Home » NYC public education has become dedicated to racial categories (Part I)

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NYC public education has become dedicated to racial categories (Part I) — 64 Comments

  1. Richard Carranza, the grotesquely overpaid (more than $300,000 per year) and incompetent head of NYC’s schools, is in stiff competition with the worthless de Blasio for the man most likely to ruin New York. That two such disastrous creatures of the leftist bureaucratic swamp hold such high positions is a sad commentary on the nation and on our greatest city.

  2. Keep in mind about Carranza: this is the third consequential position he’s landed with a core city / major metropolitan school district. Now look at this man’s background. He’s an utter mediocrity. All of his degrees were awarded by teachers’ colleges and he’s never taught a secondary academic subject nor has he taught secondary vocational subjects either. His only employment as a teacher was in the bilingual ed / ESOL / special education mill.

    diBlasio is an utter roach. Consider, though, that the political culture of New York is such that no one of prominence has challenged him. That having been said, a number of his opponents over the years have been better people even if they weren’t prominent people. They still lost to him. New York City’s witless electorate has inflicted this creature on itself, and he’s inflicted Richard Carranza on them.

    Personally, I think popular interest in the tripe di Blasio and Carranza are peddling is nil. It’s a miasma emanating from the teachers’ colleges which Democratic pols fancy.

  3. “Asian families tend to espouse values that lead to academic excellence, such as hard work. Since such values are now labeled by SJW educators as ‘white,’ therefore Asians are supposedly benefiting from their ‘proximity’ to white values that confer white privilege.” [Neo]

    The last word on white privilge was arguably written at Ace of Spades Morning Rant on May 20 printed below in its entirety (because it is worth reading). Bold is mine, Link below for reference:

    “Progressives like to claim that the economic disparites [sic]between blacks and whites are due to white privilege. Ignoring the fact that Asian immigrants generally do quite well in this country, what can be done to lessen the disparity? Well, it’s not like white privilege is any big secret. Anyone can reach out and take some. Here’s how you do it: Go to school and study your ass off. Graduate from high school. Obey the law. Avoid recreational drugs and alcohol. Get a job. Consider no job, if it is honest work, to be beneath you. Work your ass off. Go to church. Avoid pre-marital sex and all-night partying. Do not have a child unless you’re married and are able to support one. Live beneath your means. Save money for emergencies. Do not hang out with criminals, slackers, or losers. This is white privilege in a nutshell. And what’s great about white privilege is, get this, you don’t have to be white to get it. These rules will work for anyone, regardless of race or religion or country of origin. All you have to do is follow them and good things will come your way. Usually. The problem is that, due to the unevenness of life, the benefits of white privilege are not evenly distributed, so it’s better if you live in a community where everyone practices these rules. In this way, you will maximize your chances of benefitting from white privilege. But you’re not done yet. You also must teach these rules to your children, and teach them to teach the rules to their own children. Because the benefits of white privilege accrue like compound interest over generations. And it only takes one generation, maybe two, to break this golden chain and then you’re back to square one, back to the misery, starvation, ignorance, and squalor that have been endemic to human societies since time immemorial. White privilege is the only path that has ever lead to prosperity for the many, rather than just for the few. So what this world needs is not less white privilege, but more.”

    http://ace.mu.nu/archives/381353.php#381353

  4. “. . . New York City’s witless electorate has inflicted this creature [DeBlasio] on itself, and he’s inflicted Richard Carranza on them.” [Art Deco @ 3:18]

    Which brings to mind H. L. Mencken’s definition of democracy as giving the people what they want . . . good and hard!

  5. This is a deliberate and evil attack on the “Melting Pot”. The SJWs cannot exist without separating us all into the incompatible ingredients of the “Salad” and stoking hatred and victimhood.

    I am so old that I remember when black students who achieved were labeled “oreo cookies”, i.e. black on the outside but white on the inside.

    The SJWs and their ilk want to destroy America.

  6. So our moral betters tell us that the Asians are the new Kulaks?

    (And so are any other group that works hard to improve itself.)

    This does make a kind of sense: It HAS been proven that government can legislate “equality” by reducing EVERYONE to squalor (except, of course, for the leaders and their enablers).

    Similarly, the usual suspects wish to prove that they can make education equal by destroying the educational system for EVERYONE.

    It’s “scientific”. (But even if science isn’t your thing, all you have to do is read Orwell…and/or read up on the messianic, utopian examples of the 20th century.)

  7. Asian success in America is the gravest of threats to everything the Left stands for because that success “puts the lie” to their claims.

    Those who rail against “white privilege” have “the cart before the horse”. They confuse results with process. The values white cultures have traditionally embraced result in the generational acquisition of resources that enable and thus result in the acquisition of privilege. Asians are simply smart enough to emulate and embrace the values that result in socio-economic success.

    Whereas, “stupid is, as stupid does”…

  8. Ace’s remarks are commonsensical. They incorporate two things which will disgust and infuriate the enemy.

    1. They’re pretty much what Joe Blow off the sidewalks of Fort Wayne would tell you to do. But what is the function of intellectuals, but to tell us that what ordinary people think isn’t so? “Oh no, that’s much too simple a view. You see…”. For an older generation of leftists (like the old twit who edited the ‘alternative newspaper’ where I grew up), referring to something as ‘simplistic’ was like breathing. That she’s hardly had a nuanced thought in her 48 years in public life notwithstanding. You offer this advice, and you’re telling a raft of guild professionals and politicians that they aren’t needed. The idea is quite distressing to them.

    2. You’re telling black and Puerto Rican f***ups that the larger society has standards and that they’re defensible and salutary standards. And that those standards are binding on everyone. You can’t do that, cracker peasant! You cannot speak to them at all, except tentatively, and then only after you’ve got your MSW, PsyD, or MEd degree.

  9. Nobody of means sends their kids to NYC public schools. The penalty is paid by low income citizens

    DeBlasio is indeed a cockroach – but the teachers unions have been savaging school children for many years.

  10. Anybody can have some of that white privilege but you have to act white to get it and we can’t have that.

  11. – but the teachers unions have been savaging school children for many years.

    They’re horrid rent-seekers to be sure, and they’re organizations should be rolled up in a RICO action. That having been said, what they do is see to it that teacher’s are overcompensated and cannot be fired. They’re not the ones manufacturing the social ideology propagated in schools systems. That comes from the teacher’s colleges and outfits like NCATE, and is buttressed by the odious ‘public interest bar’.

    A while back, I had a rude exchange in a forum like this with one Susan O’Doherty, PsyD.

    https://www.insidehighered.com/users/susan-odoherty

    She writes a hand-wringing column about her ‘work’ in disorderly inner city schools. (She’s now retired). The reply to her hand-wringing was obvious: whatever conduits you use to provide educational services (public schools, private schools, &c), your efforts are largely wasted if teachers and students are distracted by trouble-makers. Sequester the trouble-makers; turn them over to detention centers run by the Sheriff’s department where they’ll be kept in soundproof cells and allowed out in groups of six in order that you might attempt to stuff some remedial schooling into them in doses; and make sure they get corporal punishment because they don’t understand much else. Teach the kids you can teach; even in a viperous slum, you can still teach about 3/4 of them, even if they’re slow learners.

    She replies: how could I participate in such an enterprise? They’re disadvantaged. So, the school can’t accomplish much of anything and everyone’s day is ruined because people like Susan O’Doherty, PsyD would feel bad about themselves if they’re jobs incorporated lowering the boom on anyone. And, of course, school districts would face a blizzard of litigation from public interest lawyers running interference for the obnoxious mothers of these disadvantaged little monsters.

    The unions didn’t serve up these cretins.

  12. Every young person needs to be taught that their mission in life is to become self sufficient and responsible. Ace’s rant on how to get white privilege is a sermon that young people need to hear often as they grow up. I know I did. I knew I was going to have to make my own way. That nothing would be given to me.

    The other thing young people need to learn is to discover their innate talents and abilities. Those who know where their strengths and abilities lie, and follow them, have an advantage over those who are aimless and searching. There are tests that can help identify talents and abilities. Young people should be encouraged to take them and think about how they might make a living in areas where they have abilities.

    Talent, interest, and hard work are far more important than acceptance of diversity. Freedom of association means that you don’t have to associate with slackers, drunks, addicts, malcontents, and activists whatever their ethnicity. We used to believe in a society where each person rose to the level of his/her abilities and work ethic – not in a society of equal outcomes. Forget race. Forget class. Promote a society where everyone tries to do the best they can and let the chips fall where they may.

    If you become a elf supporting, responsible adult, you are a good citizen. If you can support a wife and children that is even better. If you have enough to help family embers who need help that is commendable. If you are fortunate enough to be able to endow a university chair that is wonderful. Your ethnicity is immaterial. Do the best you can.

  13. Anybody can have some of that white privilege but you have to act white to get it and we can’t have that.

    Most black youngsters don’t make it their business to make the world worse and respond to ordinary discipline. You’re looking at 15%-25% who are the real problem.

  14. “Nobody of means sends their kids to NYC public schools.”

    Not entirely true.

    The NYC special high schools are some of the best in the nation. And some of the neighborhood schools are very decent.

    (To be sure the special schools are in the crosshairs of de Blasio/Carranza et al.)

  15. (To be sure the special schools are in the crosshairs of de Blasio/Carranza et al.)

    Personal accomplishment isn’t intermediated by self-appointed do-gooders, so they hate it. And, of course, Carranza’s intellectually mediocre and di Blasio is intellectually unserious (and likely bad at math). They don’t admire the sort of youngsters who attend Bronx Science.

  16. “…intellectually unserious…”

    Surely you jest. (He’s a freakin’ clown….)

  17. “However, the devotion to diversity bumps up against the fact that Asians do disproportionately well and it becomes difficult to explain this in conventional terms, because certainly Asians have often been targets of discrimination.” — Neo

    Difficult to explain in leftist terms, I’d say. Ace explains it perfectly well.
    _____

    “It is truly tragic and terrible that this has happened, and it helps no one: …”

    Is this topic related to an ever expanding and increasingly dysfunctional educational bureaucracy? I think it is, though I’ll pass on an explanation. The bureaucracy certainly does help/fund lots of people. And those people, including administrators, pay dues to unions who in turn fund Dem politicians almost exclusively.

    Many years ago, the Treasurer of the NEA (or the other big one) stated at a big national meeting. “I’ll start worrying about the students we teach, when students start paying union dues.” Or words to that effect. Well, he was the treasurer, but I’ll bet that attitude extended beyond his office.
    _____

    To Art Deco’s point, superintendent’s like Robert Runcie in Parkland FL, are/were working hard to “disrupt the school to prison pipeline.” Working hand in glove with the Sheriff’s dept., students like Mr. Cruz (an adopted minority surname) were able to commit violent offenses over and over again, with very few repercussions. Until the big one, that is.

  18. “She [O’Doherty] replies: how could I participate in such an enterprise? They’re disadvantaged.” [Art Deco @ 4:41]

    The ultimate solipsism; characteristic of much of the left. She seems to think that the only reason that such people aren’t like her is that they are/were/have been disadvantaged. There is no sense that they might think any differently about the world than she does.

    I use to tell my children when they couldn’t understand why someone would steal “that” (whatever it might have been) that to think like a thief one steals when the possibility arises and only determines if the item is useful or valuable after the fact. If not, throw it away and create a lose-lose situation. but steal first, judge afterwards.

  19. There are so many factors that play big roles in academic success of Asian students. Three of them are:
    1.) Family and cultural values
    Asian culture consider education is the best investment in life and highly respects educator. If you don’t respect your teachers, you don’t learn much from them. Family members often help each other to get successful academic goal. Dinning/kitchen table becomes homework table where all siblings study and help other.
    2.) Hard working
    The best way to get that goal is working hard. Practice makes perfect

    Suppose there are two adopted kids. One is Asian, adopted by other minority family (Hispanic or Black American); and another Hispanic or Black kid by Asian family. The Hispanic/Black kid will highly likely be more successful in academic performance than the Asian kid. It is not about race/gender/family incomes. It is about values in family/culture, and hard working.

  20. I’d like to welcome all our new Asian friends to the White Race! At last you too can enjoy the perks of White Privilege. How sweet it is.

    Your honorary KKK hood will arrive soon in a plain unmarked box. See you at the cross-burning! Bring the whole family.

  21. There are virtually NO “poor people” in America who have followed 3 simple rules:
    1) finish High School (able to read, write, do simple math)
    2) have a job, and keep a job for a year or more
    3) avoid children until marriage.

    Almost no Asians fail these, and only those who fail all three are at much risk of being poor without choosing it.

    “Bourgeoise Values” – US middle class values (mostly Christian derived).

    Elite snobs hate that “being normal”, which is so ordinary, is the way out of poverty for virtually all Americans.

  22. Tom Grey: I’d have to add a rule for addiction problems. I don’t where Asians fit into that, but I’ve seen a lot of white people brought down who managed rules 1-3.

  23. I went to my grandson’s graduation this AM.
    Some woman with a doctorate in Urban Education from Berkeley who is the Superintendent of the district started speaking of her African American background and how she was proudly wearing her Kinta cloth to honor the graduating class went on talking about herself and then finally gave her advice to the class: “Remember the lessons you’ve learned here in how to be social….”
    One of my co-hosts explained to me when I was telling this on air that a Kinta cloth is a colored cloth indicating African royalty. That she was dispensing grace from her royal personage to the class of 70% white kids.
    The speaker after her, a gentleman in his late 50’s reminding me in appearance of John Bolton who was the head of the school board, then spoke of not feeling bad not honoring his cultural heritage by not wearing a kilt!
    He then spoke of thanking those who made possible these kids having a great future. He asked us veterans in the building who were veterans to stand!
    Both my boys were fully cognizant of the slap just delivered to the previous speaker and looked to me and smiled as the audience clapped.
    Michigan west of Detroit.

  24. om: I wanted to like “O Brother” but even in 2000 I was tired of Hollywood’s broad brush of ridicule for the South. I’m not a Southerner but I have lived in the South and I liked those people.

    Well, the film did have Alison Krauss’s sublime “Down to the River to Pray” and that’s no small redemption:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qw6Hon013E

  25. huxley:

    There are a few more musical gems in the film than just Allison Krauss and Emmylou Harris, but when you set the Homer’s Odyssey as comedy in 1930’s Mississippi don’t expect a light touch.

  26. Huxley, om;

    Ralph Stanley’s ‘O Death’ from the ‘O Brother’ soundtrack is stunning. Didn’t much care for the movie but the soundtrack was one of the best ever. But anything that brought attention to the amazing Ralph Stanley is a winner in my eyes.

  27. its in hiring and firing policies and more..
    took decades before its so blatant someone is noticing..

    then again, this is the kind of thing going on
    pic.twitter.com/ZxlRi4vIH5

    wife and i have been attacked more than once…

  28. Griffin, om: Actually it was the “O Brother” soundtrack which led me to Gillian Welch, who’s been a big fave of mine since. (She sings with Alison Krauss on “I’ll Fly Away.”)

    When Welch was a sort of 80s hippie at UC Santa Cruz, someone played a Stanley Brothers album and she described it:

    The first song came on and I just stood up and I kind of walked into the other room as if I was in a tractor beam and stood there in front of the stereo. It was just as powerful as the electric stuff, and it was songs I’d grown up singing. All of a sudden I’d found my music.

  29. Huxley,

    It’s hard to overstate the good that the ‘O Brother’ soundtrack did for so many deserving artists and it really kicked off the Roots/Bluegrass movement. To think that many people bought an album featuring Welch, Stanley, and Dan Tyminski among others is amazing.

  30. …but when you set the Homer’s Odyssey as comedy in 1930’s Mississippi don’t expect a light touch.

    om: As it happens, I’m rereading James Joyce’s “Ulysses” which sets Homer’s Odyssey as, well partly, a comedy in 1900’s Dublin…. I did like the Odyssey elements of “O Brother.”

    I wish I could recommend “Ulysses” more but it really is a lot of work. I don’t believe anyone who says they read it straight through cold — without a guide.

  31. “Asian families tend to espouse values that lead to academic excellence, such as hard work. ” – Neo
    Can’t help but refer back to the Spelling Bee post, if we are including India’s families as Asian along with China’s, Japan’s, and Korea’s.

  32. Seems rather appropriate here.

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/06/a-racial-incident-at-a-boston-museum.php

    “No matter what, they’re gonna always see you as criminals”? “Nobody ever wants to see you win”? “No matter how hard you try…they still aren’t going to accept you based on the color of your skin”? Is this really the message we should be sending to 7th graders–who, their teacher says, have never actually experienced any racism? Am I the only one who sees a certain satisfaction in the reactions of school administrators, community engagement officers, and so on? From the Boston Herald: “[Marvelyne] Lamy said her students have become ‘social activists overnight.’” An unbiased observer might ask: whose prejudices, exactly, were confirmed by what happened at the Museum of Fine Arts?

  33. South Africa made the Japanese honorary whites with all the privileges of that rank back in the days before De Klerck and Mandela. Why? I leave that up to you, but it is clear both parties, Afrikaners and Japanese, value hard work, have a sense of duty above self, and both have pretty closed, tightly bound societies.

  34. AesopFan: Last year at this time I was in Boston for my niece’s high school graduation.

    Geez, I got tired of every stupid administrator and big wig who got up on stage, beat their gums a whole lot and never failed to come down hard on the D-word — diversity. Every single one of them.

  35. “if we are including India’s families as Asian”

    Last I heard India was in Asia! Though until the influx of immigrants from the subcontinent in the past 2-3 decades it is true Americans usually thought “East Asian” (Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese/Korean) when they thought of “Asians”.

    However in Great Britain “Asian” has always been thought of more as “South Asian” i. e. India/Pakistan undoubtedly because the long British rule brought them many immigrants from there.

  36. There was a great SNL skit in 1984 with Eddie Murphy playing a black guy made up like a white guy called “White Like Me.” It was a reversal of a 1961 book titled “Black Like Me.”

    “White Like Me – SNL”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_LeJfn_qW0

    In the skit Murphy discovers that when white people are in purely white company they throw parties for each other on buses, white loan officers give away money to white applicants and everything is free from white merchants to white customers.

    I thought it was one of the funniest things — short of Christopher Walken’s “More Cowbell!” of course — that SNL ever did. And I thought it was balanced in a way both blacks and whites would find funny.

    Yet tonight I look that skit up on the web and discover one woke folk treats it as practically a treatise on white privilege:

    In 2015, white privilege actually looks a lot like the fake SNL world — only worse.

    –https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/eddie-murphy-1984-snl-skit-white-privilege-article-1.2409222

    Then I look more closely and discover the article is written by Shaun King, the guy listed as white on his birth certificate and sure looks white, who has made a career as black race activist.

    The mind boggles. Or at least my mind.

  37. Any group of people that succeed without the prescribed SJW help would not be beholding to the Dems/Progs. That cannot/will not be allowed to happen.

    Much of the “priviledge” that exists looks a lot like hard work and persistence.

  38. Ah, the White Hispanic phenomenon.

    Jew privilege… and now White privilege.

    Diversity breeds adversity.

  39. Lowering standards for those who are slow-learners or unable to learn hurts the city, the state and the country.

    Life will never be fair, but that’s no excuse to punish excellence.

  40. How to explain the statistics proving the high achievement of 1st generation immigrants from Africa and their children in New York and the rest of the country? They must also have white privilege proximity.

  41. My daughter says that Jews are “Schrödinger’s Whites”, and the same applies to high achieving Asian communities. They are both white and non-white, depending on the agenda and needs of the ones doing the classification, as well as whether the classifiers see the Jews and Asians as political allies or opponents.

  42. My son recently tested into one of the specialized high schools in NYC. I took him to the orientation, where they told us all about the school. At the end of it my son turned to me and said “did you notice how many times they said diversity Dad?” I hadn’t, but I realized straight away it was 0. What a refreshing change from his race-obsessed middle school. I seriously hope De Blasio fails in all his attempts to destroy the schools. I’ll be marching with the Asians next time he tries.

  43. “One such explanation might be that Asians are on average just innately smarter, although any suggestion of such a thing would be a big no-no. I have no idea whether that’s true or not.” It is true, indeed, as was demonstrated in “Bell Curve”, and during more than 20 years since publication of this book nobody came with convincing rebuttal of its findings – a very rare thing in social sciences.

  44. huxley on June 1, 2019 at 8:57 pm gets the Greg Gutfeld humor award.

    More seriously, how is it that the GOP has failed to capitalize on this topic? Equal protection under the Constitution is not rocket science. Is demanding that Asians be treated fairly seen as tantamount to depriving blacks and Hispanics? What is it? This garbage lends credence to the uni-party complaint: Dems or Republicans they’re all the same. Not really, but more than we’d like to admit?

  45. Humanity is already obsessed with this concept called “race”.

    Boy, will they be surprised at how many races there really are…

  46. More seriously, how is it that the GOP has failed to capitalize on this topic?

    Because the Republican Party in New York is ineffectual when it’s not crooked, that’s why. Did you catch that three of the eight Republicans who cast votes in the House for the latest Democratic monstrosity were Upstate Republicans? I’d like to see Tenney, Stefanik, and Katko primaried, but it’s not likely to happen.

  47. I was actually accused of “benefiting from white privilege” once it was learned that I wasn’t white. This was about three years ago.

  48. Edward said, “Some woman with a doctorate in Urban Education from Berkeley who is the Superintendent of the district started speaking of her African American background and how she was proudly wearing her Kinta cloth to honor the graduating class . . . . ”

    Well, I guess if all the 1/16th Irish people can celebrate their Irishness on St. Patrick’s Day despite me thinking it’s relatively strange that they do, I suppose I should let the Kinto cloth slide as well. (Would this be considered cultural appropriation?)

  49. Rufus T. Firefly — the Left has begun to notice the success of African immigrants to the US — the Black Students United at Cornell recently protested African Africans and Caribbean Africans being included in the count of black students. (You can’t make this stuff up!) Apparently the non-African-American blacks aren’t disadvantaged enough.

  50. Art Deco,

    I recall that the GOP in NY had a much more powerful block back when Alfonse D’Amto was senator. My impression was that they weren’t of much value then either and rather corrupt.

    The situation in Chicago and Illinois is similar and probably worse. The GOP is much bigger than that, but it all adds up. It would seem that pervasive corruption is contagious and capable of persisting for very long periods.

  51. I recall that the GOP in NY had a much more powerful block back when Alfonse D’Amto was senator. My impression was that they weren’t of much value then either and rather corrupt.

    D’Amato was ‘Presiding Supervisor’ of Hempstead, NY. Hempstead is a Long Island megasuburb with a population (then as now) > 700,000. A ‘supervisor’ in New York parlance, is a voting member of a municipal council, presides over said council, and functions (with certain constraints) as a chief executive. D’Amato’s title was different than that of other supervisors, so the set up in Hempstead may have had some jigaroos I don’t know about. D’Amato was at that time the most consequential municipal official in Joseph Margiotta’s Nassau County Republican organization. One of Margiotta’s charming features was a shakedown scheme wherein local government employees were compelled to kickback 1% of their wages and salaries to the Nassau County Republican Committee. They even hit up the faculty at Nassau Community College. D’Amato was one of the primary enforcers of this scheme and paid no penalty of any kind when it was uncovered. Margiotta eventually went to prison. D’Amato has no discernable political principles of any kind and his vulgarity is so intense that he makes Donald Trump look like the Buckley brothers. George Pataki was, at the beginning, a creature of d’Amato, and a man with a similar sensibility.

  52. This sort of thinking by NYC’s educators is not merely perverse, it is obscene.

    This is the product of zero-sum mentality thinking that assumes that any success can only come at someone else’s expense.

  53. She seems to think that the only reason that such people aren’t like her is that they are/were/have been disadvantaged. There is no sense that they might think any differently about the world than she does.

    This was seen here and elsewhere during the 2015-16 elections as Alt Right supporters backed Trum against Tea Party conservatives and others they found disagreeable on the welfare of the (dead) Republic.

    People got emotionally invested, triggered, and also brain hijacked. Later on, they calmed down, but it is not something I expect them to notice in the mirror.

  54. This just in: Mexico City has decided to drop gender specific clothing – boys can now wear skirts and girls can now wear pants.

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