybe fifty’s where we’ll agree!
8
Got to shout to Michael Paulson and the recent coverage of "Hamilton" dealing objectively with the social impact of its great success. . It was nerve-wracking for theater business fans when Patrick Healy moved back to politics, will the coverage lose the step-up theatre had gotten; I guess he realized he can make a real difference in this era where ia difference is needed so badly (while the business of theater producing had up to MeToo been intractable for so many years). Michael Paulson came in and I assume with the people running the section went for a pretty non-Riedel real journalism approach to the theater, recognizing that theater and all the tourism and ancillary business it generates has lately become a key in New York economics, and it's getting more so the more premium has become a factor, as well as MeToo. At first, it wasn't clear that the more NY Times-like approach would also generate the chat board buzz, but since then, this approach seems to be thriving (even hitting the real front page. above the fold - for theater news!) while the Riedel presence has stepped back. (And it's fun to see that some of theatre journalists we used to love to read on theater like Mr. Healy and Catherine Rampell from the "Spiderman" days on CNN, so we haven't lost them, they're just now talking a different type of show by-business ).
4
A side comment on spellcheck. (Is it Billy from Brooklyn here who called it spelchek?) I don't want to turn off spellcheck because I really need it very often, but it's been on crazy overdrive very recently. I googled, but can't tell: Has this been happening everywhere, or is it a Spectrum or Mac-only problem? (Though at least it's finally accepting the Streisand spelling of "Barbra" now without fighting me; maybe they got enough user complaints about that spelling. Or maybe my spouse quietly fixed that?)
3
Get an umbrella with a strap on the handle. Hang it on your wrist, unobtrusively between your legs but not directly on the floor. Your hands are still (mostly) free and your umbrella is not rolling around on the grimy subway floor. Problem solved.
3
Why report on something that was in yesterday’s paper?
5
The irony is that black parents seem to be saying, Well if white people can have their own schools, so can we -- and yet all over the city there are, sadly, already "black schools."
And ironically, schools that are "too white" or "too black" are being integrated by making neighborhood kids go elsewhere. Mr. de Blasio has been on a mission to make that happen.
The same dedicated teachers, eager to help their students, however, are found in all schools.
It's a lie that the good teachers work in white schools only. It is also a lie that black kids can learn better with whites around.
Look at the segregated schools down South. They have produced an educated population. It is no coincidence that many black people are moving to southern states.
A teacher is only as good as his kids. When parents make their children read books and study, no matter their economic fortunes, they do well. That's why poor Asian kids with parents who work 2-3 jobs get into Bronx Science. And that's why whites who prefer TV and guns to anything else produce equally incurious, anti-intellectual offspring who cannot find jobs.
Class and color are no predictors of intellect.
Look at Mr. Trump.
6
@B.
"Look at the segregated schools down South. They have produced an educated population."
--Southern states often rank at the very bottom of educational achievement in the United States and many Southern public school students are poor and lower-class black children.
"It is no coincidence that many black people are moving to southern states."
--Many black Millennials are moving for more economic opportunity and to reconnect with their Southern roots, not because of the great schools.
"A teacher is only as good as his kids. When parents make their children read books and study, no matter their economic fortunes, they do well."
--I agree with that.
2
@Lifelong Reader And southern schools have not been officially segregated for many decades.
1
You might be right, Lifelong Reader. And yet I know that black kids down South during Jim Crow strove in school, taught by black teachers and encouraged by determined parents, and despite lousy school facilities and supplies, and became productive citizens in Southern cities (as much as they were allowed to be); and that black colleges have produced extraordinary people.
I am not against integration. And I positively am for what happened in Little Rock. But I also think that this business of black students' learning better when white students are around is silly. My black students could've learned anywhere, they were so motivated. (One needed a little chasing to get her to see me for extra help -- but what a star she turned out to be.)
As for the current state of schools in the South: All the schools are pretty bad, but that's because the white people who run most of them are not interested in a thinking populace, not even a thinking white populace. Science? Literature? Real history? That's for the elites.
I feel sorry for thinking whites or blacks who finds themselves forced to send their children to school down there. A cousin-in-law who taught in Virginia despaired. Cousins of a distant cousin who teach in Kentucky find themselves arguing against Creationism all over again. Anecdotal, I guess. But look at the legislators this citizenry, which has gone to school, elects to office. We are in trouble.
1
I am not sure if the omission of the tradition of AfroCentric schools, dating back to the Black Panther Movement of the 1960s and 70s was omitted due to ignorance, but these schools come out of a long and proven tradition. Bravo to black parents for taking their children’s education into their own hands.
2
That’s my memory as well and it makes a lot of sense to me. My friends and I were among the kids who were ‘bussed’ back in the 60’s and it did not go well. I am white and still felt incredibly out of place, unwelcome and at a loss in a predominately white, middle class school.
We all would have done much better in a community based school, developed by the community, and run by people with a shared heritage and understanding. Many people advocated for this, including the Black Panthers. It’s such an old idea it’s new again.
2
One the face of it, actively segregating schools by race is a bad idea for the African-American kids. This was done with HBCUs before the Civil Rights era. Yet another identity politics manifestation that's dividing the progressive movement and undermining the liberal ideals of diversity and multiculturalism. I get it if you've given up on those ideals, so be honest about it and admit that you don't want to play in the mainstream America sand box. In that sense, this is reactionary, not positive.
13
@Jack
You do realize that these schools geared toward African-American children are basically in response to the segregationist policies already in place because white parents don't want their kids going to the same schools as Black kids, don't you?
7
Afrocentric and Caucaseancentric schools are segregated schools, regardless of the term. No matter how well intentioned, separate but equal is an idea whose time has passed.
Think, people!
9
@Billy, how do you feel about Yeshivahs, where while not 100% legally "required" that a student be Jewish, it does seem to work out that way.
(I'm concerned by the recent Chancellor attempts to audit Jewish schools without a statement of the clear guidelines before the audri, so the schools can prepare the data. That almost seems like a recipe to find a problem no matter what the facts are. When I was in Yeshivah, for example, the Jewish History classes taught in Hebrew did not seem to be "counted" as general knowledge classes, even though if a class taught in English dealt with World War II the same way, it would count; or a literature class in Hebrew teaching the exact same writing principles as an English lit class somehow couldn't get grouped as general knoiwledge. And that was the 1970s.)
2
Freddie:
It is graduates of those Yeshivas who for years have asked governmental authorities to review the schools. They complain that students are being poorly educated and graduate without the necessary skills to pursue higher education and in some cases, handle basic adult life. Now that something finally is being done you accuse the authorities of conducting an unprincipled fishing expedition?
9
@Lifelong Reader, here's a link when the guidelines were issued about six weeks ago. https://chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/11/20/state-guidance-yeshiva-probe/
Not suggesting anything unprincipled, but they need time to meet the guidelines, which seem likely to even involve hiring decisions, which presumably no one wants done too hastily. So no reasonable way to implement them during the current school year, is there?
1