MY TURN-In 2014, we will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the landmark desegregation decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, but with a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that remains close to 90% Latino and Black, we are not only no closer to Dr. King's dream, but by every objective standard, we are much further away from it with an LAUSD today that is more toxic to students of color than it was in 1954.
According to Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow, there were 380,000 people behind bars in 1978. Today there are 2.4 million and 60% are Latino and Black. So why isn't the connection between long purposefully failed public education and mass incarceration of poor youth of color ever addressed publicly or reported in the media?
While the following liberal politicians, experts, and groups are admirably always willing to have a symposium on the catastrophic effects, and how to deal with them, on over-incarcerate blacks, the underlying cause of no timely public education that deals with kids at their subjective level is ever addressed. No one seems willing to address the 850 lb. LAUSD gorilla that continues to reek havoc on our youth with no public objection or outrage:
Elected officials:
- Representative Karen Bass (D-Calif.)
- State Senator Holly Mitchell (D-Culver City)
- Assemblymember Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-South Los Angeles)
Panelists:
- Susan Burton, Executive Director, A New Way of Life
- Dr. John H. Griffith President /CEO, Kedren Mental Health Center
- Ernest M. Roberts, Executive Director, PV JOBS
- Virgie P. Walker, President, People Coordinated Services Southern California
Community Organizations to include:
- His Sheltering Arms
- Community Build
- Los Angeles Metropolitan Churches (LAM)
- People Coordinated Services of Southern California
- Youth Justice Coalition
- PV JOBs
- Summer Night Lights
Although the holding in Brown vs. The Board that "separate but equal is inherently unequal" is supposedly still the law of the land, when it comes to those running our inner city school districts around the country, or the media whose fundamental charge should be to keep them honest, this unequal and destructive public warehousing system only evokes silence or vacuous feel good rhetoric. Simply stated, people who are educated to be "somebody" don't have to say it.
We beatify Martin Luther King on the 50th anniversary of the I Have A Dream Speech, but children of color are more segregated and get a worse education today than they did when King spoke during the March on Washington- and they do it in a de facto segregated LAUSD that Brown said was "inherently unequal, " and where Superintendent John Deasy has the gall to continue lying and nobody in a position of power seems willing to call him on his lies:
One must wonder why the mainstream and public media never address this continuing glaring dishonesty. Could it have anything to do with the fact that the same five corporate interests that now either own or subsidize all media- public and private- might find their agenda of privatization of public education and the further dumbing down of this country challenged?
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 23
Pub: Mar 18, 2014
