Comments on: The politics of race http://blog.metacentricities.com/2008/07/13/the-politics-of-race/ The intersection of vertical lines through the center of buoyancy of a floating body when it is at equilibrium... A collection of centers... Where religion, politics, science, technology, the environment and Michelle's brain and life meet. Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:55:49 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Peter Campbell http://blog.metacentricities.com/2008/07/13/the-politics-of-race/comment-page-1/#comment-8155 Peter Campbell Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:10:12 +0000 http://blog.metacentricities.com/?p=573#comment-8155 Michelle, I agree with you that the faith-based initiatives idea -- coming from someone as distrustful on the subject as Bush, or reliable as Obama -- is still wrong. I'm not knocking the effectiveness of some religious institutions in combating poverty, but the method in which these churches are funded has to be on a completely even playing ground with non-secular institutions, like Goodwill. Should the government have a strategy of collaborating with the community to foster effective social service programs? Absolutely. But the financial support should come in the form of merit-based grants to community organizations (including churches), under programs that don't highlight or specify religious institutions as the sole or primary recipients, and the accounting of such grants - particularly when they go to churches - has to be strictly judged to insure that the money is going to the government's purpose of reducing poverty, not the churches main purpose of converting people to their faith. I think the face of racism today is very different from that of the 50's and 60's. While head-on racism still exists (and my family, which is integrated, has experienced it first-hand), there's a lot less of that type of racism now than there was a few decades ago, and my son is going to grow up in a world that is less hostile than the one his mother grew up in, just as she grew up in a better environment than her mother. Where racism is still rampant, though, is in institutions, particularly our educational system. And a lot of the most effective practitioners of racist behavior would never consider themselves racist. But when you have 35 children in your class, it's easy to assume that the African-American student who speaks poor English and acts surly is likely to fail, and, with 35 students, a teacher's strategy is generally to focus on the students that they assume are able to succeed. Is it also a problem that many black children will ostracize the A students? Of course. But to consider that this behavior is unrelated to the low expectations these children face in school is ridiculous, and one problem can't be solved without solving the other. The thing that disappoints me most about our candidates is that they aren't talking about the abolition of the safety net that kept many Americans out of poverty, and they aren't talking about how "No Child Left Behind" is leaving whole schools behind. This is happening mostly in low income areas where they aren't making the test scores, regardless of what other improvements they might be making. More to the point, the live or die test scores are further stressing out teachers and interfering with their ability to deal with any but the best-prepped (often wealthiest) children. We have a crisis in this country in education and in the growth of the ranks of the poor. The government - Democrat or Republican - can't outsource the fixing of those problems to the churches. We need to develop policies and budgets that support Americans. Just as well-known blacks like Bill Cosby and Barack Obama are ashamed of their poorer race-mates behavior, they need to be ashamed of and concerned by the poverty and racism that the behavior thrives in. And Presidential candidates should be talking about how the government they oversee is going to solve these problems, not just dump them on the already-struggling communities. Michelle, I agree with you that the faith-based initiatives idea — coming from someone as distrustful on the subject as Bush, or reliable as Obama — is still wrong. I’m not knocking the effectiveness of some religious institutions in combating poverty, but the method in which these churches are funded has to be on a completely even playing ground with non-secular institutions, like Goodwill. Should the government have a strategy of collaborating with the community to foster effective social service programs? Absolutely. But the financial support should come in the form of merit-based grants to community organizations (including churches), under programs that don’t highlight or specify religious institutions as the sole or primary recipients, and the accounting of such grants - particularly when they go to churches - has to be strictly judged to insure that the money is going to the government’s purpose of reducing poverty, not the churches main purpose of converting people to their faith.

I think the face of racism today is very different from that of the 50’s and 60’s. While head-on racism still exists (and my family, which is integrated, has experienced it first-hand), there’s a lot less of that type of racism now than there was a few decades ago, and my son is going to grow up in a world that is less hostile than the one his mother grew up in, just as she grew up in a better environment than her mother. Where racism is still rampant, though, is in institutions, particularly our educational system. And a lot of the most effective practitioners of racist behavior would never consider themselves racist. But when you have 35 children in your class, it’s easy to assume that the African-American student who speaks poor English and acts surly is likely to fail, and, with 35 students, a teacher’s strategy is generally to focus on the students that they assume are able to succeed. Is it also a problem that many black children will ostracize the A students? Of course. But to consider that this behavior is unrelated to the low expectations these children face in school is ridiculous, and one problem can’t be solved without solving the other.

The thing that disappoints me most about our candidates is that they aren’t talking about the abolition of the safety net that kept many Americans out of poverty, and they aren’t talking about how “No Child Left Behind” is leaving whole schools behind. This is happening mostly in low income areas where they aren’t making the test scores, regardless of what other improvements they might be making. More to the point, the live or die test scores are further stressing out teachers and interfering with their ability to deal with any but the best-prepped (often wealthiest) children.

We have a crisis in this country in education and in the growth of the ranks of the poor. The government - Democrat or Republican - can’t outsource the fixing of those problems to the churches. We need to develop policies and budgets that support Americans. Just as well-known blacks like Bill Cosby and Barack Obama are ashamed of their poorer race-mates behavior, they need to be ashamed of and concerned by the poverty and racism that the behavior thrives in. And Presidential candidates should be talking about how the government they oversee is going to solve these problems, not just dump them on the already-struggling communities.

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