Time to end the racist triumvirate of Tuck, Huppenthal, and Horne

It’s a tale of white fragility and fear, really.—Imani Gandy

These two racist State Superintendents finally got what they deserved for shuttering ethnic studies in Arizona. However, right here in California, we have a candidate for State Superintendent that enacted the same policies in Los Angeles—shuttering ethnic studies, closing dual language programs, and killing heritage language programs. That bigot's name is Marshall Tuck. Let's show Tuck that California is not Arizona, and that we shouldn't have to wait for years for a court to rule in on his racist policies. Let's stop Tuck from repeating a Horne or a Huppenthal, by making sure he never holds a position of power in which he can harm school children again.

Marshall Tuck's white male friend Dax Shepard 'splains that cultural sterilization isn't "real racism"

When I taught in the Los Angeles Unified Schools, I openly opposed the Vietnam War and was critical of the system’s race policies.  Fortunately, I was never threatened with dismissal, I belonged to a union. — Professor Rodolfo F. Acuña

Students Protesting Marshall Tuck's racist decision to kill Ethnic Studies. Photo by Robert D. Skeels.

Eli Broad's California State Superintendent of Public Instruction hopeful, corporate banker Marshall Tuck, has a long history of fostering institutional racism. It's well documented that he closed down Ethnic Studies Programs, Heritage Language Academic Programs, and research proven Dual Language Immersion Programs. It's also documented that he has been willing to target teachers of color who get too "uppity" for him and the wealthy white elite he works for.

As a white male myself, I cannot speak on behalf of oppressed students and faculty who suffered under Tuck's racist leadership. However, as a student of Freire, a founding member of the Southern California Immigration Coalition, and a member of many groups that are led by various Central American, South American, and Indigenous Peoples, I have had a lot of exposure to the concepts of colonialism and institutional racism. I was endorsed by both Unión del Barrio and Association of Raza Educators (ARE) Los Angeles during my school board run for a reason. It is my moral and intellectual responsibility as a scholar and an activist to challenge white supremacy at every opportunity.

So imagine my surprise when wealthy white Hollywood actor Dax Shepard (I didn't know who he was until I checked Wikipedia) decided he needed to 'splain me about racism and such. I was able to preserve this one exchange, but unfortunately he deleted the rest of the conversation. He had seen the title of my carefully researched polemic Marshall Tuck's Legacy of Bigotry and Failure and said I couldn't be more wrong on the bigotry thing. I responded by asking for an explanation of that stance in the light of Tuck's abject record:

@daxshepard1 Closing down Ethnic Studies, Heritage Language, and Dual Language programs isn't bigoted?

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) June 3, 2014

@daxshepard1 Deliberately taking down all the bilingual signage at schools with monolingual Spanish parents isn't bigotry?

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) June 3, 2014

Finally I asked Shepard directly about his personal beliefs on culturally appropriate pedagogy:

@daxshepard1 I'm asking the wrong question. Do you support providing students of color access to classes about their cultures and history?

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) June 3, 2014

To which he replied (I'm paraphrasing since he deleted his tweet): "Given a choice I believe math and science are more important." To which I responded with an excerpt from Cheryl Ortega's powerful narrative within the Tuck piece:

@daxshepard1 At the end of the day this is racist and ethnocentric. Your friend did this, he can't hide from it. pic.twitter.com/nhzhYMSWEK

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) June 3, 2014

Shepard's response is nothing short of breathtaking:

@rdsathene I can't think of anything more irresponsible than the way you are using the word "racist." It undermines real racism.

— dax shepard (@daxshepard1) June 3, 2014

I know he probably didn't realize what he was saying, but let's be clear — I want to undermine all forms racism, including what Shepard believes is the "real" kind. For a white male to deny that oppressions like cultural sterilization, colonialism, and denial of language rights are forms of "real racism" is not unlike males that have taken upon themselves to define what "real rape" is. Colorado activist and former Denver Board of Education member Andrea Mérida spoke some serious truth to Shepard's white power.

@daxshepard1 @rdsathene Ever experience it yourself? No? Then you don't get to define it. Ever hear of institutional racism?

— Andrea Merida (@andreamerida) June 5, 2014

We need more people like Merida calling this out for what it is. While the cartoonish racism of buffoons like Donald Sterling dominates the headlines, the more subtle, insidious racism of Tuck and Shepard pervades our society. In the case of Tuck, it become the established institutional kind that corrodes students of color from the inside out. We can only hope that his billionaire backers don't get him elected, because we've already seen what Tuck's type do when in power — just look at Arizona!

Paul Tough, KIPP, and the "Science" of Cultural Sterilization

Paul Tough is touring the country promoting his new book, which is is to say he is on a nationwide tour promoting KIPP.  For the book, How Children Succeed:Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character  reads as an unabashed paean to the kind of segregated, bare-knuckled corporate education reform for the poor that has made KIPP the darling of the oligarchs and hedge funders. With the help of CIA consultant, Dr. Martin Seligman and his disciples at UPenn, the KIPP gang is developing a designer mind intervention intended to create a culturally-sterilized corps of black order takers and low level corporate drones who never complain and always ask How High? when the boss man says, Jump.

If the KIPP neo-eugenic treatment can be perfected by Seligman and David Levin (co-founder of KIPP), America may finally be on the road to ridding itself of the inferior and depraved cultures that are responsible for poverty and its effects, and we may herald a new day when the unfit accept their own responsibility for their unfitness and, then, work double time to make up for their own shortcomings that keep them from entering the the gritty corporate bubble where down always looks up, where everyone keeps on the sunny side of an increasingly shady Wall Street.

Yesterday the Memphis Commercial-Appeal had a story on the eminent visit of Tough to the Memphis KIPP store to pump his book and KIPP.  Now from Tough's past writings in the New York Times, we know that David Levin of KIPP did not conceive his "character building" KIPP program until 2005, when he first met Prof. Seligman.  And according to Tough, the character curriculum with its report card broken down to tenths of points did not go into effect until 2011.  So it was amazing to me that Commercial Appeal story had this:

Two years after it began emphasizing character in New York KIPP schools, college graduation rates there jumped to 46 percent. (Nationally, according to census data, 10 percent of students in poverty graduate from college.)

Does anyone with half a brain intact see a problem here?  How could a program started two years ago in a middle school affect college graduation rates for students from years ago?  How do I know the 46 percent rate is from years ago?  Because I found it in an excerpt of Tough's misleading and obfuscating book:

In addition to targeting character development through message saturation, Levin has also introduced a CPA (Character Point Average) for his students at KIPP, to go alongside their GPA. Teachers give every student a score on each of the 7 character strengths during reporting periods, which scores are then crunched into a CPA that shows up on a student’s report card. On parent-teacher interview night, the teachers go over the student’s CPA with the student and their parents, and together they explore which character strengths should be targeted for improvement, and how to go about doing this (loc. 1768-93).
The importance of having the CPA is that it implies that character is not only important, but that it can be improved. And once again, psychologists agree that this is a very important message—and one that is very effective in increasing achievement in many different areas (loc. 1729-44, 1747).

It is still too early to draw any definitive conclusions regarding whether or not the measures being taken at KIPP will bring success. However, recent numbers regarding the college graduation rate of KIPP alumni look promising. As tough reports, “the six-year graduation rate had gone up from 21 percent, for the Class of 2003… to 46 percent, for the Class of 2005” (loc. 1803). Still, many of the students at KIPP continue to struggle with issues of character strength (loc. 1809), so the new measures cannot be considered a silver bullet—though they are at least promising.

This is exactly how embedded lies by well-paid propagandists end up as monstrous quotable lies in newspapers that reporters like Jane Roberts record without ever checking or even thinking about the ridiculousness of the claim.

Meanwhile, the wholesale indoctrination of KIPPsters continues unabated and celebrated by those wealthy donors who believe that manipulating the psychology of children offers a more efficient solution to the ravages of poverty than actually doing something about poverty.