Fighting Stereotypes about Poverty While Avoiding Oversimplification

In the last two days I have read two pieces that provide radically different views of government programs and their use by those in poverty.  On the one hand there was a piece on Slate by Neil deMause which looked at the way Georgia has managed its Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program so that few families enroll relative to the number of poor in the state.  This piece clearly paints the state administrators as mean spirited and depriving potential clients of needed services. On the other hand Nicholas Kristof from the New York Times writes about families in Jackson, Kentucky pulling their children out of reading programs so they can continue to qualify as intellectually disabled and thus garner the family additional payments.  This strategy does not need much analysis to be seen as a horrible way to exploit a program at the cost of children’s future.

Taking these two pieces together make me understand how hard it is to simplify and generalize about the issues involved here.  Where I teach, at an independent school with  a yearly tuition of $25,000 or so, the students in my class usually have no firsthand experience of being in poverty although they may have observed poverty as part of service learning opportunities.  I often hear comments about the lives of the poor being easy because of government provided food, housing, and other benefits.  I also hear complaints about the poor lacking the work ethic (undermined by government programs) to move up in society.  The challenge comes in when I want to ask students to question those assumptions, but I do not want to error on the other side by painting a picture where all those in poverty are striving nobly against a hostile economic system.  The challenge is to teach nuance–always a grand difficulty.

Soup Kitchen Line (Getty Images picture from Slate)

Appeals Court Overturns Michigan Affirmative Action Ban

A federal appeals court struck down Michigan’s ban on considering race in college admissions.  The reasoning was based on the equal protection clause particularly the fact that those who wanted special consideration for race now had a much harder time advocating for their cause (pushing for a state constitutional amendment) than those who wanted special consideration for their status as offspring of alumni.

To quote the decision:

“A student seeking to have her family’s alumni connections considered in her application to one of Michigan’s esteemed public universities could do one of four things to have the school adopt a legacy-conscious admissions policy: she could lobby the admissions committee, she could petition the leadership of the university, she could seek to influence the school’s governing board, or, as a measure of last resort, she could initiate a statewide campaign to alter the state’s constitution. The same cannot be said for a black student seeking the adoption of a constitutionally permissible race-conscious admissions policy. That student could do only one thing to effect change: she could attempt to amend the Michigan Constitution—a lengthy, expensive, and arduous process—to repeal the consequences of Proposal 2. The existence of such a comparative structural burden undermines the Equal Protection Clause’s guarantee that all citizens ought to have equal access to the tools of political change.”

I am not sure what this ruling means as the Supreme Court will have  the last word anyway.  However, I am interested in the reductionist summary of the argument I saw in the Detroit Free Press and other sources.  This summary assumes the person pursuing legacy benefit is white.  However, that insertion inaccurately makes this issue one of black vs. white. In fact a black student advocating for special treatment due to legacy status has the same advantage over a black student arguing for special treatment due to race as a white student arguing for legacy status.

“The appeals court said the state ban on affirmative action violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution by making it more difficult for a minority student to get a university to adopt a race-conscious admissions policy than for a white student to get a university to adopt an admissions policy that considers family alumni connections” (from the Detroit Free Press emphasis added).

The Dangers of Twitter and the Ethics of Investigation

The website Jezebel.com identified teenage tweeters who posted racist comments after Obama’s re-election.  Then the writer reached out to the schools the tweeters attended to inquire as to whether students violated school codes of conduct and what actions were being taken.  When I first read the piece, I thought that as a form of activism the actions taken were justified.  There was a sort of vindictive tone to the piece, but the students did post offensive material in a public forum so there is something to be said for their receiving real world feedback (with appropriate consideration of first amendment rights).  After I read a piece on Slate by Katy Waldman, I gave the issue a second thought.  Was it really fair to “rat out” those kids?  Was it fair to damage their reputations and even, heaven forbid the kids “chances at, say, getting into a decent college”?  My answer would be, yes.  Out in the world beyond one’s teenage years, what one does on social media can have a big impact–say, getting one fired.    A misguided tweet will not destroy a kid’s future; appropriate contrition, some targeted service learning, and the situation can be packaged as a learning experience.  However, the habit of spouting off in an anti-social fashion could be disastrous  and Jezebel is doing their part to help break students of this habit.

One of the more mild tweets in question…

Should Anything be Done About these Numbers? Single Exam Qualifying at Elite Public Schools

Should anything be done about these numbers.  Admission to these schools is based on a single exam.  Many students prep for the exam, and the most successful prepping is done by Asian students.  To what extent are these numbers a statistical representation of the American dream: work hard, succeed, move up in society?  To what extent are they problematic?  No doubt they lead to all sorts of stereotypical judgements about race, culture, work ethic, and other hot button topics.  Read the accompanying New York Times article for details.

Insensitve Halloween Costumes to Avoid

I live in the world of children’s Halloween costumes witch for the most part are fun and innocuous, so I had forgotten about all the possible bad, offensive, stereotypical costumes that adults have on occasion donned.  That is until various blogs I follow started putting up preventative educational posts on costumes to avoid and how to gently inform the individual in blackface, or wearing a poncho and riding donkey, or sporting a sexy Indian princess costume that such cultural misappropriation is not right.

The best summary I have seen is a slideshow on The Root which goes over all sorts of arguments made in favor of insensitive costumes and refutes them.

The best immediate visual response to these costumes comes from a campaign by STARS (Students Teaching about Racism in Society) at Ohio University.

 

 

 

Freshman vs. First Year at UNC

In 2009 the University of North Carolina stopped using the term freshman and switched to first year student.  This fact has gotten picked up recently and is being wielded as a sign of political correctness and unnecessary language change.  There may be some questionable language updates, but this is not one of them.

First, think parallelism.  There are sophomores, juniors, and seniors.  None of those words involve gender.  Why should the fourth term in the sequence be gender based.  If “first year student” is too word, go British and use “forms.”

Second, according the Oxford English Dictionary the word does come from a combination of the adjective “fresh” as in newly made or appearing and “man.”  The sample sentences from back in the 1600s use the term in this more general sense of meaning a neophyte, a freshly minted person.  To go back even further, Adam was the original “fresh-man” but I cannot see Eve being a “fresh-man.”

Certainly the term has come to apply to both genders, but the University policy change does have rather firm grounding behind it.  Now if only I knew why it was getting attention 3 years later.

In the Spirit of James Meredith: Ole Miss’s Black Homecoming Queen

University of Mississippi Homecoming Queen Courtney Pearson (Robert Jordan/UM Communications)

It is great to see that 50 years after the integration of the University of Mississippi by James Meredith, the first black homecoming queen has been selected there. Pearson also noted that her not being a member of any campus sorority adds another unique dimension to her selection.  According BET the vote was 1,477 to 1,387 and according to the Atlanta Black Star, Pearson relied on an energetic social media campaign to propel her candidacy.

This news also leads to the perennial question of  when society will reach a point where we stop counting black “firsts.”  That day is probably a long way off.

Bad Pep Rally Idea: Put on Black Face and Reenact Domestic Violence

At a pep rally at Waverly High School in New York three students put on blackface make up and then reenacted Chris Brown’s 2009 beating of his then girlfriend Rihanna.  How this fit into a pep rally I have no idea nor am I sure how it was part of the competition for the title Mr. Waverly.  The incident came to light when a photo was posted to CNN.  The online condemnation has been, as one would expect, cacophonous.  However, I have this strange sense that while perhaps not so horrific, lots of questionable skits, chants, and other activities make their way into pep rallies given the combination of emotion, peer pressure, and adolescent decision making involved.

Here is the photo.  I wonder what is going on in the minds of the spectators?

 

Different Standard for Different Races: Racist if Statistically Based?

“Palm Beach, Fla. (CBS TAMPA) – The Florida State Board of Education passed a plan that sets goals for students in math and reading based upon their race. On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post”

Is it racist to set lower standards for some groups than for others as the Florida Board of Education has done?  The board points to statistics like this one, “the percentage of white students scoring at or above grade level (as measured by whether they scored a 3 or higher on the reading FCAT) was 69 percent in 2011-2012, according to the state. For black students, it was 38 percent, and for Hispanics, it was 53 percent.”

Given that existing gap, according to the board, it makes sense to set different targets.  I understand that in a neutral statistical world, the choice makes sense as it reflects reality. However, the publication of such goals which explicitly say we as a board expect less from this group than from that group is really troubling.  Some might say the goals reflect the truth and so what if the truth hurts, it is the truth. However, I am thinking there had to be a way to address this particular truth without enshrining lower expectations as an official policy.

In terms of whether setting a policy in this way is racist, I would offer a qualified “no.”  If one defines racism as prejudice plus power, this decision may be made by those with power, but it is based on statistics rather than prejudice.  That answer, though, depends on how one reads the intersection of prejudice and statistics.

 

Historical Anti-Semitism at Emory

“Emory Confronts Legacy of Bias Against Jews” read the line on the New York Times website.  I was quite surprised especially when I went on to read the article which detailed the efforts by the Emory dental school to rid itself of Jewish students under a dean who was there from 1948-1961.  The actions taken were quite blatant including telling Jewish students with excellent grades that they had failed out of the school.

On second thought,  I wonder why I was surprised.  I had read about Ivy League quotas for Jewish students.  I had heard stories from Jewish friends’ parents about not being able to go certain places or join certain clubs in the city where I grew up. So, why would I expect a prominent university to be exempt from the cultural currents of the time.  I think it must be the lens through which I view colleges as a high school teacher.  Because schools like Emory are schools many students strive valiantly to get into, I assume that they are wonderful places, paragons of learning and openness.  This is the old flaw of conflating popularity with excellence.  Certainly many popular schools and other institutions are excellent, but that does not make them wart free.

I just need to remember that the histories of many schools, many of them quite elite, have some less than pleasant chapters.  Consider for example Brown University’s examination of significant benefactors (including those after whom the school was named) and their ties to the slave trade.