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
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News Editor
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Reporter
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Photographer
2017
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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
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