Brilliant as always. I’ll never tire of the picture of Shelby Steele sitting with Thomas Sowell. I’d give anything to be a fly on the wall. Is it too much to ask for them to do a podcast together ????
Here's the kind of thing Trump's cancellation of Affirmative Action will hopefully put an end to:
I once worked for a communications company that mostly worked for the automotive industry, but on occasion they'd bid on a government contract. The trouble was that they didn't have many, if any, minorities. So they'd hire a black man in a suit to be at the meetings during the bidding process, so that they'd have a black face at the table. When the company didn't win the bid, they'd can the black man. When this is done to white people in China, it's called a "white monkey job", but I don't know what it's called when it's done to blacks in the US.
Then at another communications company, they also bid on a government contract. Same problem; not enough minorities. So they took one black coworker of mine who was already in above her level of competence — she was a very literate, intelligent person with a beautiful heart, and I loved her, but she would have been better at a different type of job — and they promoted her to VP. Then they still didn't have enough minorities, so a Lebanese-American coworker with an ethnically unidentifiable name started tanning, so that she ultimately looked like some kind of unidentifiable minority. That gave them enough minorities at the negotiating table, but they also didn't get the contract.
If Affirmative Action is no longer required, then maybe companies won't go through these ridiculous gyrations anymore.
Time to rethink LBJ’s “War on Poverty”: the most destructive set of programs for poor folks (disproportionately black) in American history. There are ways to provide a social safety net without undermining the family, encouraging out of wedlock childbirths, and discouraging steady & productive employment. All American families would benefit from having an employed father in the home as a provider, protector, and example for his children- particularly boys. Byron Donalds was exactly right: the black family was much stronger in America under Jim Crow; we must work together to halt and then reverse the damage that has been done over the last sixty years.
The country has reached a strange point where I'm often called a white racist by whites for stating the same opinions that blacks side with me on.
Online, I have discovered that saying blacks have equal intellectual and academic potential to whites will get me called a racist by whites.
I have pointed out a lot that "the growing gap between rich and poor" that Democrats fret about so much is caused by bad education, and that as 65% of black kids in Detroit have migrated to charter schools, they come out so well educated that this alone will do a lot to close that gap. That gets me called racist by whites.
Blacks in Detroit also move their kids to neighboring districts with higher standards, so while a black kid in Detroit might never have heard of Paris by the time he graduates, a black kid from the two nearest suburbs might speak French, not to mention do calculus.
But suggesting online that black kids can do as much as white kids and don't need to be patronized causes whites to call me racist.
Saying that even illiterate black parents know which local schools are the best and should be allowed to send their kids to the school they know will do them the most good has gotten me labeled racist by whites.
I guess, "You're racist," really means, "I don't have an answer to that."
Well, at least a lot of blacks know what I'm talking about.
Here’s a question to one piece of yr comment. As a teacher I witnessed how a charter school could turn out better prepared kids. I think why though might have something to do with 1. the public school has to educate every single kid in the zip code. There is no sorting or selecting
2. the charter school kids are already preordained for some level of success because the parents are involved or advocating and/or sacrificing for their child’s success. That alone can make a huge difference.
Many of my very poor students’ parents were imprisoned, or gangsters or were nervous talking to white, English-only administrators.
The goal of American public schooling is to educate them all.
There are lots of possible solutions, but the private school option is only a piece of it.
Your point 1 is the cliché often used by teachers union activists, but that is refuted by the fact that most charter schools either take the kids in the order they arrive or hold a lotto to select the students without regard to aptitude or background. So in many cases they're drawing on exactly the same pool of kids.
The other thing is that even if the kids are selected from a better prepared and supported group, those kids would still not succeed in the public education system with all the chaos, corruption and incompetence in it. People talk about the "school-to-prison pipeline" for a reason. School districts where students are routinely attacking the teacher, where police trot out a new molester about once every semester, and where most of the teacher's time is spent trying (and failing) to keep order, do not provide the conditions for those better-supported students to reach their potential. Sending those kids to charter schools changes everything.
The goal of public schooling may be to "educate them all", but it fails at it, and the fewer students fall victim to that failure, the better.
I think of a Mexican-American student I taught in a college class who was failing because of her inability to write intelligible English sentences. To my surprise, she didn't blame me for her grade. She said that at the schools she attended in Detroit, students were only supposed to be able to spend a year or two in bilingual ed, but due to the increased federal money schools get for bilingual students, the schools would keep the kids in it in perpetuity. "Our class valedictorian could barely get through her speech in English." This left her unprepared for college, and limited her potential from that point on. In that case, the public schools didn't "educate them all".
A friend brought her sister from Mexico to go to high school and learn English, but in the district they lived in, it was impossible to learn English in ESL class if the student didn't know Arabic, so my friend sent her home. Another public school fail.
And look at what was found when the Detroit district brought in forensic auditors and the FBI. Masses of money and resources were robbed from the schools and many people went to prison. Most resources did not go to the students, so even the best students couldn't succeed in those schools.
First of all, I do not think I was being confrontational with you. I wanted to dialogue. You do not need to lump me together with how I'm like a cliche or union people. Personally, I disagreed with my union about 95% of the time.
Second, when charter schools hold lotteries or first-come-first-serve, I think it is not the same pool of students as you said. This is because only parents who are invested enough will know about the opportunity and then take action to enter them. I am not aware that charter schools take random students from a public database based on the school zipcode. I also already know that they do not choose based on high achievers.
Third, I never suggested that the public school isn't chaotic and often a pipeline to prison. I agree. What I wanted to point out was that their mission, their goal, is different. Public school's goal is to educate every single students within a radius of the school. The charter's mission is to educate the kids who want in. Automatically you have a different environment right there.
I regret that I was unclear - I wanted to suggest that the public school shouldn't be compared to charters like apples to apples.
I appreciate your & your father’s work very much. I hope you are wrong that America will never be fair, unless that is an observation about universal human fallenness, in which case it applies to China, France, and Ghana as much as to America.
"America is not a fair nation and never will be. That is the price of living in freedom. But it is this freedom that makes it possible to pursue our own path through life, whatever obstacles may come, and what greater gift can a nation give than that?"
No greater gift that a nation can give exist. This nation is humanity's last hope at true freedom, if we don't let it slip away.
Biden was not smart enough or competent enough to resist caving to the far left wing of his party. He left it in shambles from which it may never recover.
Not a fan of Trump’s personality but his executive orders on our open borders, the insanity of gender identity which deny the reality of human sexuality, and the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others are absolutely the correct approach to those festering problems that the Democrats largely created.
Eli, your post is, as always, brilliant. Michael, in an earlier post pointed your comment about “fairness.” Life is not fair, “America is not a fair nation… what a great way to start a discussion. What is fairness? How about this?
1. Fairness is having freedom.
2. Fairness is having choices, not having dictums forced on you.
3. Fairness is a menu of opportunities (choices again).
4. Fairness is having an education, not an indoctrination, to flourish as an individual.
5. Fairness is supported by merit; the opportunity to earn who and what a person can achieve.
There is no greater gift than “freedom of opportunity” and to be unshackled from those who think that patronizing and giving what they think is best for someone will release hatred and bigotry.
Brilliant as always. I’ll never tire of the picture of Shelby Steele sitting with Thomas Sowell. I’d give anything to be a fly on the wall. Is it too much to ask for them to do a podcast together ????
Here's the kind of thing Trump's cancellation of Affirmative Action will hopefully put an end to:
I once worked for a communications company that mostly worked for the automotive industry, but on occasion they'd bid on a government contract. The trouble was that they didn't have many, if any, minorities. So they'd hire a black man in a suit to be at the meetings during the bidding process, so that they'd have a black face at the table. When the company didn't win the bid, they'd can the black man. When this is done to white people in China, it's called a "white monkey job", but I don't know what it's called when it's done to blacks in the US.
Then at another communications company, they also bid on a government contract. Same problem; not enough minorities. So they took one black coworker of mine who was already in above her level of competence — she was a very literate, intelligent person with a beautiful heart, and I loved her, but she would have been better at a different type of job — and they promoted her to VP. Then they still didn't have enough minorities, so a Lebanese-American coworker with an ethnically unidentifiable name started tanning, so that she ultimately looked like some kind of unidentifiable minority. That gave them enough minorities at the negotiating table, but they also didn't get the contract.
If Affirmative Action is no longer required, then maybe companies won't go through these ridiculous gyrations anymore.
Time to rethink LBJ’s “War on Poverty”: the most destructive set of programs for poor folks (disproportionately black) in American history. There are ways to provide a social safety net without undermining the family, encouraging out of wedlock childbirths, and discouraging steady & productive employment. All American families would benefit from having an employed father in the home as a provider, protector, and example for his children- particularly boys. Byron Donalds was exactly right: the black family was much stronger in America under Jim Crow; we must work together to halt and then reverse the damage that has been done over the last sixty years.
Feminism (marxism) has been the key destroyer here more than anything.
The country has reached a strange point where I'm often called a white racist by whites for stating the same opinions that blacks side with me on.
Online, I have discovered that saying blacks have equal intellectual and academic potential to whites will get me called a racist by whites.
I have pointed out a lot that "the growing gap between rich and poor" that Democrats fret about so much is caused by bad education, and that as 65% of black kids in Detroit have migrated to charter schools, they come out so well educated that this alone will do a lot to close that gap. That gets me called racist by whites.
Blacks in Detroit also move their kids to neighboring districts with higher standards, so while a black kid in Detroit might never have heard of Paris by the time he graduates, a black kid from the two nearest suburbs might speak French, not to mention do calculus.
But suggesting online that black kids can do as much as white kids and don't need to be patronized causes whites to call me racist.
Saying that even illiterate black parents know which local schools are the best and should be allowed to send their kids to the school they know will do them the most good has gotten me labeled racist by whites.
I guess, "You're racist," really means, "I don't have an answer to that."
Well, at least a lot of blacks know what I'm talking about.
Here’s a question to one piece of yr comment. As a teacher I witnessed how a charter school could turn out better prepared kids. I think why though might have something to do with 1. the public school has to educate every single kid in the zip code. There is no sorting or selecting
2. the charter school kids are already preordained for some level of success because the parents are involved or advocating and/or sacrificing for their child’s success. That alone can make a huge difference.
Many of my very poor students’ parents were imprisoned, or gangsters or were nervous talking to white, English-only administrators.
The goal of American public schooling is to educate them all.
There are lots of possible solutions, but the private school option is only a piece of it.
Your point 1 is the cliché often used by teachers union activists, but that is refuted by the fact that most charter schools either take the kids in the order they arrive or hold a lotto to select the students without regard to aptitude or background. So in many cases they're drawing on exactly the same pool of kids.
The other thing is that even if the kids are selected from a better prepared and supported group, those kids would still not succeed in the public education system with all the chaos, corruption and incompetence in it. People talk about the "school-to-prison pipeline" for a reason. School districts where students are routinely attacking the teacher, where police trot out a new molester about once every semester, and where most of the teacher's time is spent trying (and failing) to keep order, do not provide the conditions for those better-supported students to reach their potential. Sending those kids to charter schools changes everything.
The goal of public schooling may be to "educate them all", but it fails at it, and the fewer students fall victim to that failure, the better.
I think of a Mexican-American student I taught in a college class who was failing because of her inability to write intelligible English sentences. To my surprise, she didn't blame me for her grade. She said that at the schools she attended in Detroit, students were only supposed to be able to spend a year or two in bilingual ed, but due to the increased federal money schools get for bilingual students, the schools would keep the kids in it in perpetuity. "Our class valedictorian could barely get through her speech in English." This left her unprepared for college, and limited her potential from that point on. In that case, the public schools didn't "educate them all".
A friend brought her sister from Mexico to go to high school and learn English, but in the district they lived in, it was impossible to learn English in ESL class if the student didn't know Arabic, so my friend sent her home. Another public school fail.
And look at what was found when the Detroit district brought in forensic auditors and the FBI. Masses of money and resources were robbed from the schools and many people went to prison. Most resources did not go to the students, so even the best students couldn't succeed in those schools.
First of all, I do not think I was being confrontational with you. I wanted to dialogue. You do not need to lump me together with how I'm like a cliche or union people. Personally, I disagreed with my union about 95% of the time.
Second, when charter schools hold lotteries or first-come-first-serve, I think it is not the same pool of students as you said. This is because only parents who are invested enough will know about the opportunity and then take action to enter them. I am not aware that charter schools take random students from a public database based on the school zipcode. I also already know that they do not choose based on high achievers.
Third, I never suggested that the public school isn't chaotic and often a pipeline to prison. I agree. What I wanted to point out was that their mission, their goal, is different. Public school's goal is to educate every single students within a radius of the school. The charter's mission is to educate the kids who want in. Automatically you have a different environment right there.
I regret that I was unclear - I wanted to suggest that the public school shouldn't be compared to charters like apples to apples.
I appreciate your & your father’s work very much. I hope you are wrong that America will never be fair, unless that is an observation about universal human fallenness, in which case it applies to China, France, and Ghana as much as to America.
Well said Eli.
Quote from your article:
"America is not a fair nation and never will be. That is the price of living in freedom. But it is this freedom that makes it possible to pursue our own path through life, whatever obstacles may come, and what greater gift can a nation give than that?"
No greater gift that a nation can give exist. This nation is humanity's last hope at true freedom, if we don't let it slip away.
Biden was not smart enough or competent enough to resist caving to the far left wing of his party. He left it in shambles from which it may never recover.
Not a fan of Trump’s personality but his executive orders on our open borders, the insanity of gender identity which deny the reality of human sexuality, and the craziness of DEI which discriminates against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others are absolutely the correct approach to those festering problems that the Democrats largely created.
Great commentary. You and your father are my heroes!
Dear Eli, your words and thoughts are wonderful...but those picture...they radiate the true, the good, and the beautiful!
thanks,
randy
Eli, your post is, as always, brilliant. Michael, in an earlier post pointed your comment about “fairness.” Life is not fair, “America is not a fair nation… what a great way to start a discussion. What is fairness? How about this?
1. Fairness is having freedom.
2. Fairness is having choices, not having dictums forced on you.
3. Fairness is a menu of opportunities (choices again).
4. Fairness is having an education, not an indoctrination, to flourish as an individual.
5. Fairness is supported by merit; the opportunity to earn who and what a person can achieve.
There is no greater gift than “freedom of opportunity” and to be unshackled from those who think that patronizing and giving what they think is best for someone will release hatred and bigotry.
Give real fairness a chance!!
Don't forget Walter Williams...
Well, enjoy your systemic racism in this country.