One of the greatest speeches in American history was delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on August 28,1963,on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
You can watch and listen here.
Much better than reading it is hearing it.
I was somewhere in the back of the crowd with my husband. I was 25 years old.
What would Dr. King say about Donald Trump and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions?
The Trump administration has officially abandoned affirmative action, having decided that African Americans and Latinos no longer need any additional breaks and can pull themselves up by their own shoelaces.
Trump forgot that his son-in-Law Jared Kushner was the beneficiary of affirmative action. As detailed by journalist Daniel Golden in a book about preferential treatment for rich boys, Kushner’s dad gave Harvard a couple of million dollars, although no one in the family ever went to Harvard. This cleared the way for Jared’s admission, who vaulted over better qualified applicants from the same high school. Golden’s Book is called “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates.”
I’m not sure how Donald got into the Wharton School. It surely wasn’t grades or brains or even athletic skills (remember that the bone spur in his foot enabled him to avoid the Vietnam draft, his fifth deferment).
The story begins:
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will encourage the nation’s school superintendents and college presidents to adopt race-blind admissions standards, abandoning an Obama administration policy that called on universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses, Trump administration officials said.
Last November, Attorney General Jeff Sessions asked the Justice Department to re-evaluate past policies that he believed pushed the department to act beyond what the law, the Constitution and the Supreme Court had required, Devin M. O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman said. As part of that process, the Justice Department rescinded seven policy guidances from the Education Department’s civil rights division on Tuesday.
“The executive branch cannot circumvent Congress or the courts by creating guidance that goes beyond the law and — in some instances — stays on the books for decades,” Mr. O’Malley said.
The Supreme Court has steadily narrowed the ways that schools can consider race when trying to diversify their student bodies. But it has not banned the practice.
Now, affirmative action is at a crossroads. The Trump administration is moving against any use of race as a measurement of diversity in education. And the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the end of this month will leave the court without its swing vote on affirmative action and allow President Trump to nominate a justice opposed to a policy that for decades has tried to integrate elite educational institutions.
A highly anticipated case is pitting Harvard against Asian-American students who say one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions has systematically excluded some Asian-American applicants to maintain slots for students of other races. That case is clearly aimed at the Supreme Court.
“The whole issue of using race in education is being looked at with a new eye in light of the fact that it’s not just white students being discriminated against, but Asians and others as well,” said Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity. “As the demographics of the country change, it becomes more and more problematic.”
The Obama administration believed that students benefit from being surrounded by diverse classmates, so in 2011, the administration offered schools a potential road map to establishing affirmative action policies that could withstand legal scrutiny. The guidance was controversial at the time that it was issued, for its far-reaching interpretation of the law. Justice officials said that pages of hypothetical scenarios offered in the guidance were particularly problematic, as they clearly bent the law to specific policy preferences.
In a pair of policy guidance documents, the Obama Education and Justice departments told elementary and secondary schools and college campuses to use “the compelling interests” established by the court to achieve diversity. They concluded that the Supreme Court “has made clear such steps can include taking account of the race of individual students in a narrowly tailored manner.”
The Trump administration’s decisions on Tuesday brought government policy back to the George W. Bush administration guidances. The Trump administration did not formally reissue Bush-era guidance on race-based admissions, but, in recent days, officials did repost a Bush administration affirmative action policy document online.
That document states, “The Department of Education strongly encourages the use of race-neutral methods for assigning students to elementary and secondary schools.”
For the past several years, that document had been replaced by a note declaring that the policy had been withdrawn. The Bush policy is now published in full, with no note attached. It reaffirmed its view in 2016 after a Supreme Court ruling that said that schools could consider race as one factor among many.
In that case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, a white woman claimed she was denied admission because of her race, in part because the university had a program that admitted significant numbers of minorities who ranked in the top 10 percent of their class.
“It remains an enduring challenge to our nation’s education system to reconcile the pursuit of diversity with the constitutional promise of equal treatment and dignity,” Justice Kennedy wrote for the 4-3 majority.
The Trump administration’s plan would scrap the existing policies and encourage schools not to consider race at all. The new policy would not have the force of law, but it amounts to the official view of the federal government. School officials who keep their admissions policies intact would do so knowing that they could face a Justice Department investigation or lawsuit, or lose federal funding from the Education Department.
A senior Justice Department official pushed back against the idea that these decisions are about rolling back protections for minorities. He said they are hewing the department closer to the letter of the law.
He noted that rolling back guidance is not the same thing as a change of law, so that the decision to rescind technically would not have a legal effect on how the government defends or challenges affirmative-action related issues.
The move comes at a moment when conservatives see an opportunity to dismantle affirmative action.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said his prosecutors will investigate and sue universities over discriminatory admissions policies. And the conservative-backed lawsuit against Harvard is being pushed by the same group, the Project on Fair Representation, that pressed Fisher.
Watch this powerful 2-minute video, in which civil rights leader Jitu Brown tells the dramatic story of the Dyett hunger strike in Chicago, which lasted 34 days and compelled the city to keep Dyett open and invest $16 Million in the new Dyett.
Jitu Brown leads the Journey for Justice, which is leading a national campaign to stop school closings, privatization, and charter schools. They are fighting to create thousands of community schools.
This video was created by videographers Michael Elliot and Kemala Karmen. It was funded by the Network for Public Education.
Bryan, Texas, has been under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education because black students are almost four times more likely to be punished than white students for the same offense.
Then, as ProPublica reports, Betsy DeVos came into office and began rolling back civil rights protections.
In Bryan, a 13-year-old girl was sent to juvenile detention and locked up for three days.
This was posted by Politico Morning Education.
I don’t know which outrages me more:
1) the administration’s efforts to link the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School to the Obama guidelines that sought to reduce disparate punishment based on race. As Politico points out, there is no evidence to connect the Obama guidelines with the shooting.
2) the statement that Betsy DeVos opened every meeting yesterday with an acknowledgement of the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, and the suggestion that she was engaged in fulfilling his life’s work. What Chutzpah! She has been trying to slash the budget of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and appointed a woman to run it who is opposed to its mission.
Politico writes:
KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE GAO’S SCHOOL DISCIPLINE REPORT: The GAO released fresh evidence Wednesday that black students, boys and students with disabilities are all disproportionately disciplined in the nation’s public schools. The report, based on data from the 2013-14 school year, comes as Education Secretary Betsy DeVos mulls a repeal of Obama-era discipline guidance aimed at curbing such disparities. The numbers in the report are jarring. Black students by far bear the brunt of every type of discipline – from in-school suspensions to expulsions and school-related arrests. For example: While black students accounted for 15.5 percent of all public school students, they represented about 39 percent of students suspended from school. Here are some of the key takeaways:
– Boys overall were more often disciplined than girls, but the pattern of disproportionate discipline affected both black boys and black girls – the only racial group for which both sexes were disproportionately disciplined in every way: In-school and out-of-school suspensions, expulsion, corporal punishment, referral to law enforcement and school-related arrests.
– Minority students with disabilities are hit especially hard. Nearly a quarter – 23 percent – of black students with disabilities were suspended from school. More than 20 percent of American Indian and Alaskan Native students with disabilities were suspended from school. More than 25 percent of students who identify as two or more races and have disabilities were suspended.
– Poverty is a factor: The GAO found that when there were greater percentages of low-income students in a school, there were generally significantly higher rates of all types of discipline. But black students, boys and students with disabilities were still disciplined disproportionately, regardless of the level of school poverty. And, as was the case in every type of school, black students bore the brunt of it. In high-poverty schools, they were overrepresented by nearly 25 percentage points in suspensions from school, according to the report.
– The disparities can be a drag on the economy . The GAO report notes that research has shown that students who are suspended from school are less likely to graduate on time and more likely to drop out and become involved in the juvenile justice system. “The effects of certain discipline events, such as dropping out, can linger throughout an individual’s lifetime and lead to individual and societal costs,” the report said. It pointed to one study of California youth that estimated that students who dropped out of high school because of suspensions would cost the state about $2.7 billion. Another study the GAO referenced estimated that Florida high school students who drop out earn about $200,000 less over their lifetimes.
MEANWHILE AT ED: DeVos is considering scrapping Obama-era school discipline guidance meant to curb racial disparities. The secretary on Wednesday heard from both supporters and opponents of the guidance, according to meeting participants from two separate closed-press listening sessions. Nathan Bailey, a department spokesman, said that no policy decision has been made on the guidance. He added that the department has held 11 other listening sessions on the topic. Wednesday’s discussions were the first in which DeVos has taken part, Bailey said.
– DeVos opened each of the meetings by noting the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and highlighting the continued need to achieve the full realization of his life’s work, the department said. “She discussed the clear problem, revealed both in the data and in the stories told, of disparate treatment in discipline,” according to a department readout. “She welcomed the participants to share their perspectives on how to best protect all students’ civil rights and promote positive school climates, and asked how the current approach is helping or hurting those efforts.” Mel Leonor has the full story.
– View details about the meeting and participants here. In a statement after the meeting, the department said: “At the request of many of the participants, the sessions were closed to the press to protect the identities of participants who fear retaliation, are in active litigation or shared deeply personal stories involving family members and/or minors. Each session took place in the Secretary’s Conference Room to foster a candid exchange between the Secretary and stakeholders who presented varying perspectives on how school discipline policies should or should not change.”
– Repeal of the guidance has been under consideration for months, but interest in it was renewed following the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 dead. Some congressional Republicans have said the Obama-era school discipline policies contributed to law enforcement’s failure to identify and stop the school shooter. The White House targeted the guidance for repeal in its school safety plan – making it a key focus of the school safety commission created by President Donald Trump and chaired by DeVos. But as POLITICO reported last month, there’s no evidence to suggest that those policies had anything to do with the massacre in Parkland.
– The GAO report provides evidence that the guidance should remain in place, said Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the ranking member of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Scott and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, requested the GAO investigate school discipline. The report “dispels claims that racially disproportionate rates of discipline are based solely on income,” Scott said in a statement. “This report underscores the need to combat these gross disparities by strengthening, not rescinding, the 2014 Discipline Guidance Package, which recommends specific strategies to reduce the disparities without jeopardizing school safety.”
The Schott Foundation is one of the few philanthropies that unabashedly supports public education and recognizes its importance in a democracy. Schott has supported the civil rights group, Journey for Justice, whose leader Jitu Brown has a powerful voice. (Jitu is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.)
Schott underwrote the production of a video about the work of J4J.
“Schott grantee partner Journey for Justice Alliance released a compelling short documentary chronicling the fight against education reform in the age of Trump and DeVos. Beyond the rhetoric coming from DC, for years Journey for Justice has been raising the voices of those most impacted by budget cuts and privatization. Following J4J’s cross-country trip from Detroit to Washington, D.C. to oppose Betsy DeVos’ appointment as Education Secretary in early 2017, this film not only shows the profound hurt that these policy changes cause, but the inspiring organizing done to resist them.
“As J4J National Director Jitu Brown is led away from the Senate hearing room, he says “it’s an act of cowardice to run toward privatization and away from equity. We are as far away from Brown v. Board as we were in 1957.”
“Film Description:
“Many are voicing concerns that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is unqualified, motivated by profit, and advancing a harmful agenda.
“Over a year ago, we organized a group of parents, educators, and students to travel from Detroit to Washington to raise their voices at DeVos’ confirmation hearing. We came to advocate for a public education system based on equity and democracy. We came because we had already lived with the consequences of policies that undermine those values, policies that DeVos had advocated for in Michigan. We came to speak truth to power and we were silenced—shut out.
“Please watch and share this 30 minute documentary made by 180.”
This 6-Minute video is worth your time. Watch frustrated Members of the House Appropriations Committee (not the Senate) try to get Betsy DeVos to answer questions with a “yes” or “no.”
She tries to snow them with long-winded, evasive answers. They ask again and again. She smiles as she bobs and weaves. She is neither stupid nor incompetent. She is evasive. She is evasive because she doesn’t want to admit her real intentions.
The first questioner, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, is the Democratic leader of the Committee. When Democrats were in control, she was chair of the committee. She wants to know why DeVos is pre-emptying states that are trying to protect their college students from predatory debt collectors. She has DeVos over a barrel. Does DeVos support the right of states to write stronger consumer protections than the federal government, which under a DeVos is eliminating those protections? DeLauro demands a yes or no.
This battle of wills is fierce.
When you see how haughty and arrogant DeVos is in responding to the Committee that oversees appropriations for her Department, you will understand why 99% of the DeVos budget was rejected by Congress.
Another member of the Committee wanted to know whether private schools receiving federal dollars would be required to respect the rights of LGBT students. That’s another tug of war. Getting zdeVos to answer a straightforward question with a one word answer is like pulling teeth. The DeVos Family foundations support anti-gay organizations, and her mother and brother Erik Prince were founders and major donors to the Family Research Council. No doubt she has thought of a way to weasel out of that commitment. The last thing she would ever do is tell an evangelical school that to remove its ban on LGBT students.
Jan Resseger summarizes Linda Darling-Hammond’s reflections on the Kerner Commission Report.
“Darling-Hammond traces a mass of factors showing that as a society we identified the wrong problem, satisfied ourselves with blaming somebody, and ignored our responsibility collectively to confront primary social injustices that are the real cause of achievement gaps. What we accomplished instead was discrediting public education and undermining support for teachers.
“Darling-Hammond believes our problem is that we have stopped trying to do anything about racial and economic segregation: “In a study of the effects of court-ordered desegregation on students born between 1945 and 1970, economist Rucker Johnson found that graduation rates climbed by 2 percentage points for every year a Black student attended an integrated school… The difference was tied to the fact that schools under court supervision benefit from higher per-pupil spending and smaller student-teacher ratios… During the 1960s and ’70s, many communities took on efforts like these. As a result, there was a noticeable reduction in educational inequality in the decade after the original Kerner report…. (S)ubstantial gains were made in equalizing both educational inputs and outcomes. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 targeted resources to communities with the most need, recognizing that where a child grows up should not determine where he or she ends up… However, the gains from the Great Society programs were pushed back during the Reagan administration, when most targeted federal programs supporting investments in college access and K-12 schools in urban and poor rural areas were reduced or eliminated, and federal aid to schools was cut from 12% to 6% of a shrinking total…By 1991, stark differences had reemerged between segregated urban schools and their suburban counterparts, which generally spent twice as much on education.”
Trump, DeVos, and other Republican enemies of a good and decent society falsely claim to be leading “the civil rights movement of our time,” that is, for vouchers and charters and school choice and against teachers’ unions. It is worthwhile to remember why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis on the day he was assassinated. He was fighting for the city’s sanitation workers. They were ill-paid and worked in dangerous conditions. They wanted to form a union to demand their rights. He was there to help them.
Norm Hill was a close associate of Dr. King. He was with him in Memphis on the day he was murdered.
He reminds us that “at the 1961 AFL-CIO convention, King warned that black people should be skeptical of anti-union forces, noting that the “labor-hater and race-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other.”
Organized labor is under attack today. The far right wants to obliterate it. They want all workers to be part of the “gig” economy, with no pensions, no benefits, no collective bargaining, no representation. Voucher schools do not have unions; they are free to discriminate against students and staff. Let us not forget that more than 90% of charter schools are non-union, which explains why the anti-union Walton Family Foundation, the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and ALEC are devoted to opening more charter schools. They are not interested in better education or civil rights. They want to break the last powerful unions: the AFT and the NEA.
Dr. King understood that powerless workers need unions to fight for them.
Hill ends like this:
While Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb continued to oppose the unionization of the sanitation workers, in the end, his opposition was overridden by the city council that felt the pressure from mounting constituent complaints about tons of garbage reeking in their streets.
Success.
Yet, on the 50th anniversary of the Memphis sanitation workers strike, organized labor faces new and powerful challenges. For example, the case of Janus v. AFSCME, which the U.S. Supreme Court is taking up, raises whether unions have the fundamental right to expect public workers they represent to pay union dues. The matter is likely to be decided this year. The implications of a decision, for obvious reasons, could be profound regarding public sector unions like, for instance, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Teachers, affecting millions of workers.
In response to a White House and far right that appears determined to not only turn back the clock — but break it — regarding organized labor in America, arises a new necessity. We must, following the example of Randolph and Dr. King, harness an emerging coalition of progressive forces that today must include not only traditional civil rights and labor groups, but also Black Lives Matter, and the #MeToo and related women’s movements.
At the same time, demonstrations of this collective power must be felt at the ballot box nationwide, especially as midterm elections draw near.
Randolph left us an indelible blueprint for action when he said, “At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can’t take anything, you won’t get anything, and if you can’t hold anything, you won’t keep anything. And you can’t take anything without organization.”
If you want to put an end to civil rights enforcement in the nation, Trump has your guy to do it.
I received this mauling from CREDO ACTION.
“Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.”
Dear Diane,
Tell the Senate: Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division
Donald Trump hates equality. When he promises to “make America great again,” he’s talking about undoing decades of civil rights gains and doing everything he can to institutionalize white supremacy and misogyny.
That’s why, when it’s time to appoint heads of civil rights offices across the government, he picks people who will undermine the very principles they are supposed to defend.
Eric Dreiband, Trump’s nominee to lead the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice is a perfect example. Instead of having years of experience defending civil rights, he comes with decades of work defending people and corporations accused of discrimination.1 We need to do everything we can to keep him from being confirmed.
Tell the Senate: Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Click here to sign the petition.
Our country’s civil rights laws are part of a generations-long effort to come to terms with and make amends for a country founded on both the systematic oppression and dehumanization of people of color and the misogynistic subjugation and disenfranchisement of women. The Civil Rights Division has a history of defending voting rights, holding rogue police departments accountable, fighting housing discrimination and ensuring equal rights in education. Eric Dreiband’s career has done the opposite. He defended:
The University of North Carolina over challenges to North Carolina’s anti-LGBTQ HB2;
A Catholic challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit;
Abercrombie & Fitch’s attempt to deny a Muslim woman employment because of her headscarf; and
R.J. Reynolds’ policy of weeding out job applications from “older” applicants.2,3
He also spoke out personally against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act and efforts to “ban the box” as a way to minimize discrimination against job applicants with criminal convictions.4
In advance of Dreiband’s committee hearing, Sen. Patrick Leahy said he “honestly couldn’t think of a more uniquely unqualified nominee to defend and enforce the core civil rights laws that codify the values of a just and tolerant society.”5 But Dreiband’s unique disqualifications are what make him a perfect choice for Trump and extreme right-wing Republicans who want to dismantle civil rights protections and use government to protect racists, misogynists, xenophobes and anti-LGBTQ bigots.
We have to put massive pressure on every Senate Democrat and any Republican with a conscience to block Dreiband’s confirmation.
Click the link below to tell the Senate: Don’t confirm Eric Dreiband as director of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division:
https://act.credoaction.com/sign/Block_Dreiband?t=7&akid=27083%2E4147912%2EosCF3c
Thank you for everything you do,
Heidi Hess, Senior Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets
Add your name:
Sign the petition ►
References:
Deena Zaru, “Civil rights activists raise alarm over Trump’s DOJ pick,” CNN, Aug. 14, 2017.
Tess Owen, “Trump’s civil rights pick has made a career fighting for corporate rights,” VICE News, June 30, 2017.
The Leadership Conference et al., “Oppose the Confirmation of Eric Dreiband to Serve as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights,” Aug. 31, 2017.
Ibid.
Paul Gordon, “Republicans Advance More Dangerously Unqualified Nominees,” People for the American Way, Jan. 19, 2018.
photo: House Committee on Education and the Workforce Democrats
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