Perdaily.com

(Mensaje se repite en Español)

In spending the Memorial Day weekend with an old teacher friend who lives and works in an upscale bedroom community out on Long Island, New York, I was unexpectedly enlightened by yet another lesson as to how the purposefully failed predominantly poor minority filled innercity public education systems in this country bear no resemblance to the still excellent public education that remains the rule in the suburbs, where the affluent middle class live and can still exert their substantial financial influence.

When my friend, who only started teaching in his late 40s told me that he was making well over $100,000 a year as a special needs teacher, I realized immediately that me and Dorothy Gale were not in Kansas anymore...nor for that matter in innercity L.A., Chi-town, or NYC, where the first rule of public education "reform" still remains: How little can we pay teachers- while getting rid of those at the top of the salary scale- so that obscene corporate profit can yet again increase.

As constituted, the institution of public education remains clearly designed to maintain an inherently racist status quo in this country by assuring that the education the vast majority of minority children receive in innercity public schools in say NYC in no way resembles the excellent public, parochial or private education that predominantly White children get in toney suburban communities in such places like Long Island, Marin County or Simi Valley.

In fairness to the folks living in suburbia and given their complete lack of association with minorities, it would be difficult at best for them to understand the destructive public education system poor minorities are continuing to be subjected to, since it is literally never experienced in the affluents' daily lives. By mistakenly projecting their exclusive education experience with their own children's education onto minorities, whose public education in no way approximates that of their children, these predominantly affluent White parents are left with the not politically correct and yet egotist fallacious conclusion that the poor minorities must in fact be inferior.

In the not too distant past then denominated inferior Irish, Italians, Jews and other immigrants somehow got an excellent public education that was key to their transitioning from uneducated immigrant to fully integrated American in one generation. It was not that exceptional for a first generation son of immigrants like a Louis Brandeis to become a United States Supreme Court justice in just one generation. But Black folks who have been in this country for over 400 hundred years just can't seem to make that same transition, hmm... Inherent in accepting without question or outrage this lack of reasonable expectation of Black student excellence is a pernicious form of racism that regrettably still is alive and well in America.

The not so subtle inherently racist message implied in these minorities academic failure is that they are indeed inferior, when the real reason is that the supposed rote non-expectational based education they continue to be subjected to in no way approximates the education predominantly White- and even some minority children- get in low enrollment, well funded, and high quality public schools in the suburbs.

When you get down to it, these contrasting and extremely disparity school realities get down to something as mundane and fundamental as the idea of you get what you pay for.

If you or someone you know has been targeted and are in the process of being dismissed and need legal defense, get in touch:

Lenny@perdaily.com

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