Bernie Sanders: 65 years after Brown vs Board of Ed, segregation remains in our classrooms

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Since the late 1980s, the number of racially segregated schools has more than tripled, and today, more than a third of all African American and Latino students attend a school where 90 percent of their peers are non-white. This segregation also operates along class lines: 40 percent of children from low-income families attend schools whose student population has poverty rates of 75 percent or higher.

(snip)

In 2016, school districts serving mostly students of color received $23 billion less in funding than mostly white schools, even though they serve the same total number of students. In all, school districts serving the largest populations of Black, Latino, or Native American students receive roughly $1,800 less per student in state and local funding than those serving the fewest students of color.

(snip)

It’s the same story when it comes to funding. North Carolina has one of the lowest public education funding rates in the country. North Carolina public school teachers make at least 26 percent less than comparable college graduates. And Republicans in the legislature have passed major corporate tax cuts, while trying to block Gov. Roy Cooper’s proposed increases in school funding.

This is Robin Hood in reverse, and it is happening on the national level too. After giving huge tax cuts for the very rich, President Trump is proposing to cut after school programs that serve 34,000 North Carolina students and is proposing to eliminate funding for the major grant program for teacher development.

(snip)


https://www.citizen-times.com/story/opinion/2019/05/17/bernie-sanders-asheville-nc-2020-election-brown-v-board-education-segregation/3694881002/

[George II]

1. What has he done to help bring an end to segregation in our classrooms?

[comradebillyboy]

3. He was at a sit in in 1962.

[George II]

4. That was a sit-in against segregation in housing. He's never done a thing about....

.....segregation in classrooms, but he DID attend the March on Washington "with" MLK!

[Hortensis]

2. So true. PoC will require strong anti-segregation commitment

from whomever they support. In 2016, they chose Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly because she'd earned it with a long record of working for their issues, including desegregation. So far in 2019, Biden is their man, though there's a long campaign road ahead.

And, of course, Obama! His candidacy was a national "moonshot" for desegregation and was hugely and proudly supported by Democrats in 2008 and 2012.

In all of these, however, it has to be noted that Sanders was not exactly at the forefront of the ongoing fight for racial equality. Not even to help desegregate the White House. Obama staffers denied that his support was even adequate much less strong as he claimed, just as Clinton staffers did in 2016. Mostly missing in action in this war.

At the She the People conference, when asked what he would do about all the archconservative judges appointed by Republicans to oppress PoC from the bench and roll back laws protecting equality, Sanders basically blew the question off, had no plan to battle the great increase in judicial re-imposition of segregation, including very much in our schools.

Of course, some of Sanders' past lack of commitment could also be ascribed not to indifference to racial issues but to his decades-long attitude toward Democrats, unaffected by the fact that PoC have been especially important in our party ever since they helped create the New Deal. Both Obama and Hillary were Democrats, of course, and virtually all the efforts from inside government toward equality over the past 80 years have been lead by Democrats. Notably, at that conference he finished his non-answer with "...anyway both parties do it."* (!) That's right, Democrats also pack our courts with archconservative racists. The black women who'd come to hear his plans were not exactly pleased because this is, of course, a huge anti-integration problem.

*For another indication of Sanders long pattern of blind cluelessness about who Democrats are (include the vast majority of black and other minority voters, of course), from former female VT governor Madeleine May Kunin and author of "The New Feminist Agenda:

Hillary Clinton is not the first progressive Democratic woman to be challenged by Bernie Sanders. He ran against me in 1986 when I was running for my second term as governor of Vermont. At that time he had little affinity for the Democratic Party.

When advised that his third-party candidacy might result in a Republican victory, he saw no difference between Democrats and Republicans, saying: “It is absolutely fair to say you are dealing with Tweedledum and Tweedledee.” Voters did not agree.

(They chose her over both I-Sanders and the Republican by huge margins.)

[JudyM]

5. This is an important issue to keep public awareness on.

The status quo is not acceptable.

[Uncle Joe]

7. I agree JudyM

on all counts.

[LanternWaste]

6. He's updated his "not just hang out on street corners..." routine.

Well, not so much updated as re-wrapped.

And sometimes the pretty bow can fool a lot of people.