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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (April 23, 2014)
Opinion Schools More Segregated Now “Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now” B ERNIE F OSTER Founder/Publisher B OBBIE D ORE F OSTER Executive Editor J ERRY F OSTER Advertising Manager L ISA L OVING News Editor H ELEN S ILVIS Multimedia Editor D AVID K IDD Graphic Designer M ONICA J. F OSTER Seattle Office Coordinator J ULIE K EEFE S USAN F RIED Photographers The Skanner Newspaper, established in October 1975, is a weekly publica- tion, published each Wednesday by IMM Publications Inc., 415 N. Killingsworth St., A s we approach May 17, the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education landmark decision outlawing “separate but equal” schools, sev- eral studies show that our schools are more segregated now than they were three decades ago. And there are no indications that things are likely to change for the better in the foreseeable future. A report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) titled, “Brown v. Board at 60,” concluded, “Today, things are getting worse. The typi- cal black student now attends a school where only 29 percent of his or her fellow students are white, down from 36 percent in 1980.” Actually there were two Brown decisions. The first, in 1954, out- lawed racially segregated public schools, which had been defended as “separate but equal.” Faced with foot-dragging by intransigent school officials in the Deep South, the Supreme Court issued a sec- ond ruling in 1955, sometimes called Brown II, declaring that the schools had to be desegregated “with all deliberate speed.” But speed was nowhere to be found. Two years after the court ruling, no Black child attended schools with a White student in eight of the 11 former Confederate states, including Alabama. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), a coalition of nearly 200 organizations, noted, “It took ten years after Brown, but beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the nation committed to desegregation and it worked. African-American leaders also played a role in dismantling T HE C URRY desegregation. R EPORT An investigation of resegrega- tion in the South, conducted by ProPublica, focused on George E. Tuscaloosa, Ala., my hometown. Curry The city had been under a federal desegregation decree since 1979. In 1993, with Tuscaloosa vying for a new Mercedes-Benz plant, Courts and executive agencies business leaders decided it was consistently supported desegrega- time for them to make a move. “Publicly, the city’s movers and tion plans and from 1968 to 1988, as more schools integrated, aca- shakers said the lack of neighbor- demic achievement increased for hood schools made the district unattractive … Behind closed African American students.” doors, they argued that if they did However, that progress stalled. “…The legal and political tide not create some schools where turned against integration during white students made up the major- ‘The typical black student now attends a school where only 29 percent of his or her fellow students are white, down from 36 percent in 1980’ the 1980s,” LCCR observed. “Courts stopped ordering desegre- gation plans and began dismantling existing plans – both court-ordered and voluntary. Fed- eral agencies stopped aggressive enforcement and by 1989 schools were beginning to resegregate, reversing many of the academic gains of the previous 20 years.” Upon entering office in 1981, President Ronald Reagan set the political climate for retrenchment. And so did an increasingly conser- vative Supreme Court. But some ity – or near it – they’d lose the white parents still remaining,” the investigation found. “Districts under desegregation orders aren’t supposed to take actions that increase racial separation. And so the city’s leadership decided the desegregation order needed to go, and they believed the time was ripe for a court to agree.” The court did agree to bow out after some Black leaders went along with the plan. “The roster of witnesses lined up behind the school board shocked many in the black com- munity,” ProPublica reported. “It included some of the city’s most influential black leaders, including a city councilman, a state senator, and Judge John England, Jr…Rumors spread within the community that England’s and others’ support had been part of a secret arrangement with white leaders.” A person with direct knowledge of the arrangement confirmed to me that a deal was indeed made whereby a new Black school would be constructed on the pre- dominantly West Side of town in exchange for supporting an end of the court-ordered desegregation. However, after extracting what they wanted from Black officials, Whites reneged on the deal and no new school was erected. Another reason schools are being resegregated is that segre- gated housing patterns have remained intact. “Schools remain segregated because neighborhoods in which they are located are segregated,” said the EPI report. “Raising achievement of low-income black children requires residential inte- gration, from which school integration can flow.” Without dismantling segregated residential housing patterns and getting federal courts or the Jus- tice Department to retain some jurisdiction over court-ordered desegregation plans, public schools are on a path to return to their pre-Brown status of being separate and unequal. Read the rest online at www.theskanner.com P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228. Telephone (503) 285-5555. E-mail: info@theskanner.com World Wide Web site: http://www.theskanner.com Fax: (503) 285-2900 The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Associ- ation and West Coast Black Pub lishers Association. All photos submitted become the property of The Skanner. We are not re - spon sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. © 2014 The Skanner. ALL RIGHTS RE SERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT PERMISSION PROHIBITED. To see The Skanner News on your smart phone go to theskannermobile.com or scan this QR code with your app. • • • • • • • • Local news Opinions Jobs, Bids Sports Entertainment Music reviews Bulletin board RSS feeds Mental Illness is Our Dirty Little Secret I ’m tired, my sisterfriend says. I don’t know how much longer I can hold on. As I hear her I have a couple of choices. One is to tell her to get with her pastor and pray; the other is to tell her to get real with her illness. Running her to her pastor takes her to a familiar place. Pushing her to help takes her out of her comfort zone. When my beloved brothers and sisters share that they are stymied in the way they live their lives, I don’t mind praying and encourag- ing spiritual counsel, but I do mind ignoring the medicinal help that could assist my sisterfriend. Mental health is our nation’s dirty little secret, and if it is whis- pered in the nation at large, it is a silent scream in the African Amer- ican community. We are afraid, ashamed, frightened to own up to it, using our own lingo (s’kerd, shamed) to wrap ourselves around the fear that goes with “coming out” on mental illness. So we are silent, even when we lose a warrior. Karyn Washington was a 22-year-old Morgan State University sister who committed suicide, last week. This young and brilliant one turned her pain into power when she created a website, “for brown girls” (www.forbrown- girls.com) that lifted up and affirmed our brown skin girls. Karyn was a colored girl whose mental issues were apparently so severe that she chose to take her own life while affirming those of Page 2 The Portland and Seattle Skanner April 23, 2014 B ENNETT C OLLEGE Julianne Malveaux others. From all accounts Karyn experienced depression. How many feel it and don’t say it? How many nod and just don’t mean it? How many exhale, inhale and real- ly reach out to a brother or a sister to listen, have a cup of tea, take a know why the caged bird sings.” I chose to focus on this because in one scant week I have spoken to African American women who have experienced depression or feel shackled by other mental health issues. They walk like they hold the world in their hands; sway like they are hearing drums from another continent, yet cry behind closed doors, like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders. They are sad, ground down, depressed, and we play off their pain, trivialize it, instead of responding to it. We are losing too much genius when we They walk like they hold the world in their hands; sway like they are hearing drums from another continent, yet cry behind closed doors walk, or just reach out and touch? The poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote, “We wear the mask that grins and lies that hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.” Many in our nation, especially African Ameri- cans, wear the mask. When we peek/speak/tweet from behind the mask we realize, yet if we were real, we would have to acknowl- edge in the words of Paul Lawrence Dunbar that to make a poet Black and bid her sing is to challenge her and her two realities. In the words of Sister Maya, “I play off the scourge of metal ill- ness. We decide that it is their problem, not the problem of a nation that would inflict, rather than attempt to fix, mental illness. For all the care the Affordable Care Act has offered, we must ask if it has offered enough to combat mental illness. We in the African American community have paid more and received less to be perceived as “normal” members of society. Despite injustices in Scottsboro, Groveland and other vile places in our nation, we have been expected to show up, with amazing dignity, ignoring the massacre of our sons or daughters with well-modulated emotion. Too many of us fear or fail to speak our pain. Poverty and mental health are correlated, yet the poorest of us see our pain as “par for the course” and we don’t speak about it. Whether African Americans are wealthy or finan- cially challenged, mental health is elusive for some. And faith with- out works is dead, which means fall on those knees if it comforts you, then run to the doctor who may help you with medication and therapy. Baby girl Karyn Washington inspired this column, and as I thought of her, others kept remind- ing me of their own pain and the ways it has been ignored. If you don’t get it, read from Terrie Williams’ “Black Pain.” And if you get it/read it, remind folks that this is not a sympathy issue, this is a public policy issue. So weep sis- ter soldier, brother warrior. Those who bear the scars of mental ill- ness have often fought longer, harder, and with the chemical imbalance that makes them feel it all so much more intensely. Men- tal health is not an embarrassment; it is a national health issue. It is a silent killer that we have yet to acknowledge. Read the rest online at www.theskanner.com
