Harvard lawsuit is not what it seems

By Jeff Yang

What this lawsuit is really is just the latest attempt to derail an apparatus that has given hundreds of thousands of blacks, Hispanics and, yes, Asians a means to climb out of circumstances defined by our society's historical racism. 

It is hardly a coincidence that Blum has chosen to use the Asian American community as his tool to do so. There are millions of Asians who, like my parents, see a prestigious-university education as not just a goal for their children but a virtual entitlement, the product of years of aspiration and preparation. 

But there are millions of other Asian Americans -- a significant majority, in fact, at 69% -- who support affirmative action as a necessary way for us to achieve a better society, and who recognize that we have benefited and continue to benefit from its fruits, both directly and indirectly. 

As Loyola University Chicago assistant professor of higher education OiYan Poon puts it, "The question Asian Americans face now is, 'Do we care about justice or just us?'" She adds, "If we care about justice, we have to see that we're only being used as cover to dismantle a policy initiative that is about racial equity, which ultimately benefits everyone."

"White People Feel Targeted by the Ferguson Protests—Welcome to Our World"

Time Magazine:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: White People Feel Targeted by the Ferguson Protests—Welcome to Our World

We read this article in our Leadership Team meeting at school.  It sparked a lot of conversation about what it means for us as educators and as members of the leadership team supporting/representing/leading other educators at a school with a student population that is predominantly students of color.  What are our responsibilities toward our students?  How do we create the type of school where all students are respected? How do we create the type of school where we are actively fighting against the oppression of black male students (in particular) and other students of color?  Where do our conversations and efforts toward acknowledging and celebrating our diverse staff and students (including a successful Day of Pride that was organized recently) fit into all this?  What actions can we take in a practical way to fight injustices and inequities in the space that we occupy... while continuing to provide quality education? ... while also recognizing that fighting/acknowledging/identifying injustices and inequities with/for students should be a part of the "quality" education that they receive from us?  

Many thoughts.  Some answers.  A lot of hard work.

"For Officer Liu’s Funeral, Blending Police Traditions With Chinese Customs"

NYTIMES: 
For Officer Liu’s Funeral, Blending Police Traditions With Chinese Customs

by Vivian Yee and Jeffrey E. Singer

I just thought that this was really interesting. I heard that there were tons of policemen who showed up in New York from out of state to show support/respect for Officer Ramos and I'm sure that they want to show respect to Officer Liu as well. On the other hand, apparently "[s]everal family friends [of Officer Liu] have said they plan to attend only the wake on Saturday, intimidated by what is sure to be a large showing by the Police Department on Sunday."  If the expression of solidarity and respect by the policement (most of whom didn't know Officer Liu) is serving to suppress the expressions of grief and respect by the family member and friends who did know him, I feel like something is falling through the cracks.

While Officer Ramos’s wife appeared “courageous and dignified in the face of such great loss,” containing her emotions during her husband’s funeral on Saturday, Mr. Mo said, “if you look at a typical Chinese funeral, that is not the way to behave. Should we bend the tradition in order to make it more palatable for Westerners? Those are all issues.” 

...  

“We have to understand these customs and norms,” he said. “We can’t just say, ‘I’m Roman Catholic; this is the only way I know how to do this.’ ”

Charter Schools

AFT: Restoring Shaker's Vision for Charter Schools by Richard D. Kahlenberg and Halley Potter 

(The website version is here)

I didn't know that charter schools were originally suggested by an AFT president.  It was an interesting article about the history of charter schools and how the concept of "free market" and the "competition breeds excellence" mentality skewed his original concept for charter schools:

Under Shanker’s program, proposals for charter schools would be reviewed, evaluated, and approved or rejected by panels that included union representatives, school board members, and outsiders. Charters would be schools of choice—no student or teacher would be compelled to be part of one. And Shanker proposed that the schools be given independence for a five- to 10-year period to prove themselves, because new education ideas need time to be nurtured and cultivated. In order to make these new schools successful, he outlined two critical conditions: that the schools provide their teachers with strong voice, and that the schools educate kids from all walks of life. 

”Friends Without Words”

New York Times: "Friends Without Words"

This article is not about race or education per se - it's about Jaime Herrera, who is a janitor at the main branch of the New York Public Library.  What caught my eye was that Mr. Herrera has been has deaf since he was a child, but as a 14-year old veteran, he's often assigned to train and help the new hires.

At first, this seems odd to them, since Mr. Herrera, 56, is deaf and does not speak.

“When they put me with him, to train, I was like, ‘How am I going to learn from a deaf guy?’ ” recalled Mr. Herrera’s current cleaning partner, Emrah Bektesevic, 22. “But after about 10 minutes, I could totally understand what he meant. He was a great teacher.”

"How Dare You?" Satirical article on the test prep industry

A funny-because-it's-about-a-real-life-thing-that's-not-that-funny satire from McSweeney's:
"THE VIEW FROM WHERE I STANDARDIZE: RUMINATIONS FROM THE TEST-PREP INDUSTRY"

Great concluding question:

Is education something that should be at the whim of the free market? And what elements of an education can be considered “extras?”

The "Bamboo Ceiling"

Author, N. Va. native Helen Wan on the ‘bamboo ceiling’

In our discussions, we focus mainly on the inequities that students of different racial/ethnic backgrounds face in high school and in those comparisons, Asian/Asian American students often seem to be doing "better" than other ethnic groups (better test scores, high school graduation rates, etc.).  But it was interesting to read that despite those benefits in high school, Asian Americans are equally underrepresented in corporate America (which, admittedly is already a pretty privileged subsection of society):

In the annals of American employment discrimination, “quiet” and “hardworking” may not seem like the worst way to be characterized, Wan acknowledges. But such seemingly benign stereotypes, much like the term “model minority,” mask a less benign truth backed by reams of research: Members of the country’s most highly educated racial group are among the least likely to make it to the top in corporate America.

...

Despite higher educational attainment, however, Asian Americans fare as poorly as other minority groups when it comes to the top jobs at the nation’s 500 largest companies. Only eight of those companies are led by Asian Americans, and only 2.6 percent of the seats on the corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies are held by Asian Americans, according to research by Diversity­Inc and the think tank Catalyst. (Six African Americans are Fortune 500 CEOs, and 7.4 percent hold corporate board seats; eight Hispanics are Fortune 500 CEOs, and 3.3 percent hold corporate board seats. Nearly 87 percent of corporate board seats at the companies are held by white workers.)

Anyways, just shows that change needs to happen systemically everywhere - not just in high school or in pre-K or for a certain group of students or for a certain city or area.  

"Social Media Is a Conversation, Not a Press Release"

So, this article is not directly related to race or to education.  It's just a random article that I happened upon... a response to the way that some journalists (Bill & Emma Keller) critiqued a cancer patient's social-media presence.  Like I said, nothing that's directly related to race or to education.

However, I thought that the article was well-written and there was one particular quote that resonated with me.  I can't put it into words, but I feel like there's something here about the power of empowering youth and teachers and other allies to speak up... (emphasis mine)


If anything, social media has helped move us to a world in which people are no longer passive, silent subjects of journalists (or academics or other gatekeepers of public discourse). We can no longer speak of people at them, without them talking back of their own experience, and articulating their own narrative in their own terms. And how to deal with that reality, not whether cancer patients should tweet that much, is the real ethical question before us.

I don't know... I'm not finding the words... But anyways, it was an interesting read... :)
"Social Media Is a Conversation, Not a Press Release" by Zeynep Tufekci

Teach for America

(Recommended by Larry)

"The history of TFA reveals the ironies of contemporary education reform. In its mission to deliver justice to underprivileged children, TFA and the liberal education reform movement have advanced an agenda that advances conservative attempts to undercut teacher’s unions. More broadly, TFA has been in the vanguard in forming a neoliberal consensus about the role of public education—and the role of public school teachers—in a deeply unequal society."

Read here: http://jacobinmag.com/2011/12/teach-for-america/

Race and Ethnicity in an Integrated School

Blogpost: Race and Ethnicity in an Integrated School
By Spencer Pforsich

Another perspective on how important (and difficult) it is to find constructive and supportive ways to talk about race & ethnicity in our schools:

It was February 2008 at High Tech High. As my first period students arrived and settled in, I distributed copies of an email the entire faculty received the evening before from celebrateblackhistry@gmail.com. The email, signed only “Concerned Student,” expressed outrage because the author felt not enough attention had been paid school-wide to Black History Month, currently in its last week. It read, “I’m not saying that every teacher in this whole school needs to drop whatever they already have planned and change the curriculum to do ONLY Black History, but people need to do something.” 

... 

“Let’s pause here for a moment,” I said. “Look around the room at who has done most of the talking. Also look around at whose voices you haven’t heard.” As students slowly took this in, a few surprised sounds and awkward giggles emerged. They began to notice, as I had, that almost every student who had spoken throughout the conversation had been white; about half the class had remained silent. The two black students had said nothing. 

One point from the email that the students hadn’t addressed was a sentence that read, “I’m choosing to be anonymous because I don’t feel I can talk to a teacher or my advisor about this.” In our small school, many of us felt that the best part about it was the close-knit sense of community that we could create. The thought that there were possibly students here who didn’t feel comfortable approaching their teachers about issues that mattered to them was deeply alarming to me—and I began to question why my classroom had such conspicuously silent voices.