Opinion
Clueless Sarah Palin Equates US Debt with Slavery
T
he most remarkable thing
about former GOP vice
presidential candidate Sarah
Palin is her boundless knack for
sneaking a racial dig into one of
her screwy trade mark swipes at
President Obama and the Democ-
rats. The latest Palin race card play
is her likening the country’s debt
to China and other foreign nations
as slavery. Palin is hardly unique
in playing on the slavery analogy
to make a point. A legion of GOP
officials and GOP leaning mouth-
pieces have made a studied habit
of tossing the slavery analogy out
whenever the person that they
want to assail is African-American
or faintly touches on an issue in
which there is an explicit or
implied benefit to minorities be it
affirmative action, federal spend-
ing, government backed social
programs, or education reforms.
It’s always done with a wink
and a nod to stir and pander to
ultra-conservatives and plain bor-
der line bigots. We just witnessed
that a few weeks back when GOP
ultra-conservatives new darling
Dr. Ben Carson branded Oba-
macare as worse than slavery. For
that he got the predictable praise
and assent from the hard right. But
Palin brings a special mastery to
the play on racism and other sub-
T HE L AST
W ORD
Earl Ofari
Hutchinson
tle code racial analogies to savage
Obama. That’s because she
remains the fount of an utter lurid
and prurient fascination by many
in the media. They know that she’s
always good for an eye popping
quote that’s guaranteed to make
news and get the tongues wag-
ging.
GOP leaders early recognized
that Palin was the perfect stalking
horse to say what top party leaders
couldn’t say on race. A tip of her
usefulness on this attack line came
during the 2008 presidential cam-
paign. Palin at the time took some
heat for telling a meeting of Alas-
ka’s black leaders in April 2008
that she didn’t have to hire any
blacks. The black leaders had
complained to Palin about the
invisibility of blacks and minori-
ties on her staff and in state
governmental departments. Even
more damning, she purportedly
told the black leaders that she did-
n’t intend to hire any. Palin’s cam-
paign manager and a staff
representative hotly denied to this
writer that Palin had made the
comment. However, they quickly
declared that Palin was absolutely
color-blind in hiring and insisted
that she did not push any special
programs to boost minority hiring.
Palin was as good as her word.
There was a glaring paucity of
blacks, Asians, Hispanics on her
to question the validity of
Obama’s birth certificate.
She again fanned the latent big-
otry among her fans with
her Going Rogue book tour. She
flatly said that she’d avoid the big
city liberal media hot-beds and
tour in mostly small and mid-sized
towns in the Heartland states. This
was a not so subtle code guarantee
that her audience would be over-
whelmingly white, working class,
Sarah Palin brings a special mastery
to the play on racism and other
subtle code racial analogies to
savage Obama
staff and relatively few in top state
jobs. Also during the campaign,
Palin was mute on the series of
racist emails that some state
employees sent out on state of
Alaska accounts.
Palin gave another boost to the
bigots by almost single-handedly
reviving the withered on the vine,
unabashed, racist tinged, birther
campaign. Palin accomplished
that neat trick with her off the cuff
quip to a conservative radio talk
show host that it was “fair game”
and conservative. That’s exactly
the audience she got. It’s an audi-
ence that won’t make her
uncomfortable.
This didn’t type Palin as a racial
bigot. But it did type her as the lat-
est in the long train of right-side
GOP politicians who calculate that
they can score big with a subtle
play of the race card. During the
past decade, a parade of Republi-
can state and local officials,
conservative talk show jocks and
even some Republican bigwigs
have made foot-in-the-mouth
racist cracks. Their response when
called on the carpet has always
been the same. They make a duck-
and-dodge denial, claim that they
were misquoted or issue a weak,
halfhearted apology. And each
time the response from top Repub-
licans is either silence, or, if the
firestorm is great enough, to give
the offender a much-delayed, mild
verbal hand-slap.
Palin never has had that prob-
lem. Even though she has long
fallen out of favor with GOP lead-
ers and has proven toxic wherever
she appears to try and stir support
for a far right GOP candidate. But
it’s the media’s fascination with
her combined with her noisy far-
right constituency that revel in her
potshots at Obama, especially the
ones that have the odor of race
attached to them, that gives her
political shelf value. The slavery
crack is just the latest, but it won’t
be the last. As long as Obama sits
in the White House, the slavery
comparison to anything the right
wants to attack and everything that
it connotes will always be a serv-
iceable term to toss out with the
secure knowledge that it will jan-
gle the desired chord among
Palin’s GOP fan club and sadly
many beyond.
Student Success Hinges on Parental Involvement
I
n recent years, the debate
about ways to close the
achievement gap and ade-
quately prepare primary and
secondary African American stu-
dents for success has focused on
such remedies as ensuring
resource equity, expanding pre-
school opportunities, and raising
teacher quality. While all of these
are necessary, one area that is often
overlooked is the importance of
parental involvement.
Educational
requirements
should be clear
and easy to
understand for all
parents,
regardless of their
educational
background
No one disputes the fact that
children are more likely to perform
better, graduate from high school
and be better prepared for college
and the world of work when their
parents are actively involved, both
at home and at school, in their edu-
cation. But for many low-income
African American parents who
may be single and struggling to
make ends meet, finding the time
and energy to help with home-
work, volunteer at school and
communicate regularly with teach-
ers, can be especially challenging.
They need help. And schools and
districts that serve low-income stu-
dents and students of color must
do more to overcome greater barri-
ers to effectively engaging parents.
These and other findings are
T O B E
E QUAL
Marc Morial
revealed in a new National Urban
League survey, “Engaged to
Achieve: A Community Perspec-
tive on How Parents are Engaged
in Their Children’s Education.”
The survey solicited the views
and opinions of K-12 teachers,
school administrators and volun-
teers in communities across the
country about their perceived dif-
ferences in parental awareness,
parental involvement and oppor-
tunities for student achievement
and success based on race and
economic background.
A joint effort of the National
Urban League Washington
Bureau and the National Voices
Project with support from the
W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the
study shows that when there was
a difference in how parents were
perceived, African-American par-
ents were more commonly
perceived as being less aware and
less involved in their children’s
education than white parents.
Report authors suggest that when
these perceived disparities are not
addressed constructively, they
may affect the type and depth of
parent engagement efforts direct-
ed to low-income parents and
parents of color. Other key find-
ings include:
African American parents’
engagement in their children’s
education was felt to be more
reactive than proactive, i.e. con-
fronting perceived racial bias or
addressing discipline issues. Par-
ents who resided in communities
where efforts were made to
address racial disparities were
nearly twice as likely (82 percent
vs. 45 percent) to report they felt
more aware of their child’s aca-
demic progress than parents in
communities where no such
efforts were made.
Though most respondents felt
that students and parents typically
understand
the
connection
between education and economic
opportunity, they felt that race and
income played a significant role in
students’ access to the experiences
that help to promote success. The
survey suggests ways to bridge
some of the gaps in parent engage-
ment, including:
Educational
requirements
should be clear and easy to under-
stand for all parents, regardless of
their educational background.
Parents must be regularly updat-
ed about their children’s academic
performance in a manner that pro-
vides clarity about how students
are meeting, or not meeting, spe-
cific requirements.
Efforts to engage parents must
take into account practical barriers
to entry that parents may face and
tailor such efforts accordingly.
In communities where racial and
ethnic disparities are pervasive,
there must be targeted investments
and customized approaches to
improving parent engagement.
Marc H. Morial, former mayor
of New Orleans, is president and
CEO of the National Urban
League.
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November 13, 2013
The Portland Skanner Page 5