Racism in the national Charter School Movement is not new

Charter schools represent resegregationWhat’s known today as the Charter School Movement is not new. The concepts that drives it were born prior to 1954, when students of color won the right to equal education through the historic lawsuit, Brown v. Education, which ushering in the desegregation of schools throughout the country. What we are seeing today is simply a big step forward being taken by racists with money and power to re-segregate schools and make sure that Brown and Black students receive inferior educations.

These 1%ers want to make certain that public schools will never produce another brilliant Barack Obama. And, they want to make sure they get hold of the money public schools’ budget and buildings represent. read more

Almost 1 in 100 jailed in US

Almost 1 in 100 Americans behind bars

Here are a few quotes and visuals to help us see what the United States’ almost 1% incarceration rate looks like – a phenomenon the ACLU condemnsin its new report Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration.

The imprisonment of human beings at record levels is both a moral failure and an economic one …

US incarceration rates 5 times world averagerefers to the reality that 750 people out of each 100,000 residents in the United States are being jailed. In mathematic terms, that equates to .0075% of our population (3/4 of a percentage point) meaning that it comes way too close to being 1% of our population (1 person out of every 100). read more

Voting Rights Timeline in the US

Voting rights in the US are closely tied to other important social issues: the right to own property, First Amendment free speech rights, rights to assemble and to be the master of one’s own destiny. These resources show when the right to vote was obtained by various populations of American society.

Timeline by Center for Democracy

Timeline by the ACLU in graphic format and as a pdf file

The voting rights timelines does not address two other serious voting rights issues being played out in the US: using felony disenfranchisement as a mechanism to prevent Black men (plus some women) and Latinos from exercising their voting rights, which has become a type of apartheid in these communities. Michelle Alexander writes about this in her book, The New Jim Crow and the concerted Republican effort put in place since the first GWB election in 2000 which seeks to purge legitimate voters from voting rolls in targeted communities and otherwise restrict voting rights across the country. read more

To students of real history, corruption doesn’t look worse today

People who believe widespread social problems are new to the United States come from ethnic backgrounds of privilege, or didn’t learn true history at home or in school. A Facebook friend and Green Party member thinks he is trying to explain to me that ethnicity does not affect a person’s belief about whether there is more corruption today than in the past. But, what Mark is really doing is demonstrating that he hails from a background where White male privilege is so much part of his personal culture that he is unaware that any other reality exists. read more

What Is “Jim Crow”?

In 1829, Jim Crow was both the name of a song and the name of a satirized character written and portrayed on stage by Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice, who used blackface makeup to darken his skin in order to parody a Black man in this role. Later, Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965 (Wikipedia). They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities. Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia explains, read more