[lbo-talk] Glen Ford: Torturing Detroit's Kids for Racist Fun and Profit

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Feb 23 15:41:23 PST 2011


http://blackagendareport.com/content/torturing-detroits-kids-racist-fun-and-profit

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 Black Agenda Report

Torturing Detroit's Kids for Racist Fun and Profit A Black Agenda Radio commentary

by Glen Ford

Corporate America and its servants in the Democratic and Republican

parties care nothing for the education of Black, inner city school

children, and the proof is in Detroit, for all to see. The State of

Michigan, controlled, like every other state in the country, by

business interests, has ordered Detroit to close down half of its

public schools, and increase class sizes to 60 students. That's double

the number that any respectable educator considers suitable for

classroom work, and tantamount to a declaration that Detroit's public

school students will not be provided an education. In a modern society,

this is the equivalent of declaring Detroit - an overwhelmingly Black

metropolis - a failed state.

This racist outrage is blamed on a $327 million school budget deficit,

just as when the public schools were decimated twice before in recent

years, eliminating 79 schools and reducing enrollment to about 84,000

students. Many of those public schools were then sold to private

charter school companies. With every assault on public education,

charter schools multiplied. Now 54,000 Detroit students attend charter

schools, and even before the current crisis, the corporate enemies of

public education were gleefully predicting that charters would overtake

public school enrollment by around 2015 - which would make Detroit the

second major American city in which charters outnumber public schools.

All That's Left

The other city is New Orleans, where 70 percent of the students attend

charter schools, the highest proportion in the nation. New Orleans and

Detroit have something else in common: They have lost more population

than any other U.S. cities. And if that is not by design, then why are

so many rich white people so happy about it?

The rulers of America have decided that predominantly Black cities are

to become relics of the nation's past. In New Orleans, they had a

hurricane to help them with their ethnic cleansing, but elsewhere,

public policies must be crafted that make the cities uninhabitable for

much of the existing Black population. Sometimes gentrification does

the trick, but one needs lots of affluent white people to push Black

folks out of town, and it takes time. But Detroit is to be emptied out

in a hurry, by doubling classroom size and utterly ruining the public

schools. Then, the education entrepreneurs and hedge fund managers and

billionaires can build the kind of charter school system they want,

with the kind of children they want, and without the teachers unions,

which they definitely do not want.

The privatizers always claim that they have only the interests of the

kids at heart. But if that were the case, they would never even

consider doubling classroom size to 60 students, and keeping it that

way for at least the next four years - during which time very few

students would learn anything. After four years of deliberate torture

of children, lots of those kids and their parents will be gone - which

is an important object of this cruel exercise. And, if the privatizers

have their way, the teachers unions will be busted. Then, who will be

left to demand, as Detroit's teachers have repeatedly done, that

classrooms be small enough for students to have at least a chance to

learn?

© 2011 Black Agenda Report

Glen Ford

Back Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at

Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list