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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 8, 2017)
Page 2 The Skanner November 8, 2017 ® Challenging People to Shape a Better Future Now Bernie Foster Founder/Publisher Segregating Schools Won’t Make America Great Again Bobbie Dore Foster Executive Editor O Jerry Foster Advertising Manager Christen McCurdy News Editor Patricia Irvin Graphic Designer Melanie Sevcenko Reporter Monica J. Foster Seattle Office Coordinator Susan Fried Photographer 2017 MERIT AWARD WINNER The Skanner Newspaper, es- tablished in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published every Wednesday by IMM Publi- cations Inc. 415 N. Killingsworth St. P.O. Box 5455 Portland, OR 97228 Telephone (503) 285-5555 Fax: (503) 285-2900 info@theskanner.com www.TheSkanner.com The Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association 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. ©2017 The Skanner. All rights re served. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission prohibited. Local News Pacific NW News World News Opinions Jobs, Bids Entertainment Community Calendar LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS to y • d ay ! • L i ke u s o n F ac it Updated daily. ebo m me • nts TheSkannerNews o k • learn • co in y o u r c o m m u n Opinion n Nov. 4, 1952, Dr. Hel- en Kenyon addressed the Women’s Society of Riverside Church in New York City and opined that, “Eleven o’clock Sunday morning is the most segre- gated hour in America.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. often paraphrased the quote. Today, sadly, our public schools best reflect Dr. Ken- yon’s and Dr. King’s senti- ment as the most segregated place in America. The rampant re-segregation of American public schools poses a greater threat to the trajectory of America’s progress than terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and Russian meddling in our elections. Sixty-two years af- ter Brown v. Board, the GAO (Government Accountability Office) reported that from the years 2000-2014, both the per- centage of K-12 public schools in high-poverty and the per- centage of African Ameri- can and Hispanic students enrolled in public schools more than doubled, and the percentage of all schools with so-called racial or socioeco- nomic isolation grew from 9 percent to 16 percent. Research shows that racial and socioeconomic diversi- ty in our classrooms leads to higher than average test scores, greater college en- rollment rates, and the nar- Rushern Baker County Exec, Prince George's Co., Md. rowing of achievement gaps. These gains don’t just apply to poor and minority children either — every student bene- fits from learning and engag- ing with peers from different “ Today our public schools are more seg- regated than they were 40 years ago backgrounds. Despite the evidence, today our public schools are more segregated than they were 40 years ago. As an advocate for children and families, and as a public servant, who has fought for more resources for students, I believe we must act boldly to save free, high-quality public education for all. Some of the very leaders tasked with solving the nega- tive effects from school re-seg- regation offer shortsighted policies that exacerbate racial and economic divisions. The ripple-effect, consequences of their misguided thinking remains the greatest poli- cy foible of the modern era. Lazy logic behind bad policy feeds a perception that that the achievement gap exists simply, because poor and minority students learn dif- ferently than their wealthier, White peers. Rather, it is di- rectly tied to declining enroll- ment, lower property values, and the dwindling resources available to tackle mounting challenges in the communi- ties that surround underper- forming public schools. The greatest irony is that those promoting harmful ed- ucation policies use the same language of “giving every child a chance at a high-qual- ity education” to pitch their tax-dollar-poaching and re- source-pilfering experiments to desperate parents. Rather than making public education a number one pri- ority, a Hunger-Games-like competition for vouchers and charter schools leaves par- ents and students fending for themselves. The families that lose the education lottery end up at schools with increased needs and declining resourc- es. In Maryland, our Gover- nor’s BOOST voucher pro- gram set aside $5 million dol- lars of public money to help 2,400 families pay for their child’s education. Yet, 80 per- cent of the families receiving these grants had children who were already enrolled in pri- vate schools. Vouchers, whose Ameri- can roots can be traced back to some Southern states’at- tempts to avoid integration, perpetuate segregated edu- cation and are nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to cut off funds to public schools. It gets even worse. Some communities have simply se- ceded from the larger school district, as we’ve seen in Al- abama and Tennessee, to keep from integrating their schools. Since 2000, the U.S. Justice Department has re- leased 250 communities from their desegregation orders and consequently facilitated their financial and adminis- trative secession from their school districts. After all those factors lead to a dip in school perfor- mance, students and their communities are stigmatized as “failing.” Schools close. Quality of life drops; economic prospects dwindle; public safety de- creases; and the cycle repeats, so that higher needs popula- tions receive even fewer re- sources. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com Blacks Often Pay Higher Fees for Car Purchases than Whites I t’s that time of year again when auto dealers try to make room in their show- rooms for next year’s mod- els. The seasonal clearance sales that come right before the holidays are just as tempt- ing as ever, beckoning con- sumers to get that proverbial “new car fever.” But don’t let those shiny new cars blind you from the facts of a major consumer pur- chase. After mortgages and student loans, auto sales take a big bite out of your pocket and available credit. A new analysis of car sales data reveals that many con- sumers are being charged triple-digit mark-ups on pur- chases that include a lot of questionable add-on products that cost consumers a bundle and reap major profits for dealers. A new policy analysis by the National Consumer Law Cen- ter (NCLC), examined sales and financing practices wide- ly used by car dealers. Ag- gressive sales of add-on prod- ucts were frequently offered at inflated prices. Addition- ally, these same products and services are usually available for consumers to purchase more cheaply on their own. When these items are added to the financing of the vehicle, consumers end up padding Julianne Malveaux NNPA Columnist the costs of finance, making the debt more costly than nec- essary. After analyzing data on the sale of three million add-on products sold on 1.8 million “ Here’s how the unfair pricing and add-ons occur: After a consumer settles on a price of a vehicle, he or she is then told to see the finance and insurance (F&I) repre- sentative to review terms and sign the purchase. What few consumers know, is that many dealers pay its F&I per- sonnel on a commission basis. Hence, the more costs added to the vehicle purchase, the more these employees earn. Other dealers, according to Many consumers are being charged triple-digit mark-ups on purchases that include a lot of questionable add-on products vehicles from September 2009 through June 2015, these add-on costs were both unrea- sonably high and varied at the discretion of the dealership as to the price levels that would be charged. “Our analysis demonstrates the negative consequences of opaque and inconsistent pricing of auto add-on prod- ucts and the urgent need to bring transparency and con- sistency to this market,” said John W. Van Alst, the report’s primary author and director of NCLC’s Working Cars for Working Families Project. NCLC, pay a higher percent- age commission as the F&I profits increase per vehicle sold. Sometimes car sales rep- resentatives receive a com- mission on the cars sold and additionally, a portion of the add-ons, sometimes known as “back-end” products. If consumers accept all the options offered by F&I, the likelihood is that they will eventually pay far more than the vehicle is actually worth. Not only that, the amount of mark-up that boosts the deal- ership’s profits would be far cheaper and affordable if the consumer secured them in- dependently. To make these products and services appear affordable, the length of the auto loan is often extended to 72 or 84 months—or even lon- ger. The longer the auto loan, the more likely that the con- sumer is getting a bad deal. NCLC also cites previous research by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) that determined car buyers who financed vehicles at the dealership in 2009 paid $25.8 billion in interest rate mark- ups. That same study also found that more than half of Black car purchasers (54 per- cent) were also charged loan kickbacks, compared to only 31 percent of Whites. In 2014, a CRL consumer survey also found that Black and Latino car buyers pur- chased more add-on prod- ucts than other consumers after being told that the ad- ditional items were required to finalize the deal. As a re- sult, although consumers of color reported trying more than other consumers to ne- gotiate a fair car deal, they still wound up paying more for their purchases than similarly-situated White con- sumers. Read the rest of this commentary at TheSkanner.com nt • lo c a l n e w s • eve
