But one of these guys, Antonio Cromartie, has some off the field issues in the form of eight children with six different women and the child support that comes with such a situation. Antonio, good luck with the season BUT PLEASE keep it in your pants and please don’t follow Antonio’s lead.

Sorry about the sound. Please turn your volume up.

SOMA School District

In the last few weeks we have sent a few letters, made a few phone calls, paid a couple of visits and talked to other parents. What we discovered is we are not the only parents upset about how our district identifies and addresses the needs of children. At least one lawsuit has been threatened. We also discovered a heavy layer of lip service in regards to closing the well publicized achievement gap in the district. It is the district’s alleged number one priority but all that has been done is putting together a 50+ member panel to “make recommendations”. Seriously? C’mon. Does it really take that many people to screw in a light bulb? Commentor, davidfrazer, said it well:

“…I am not optimistic that a 55-member task force with a charge that, as I understand it extends for a year, will reach any sort of meaningful consensus. If experience is any guide, such task forces fall into three categories. Either they are stacked by the powers that be to justify a predetermined policy outcome or they produce a watered down “consensus” report that is of little real value (see, e.g., prior strategic planning process) or they break down into warring factions with “majority” and “minority” reports.

Call me cynical but I don’t see how the task “solves” the eqiuty and excellence conundrum on its own. What we need on this issue is not a “blue ribbon” panel. What we need is leadership.”

Why mention the gifted/talented program with the achievement gap? Because in my view they are joined at the hip. Is it not the responsibility (perhaps not sole) of the school system to prepare our children for academic achievement and raise each child’s educational expectations? SOMA seems settled on dumbing down educational expectations instead of raising them. This is best exemplified in the rate of participation in advanced level courses by students according to ethnicity/race (link: page 10). White students participate in these courses at a rate of almost five times that of Black students. SOMA seems to just shrug it’s institutional shoulders when questioned how to address the issue.

Perhaps the solution is simple. SOMA should focus on more participation in preparatory/advanced classes across groups, potentially raising student scores on standardized tests across those groups, and as a result the achievement gap will be un-gapped. By not doing this, how many Jack and Jill Student is SOMA underserving and miseducating? But in order for SOMA to un-gap the gap, it must properly identify children who show academic promise and address their needs. When contemplating this issue, I first thought the district’s definition of a gifted and talented child needed to be expanded. But when I read how the district characterizes those children (listed below), I changed my mind. It is:

The characteristics of exceptionally able learners (why not just called these kids “gifted and talented”?) may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Show a high degree of intellectual, creative, and/or artistic ability and demonstrate this ability in multiple ways;
• Intense curiosity about principles and how things work;
• The ability to grasp concepts rapidly and/or intuitively;
• The ability to generate theories and hypotheses and pursue methods of injury;
• Pose questions beyond those present in the regular District curriculum;
• Make connections;
• Produce products that express insight, creativity, and/or excellence, and;
• Possess exception leadership skills.

Clearly, measuring the above characteristics is a highly subjective pursuit, but I would say the definition is pretty well thought out. So it must be SOMA’s identification method that is flawed. This brings me to the purpose of this post. I ask, if you have read this far, please share what methods you would use to identify children who possess the above traits? Please share the first thing that comes to mind in the comments.

Shout out to Lauryn Hill and Carter G. Woodson.

The "White" Wiz (source: San Franciso Sentinel)

A few weekends ago when I had run out of activities for the girls and I to partake in together, I passed the local high school on the way home from swimming lessons. The drama department was putting on a production of The Wiz. The Babies must have seen the movie starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson and Nipsy Russell about 30 times with their mom. Not the greatest movie but hey, they love it. (I saw the Broadway musical for my fifth birthday and I still remember how awesome it was.) Now I don’t keep a running tally of their cinematic viewings. These numbers are more guesses gauged from how well The Babies know the theme songs of movies and how often they sing them in the car or the bathtub. The only thing in heaver rotation than “He’s The Wizard!” right now is “It’s A Hard Knocked Life” from the Annie movie. Maybe they’ve seen Annie 40 times.

After seeing the sign for the play, I thought beautiful! I had mentally killed another few hours of entertaining the girls. I would just take them to see The Wiz. When I excitedly shouted to the girls, “Who wants to see The Wiz at the high school?”, C-Thunda predictably says, “Meeeeeeeee!!” But then T-One party-poopingly says, “Dad, you can’t take us. Mom is going to take us next week.” I must have given out a sigh of disappointment or something because C-Thunda immediately consoled me by letting me know I could take them both to see the “white” Wiz instead.

“The ‘white’ Wiz? Baby, what’s the ‘white’ Wiz?”

“You know. The one with the white people in it.”

“Ahhhhh.” 

Mind you, C-Thunda is 3-years-old. While I found it interesting C didn’t call The Wiz (you know, the one with the Black people in it), The “Black” Wizard of Oz but instead called the original movie The “White” Wiz, her description made me uneasy nonetheless. See, I rarely talk about people in terms of white and black with The Babies. My general (and scientifically proven) viewpoint is everyone, yes, everyone is brown. So for C to describe anyone in terms of color surprised me. As MetroDad correctly points out:

“One thing I love about little kids is that they don’t think in terms of race or the color of their skin. They pretty much judge them solely on their ability to relate to poop jokes, Dora the Explorer, and farts.”

The reason I was uneasy is because I realized C-Thunda was not necessarily learning about race and all its social implications from me. She was learning from the world at large. And it’s no telling what she’ll learn out there. If at all possible I’d like to spare The Babies from hearing psuedo compliments like, “You’re handsome for an Asian guy” or requests like “Can I touch your hair?” or even so-called self-empowering statements like “I’m a strong black woman”. I look forward to the day when The Babies will just be able to simply say, “I’m strong”. Or not have to say it at all, just know it. On the other hand, I don’t want them so desensitized to race that they succumb to the liberal idiocy of “I don’t see color.” While it is my hope we will continue to see the ever declining significance of race, I am not optimistic that it will be totally insignificant.

I agree with MetroDad in that we have to stand up to racist thoughts and actions. But we also have to check that our own children have a balanced view of race. They should know that race is important and not important at the same. It both exists (as a social construct) and doesn’t exist (as a scientific fact). It should be talked about openly when needed but should be the last thing on anyone’s mind. When it’s all said and done, perhaps The Babies will be able to recognize and acknowledge Judy Garland’s 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz by some other distinction besides The “White” Wiz.

When writing here I will try my best to resist the urge to speak about folks whom disagree with me in a demeaning way. My mother always told me that if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all. Well in this instance I’m going to ignore mom’s advice, sort of. It’s not that I want to be mean or call names. In fact, I don’t think I’m doing that. I’m just bothered by a nagging question. I really can’t resist the urge to ask it.

Is Amy Holmes just straight stupid or is it just an act?

source: The New York Post

Apparently I’m not the only one with this question. If you go to Rick Sanchez’s blog on CNN many of the commentors question whether Amy is dumb, clueless (different than dumb) or just putting on a show. How could Amy not have seen the now imfamous cartoon in The New York Post as racist? And even if she didn’t, how could she have, with a straight face, come up with that cock-eyed defense of the cartoon. But let me not get ahead of myself.

I didn’t know much about Amy except what I’d gathered from Real Time with Bill Maher and her appearances on various cable news shows. I did a little more digging. From her profile on the CNN site, she’s a registered independent, a Princeton graduate and has been on People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People” list.

In a series of YouTube videos she explained a little of her background. Amy was born in Africa in the country of Zambia to a Caucasian mother and an African father. Her mother divorced her father when she was 3 years old. After that, she and her mom moved back to Seattle where her mother grew up. Amy was then brought up on Rob Lowe movies, idolized Brooke Shields and now prefers to date only middle aged Jewish men.

Whenever Amy appears on Real Time my instant thoughts are, “Man, she’s good lookin’.” She possesses a middle brown cuteness with a half-fro. Amy’s attractiveness is clearly a factor in her popularity. I mean, have you ever noticed that most of these news anchors, men and women, are some pretty handsome people? But even with Amy’s cuteness, the nanosecond she opens her mouth I think to myself, “This chick is so messed up.”

And trust that it isn’t that’s she a conservative. I would classify myself as a moderate with conservative leanings having voted for Democrats and Republicans. It is more that she consistently suspends logic and common sense when offering her opinion. I mean, if it truly is her opinion and not some script she’s reading from. Mostly I think it’s just something she regurgitated after reading, perhaps just skimming, the latest National Review in her local Starbucks. The opinion she gives today, undermines the opinion she gave the previous day. When I see her I shake my head with a little smirk on my face thinking… “Amy, Amy, Amy. You are so mixed up.” But that was pretty much the extent of it.

It made me giggle to myself when she would vehemently defend Sarah Palin’s intellect and her candidacy for VP but on the other hand question Barack Obama’s capacity for the office of the Presidency. It amused me when she said Hillary Clinton would destroy Washington with partisan politics (even though she voted for Bill) but supported Sarah’s rally of cry of “Barack pals around with terrorists”. Or saying Barack has a “Moses Complex”, wrongly quoting one of his speeches. She didn’t even take the time to check. I actually found it hilarious, in the Amy-you’re-so-mixed-up kind of way when she referred to Republican candidates for president campaigning to African-American groups as “spade work”. I thought it interesting that she criticized Barack’s speech on race as being boring and chastised him for “outing” his grandmother for her racial biases. But she cries foul when someone calls her on not seeing the racist undercurrent emanated by the “cartoon” in The New York Post. [Incidentally, Amy Holmes is a former classmate at Princeton with Rupert Murdoch’s, the owner of The New York Post, son Lachlan.]

Now before I go on let me say that when I saw the cartoon originally on African American Dad’s site, my immediate reaction was that the cartoonist’s intent was to depict Barack as the chimp. But instead of reacting immediately I said, let me sit on this for a couple of days and try to figure out what else this could have meant. After all, I want to live my life in a certain way. I want to promote racial harmony in this post Obama era. So the last thing I want to do is jump to a conclusion. So I thought. I came up with nothing. Even if there was no intent to be racist doesn’t change the fact that the cartoon is racist.

Amy Holmes’ defense of this cartoon only confirmed for me how racist it was.

Last week she appeared on Rick Sanchez’ CNN broadcast with UCLA Professor Mark Sawyer, who is the director for Race, Ethnicity and Politics. Instead of putting the whole exchange in this post, here’s the link to the transcript of that show. [Scroll about two-thirds of the way down.] But I’ll give you part of it:

SANCHEZ: Amy, do you think that was the intent [to be racist] of this cartoonist? And do you think it’s proper for the Reverend Sharpton to be protesting “The New York Post”?

HOLMES: Well, you would be assuming this was a depiction of Barack Obama and I don’t think that it was. I think that everyone knows that this legislation was written by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and that it was along almost entirely partisan lines. So, when I looked at that cartoon, I thought the cartoonist was referring to politicians in the Democratic Party, here in Washington, D.C. who passed a $787-billion stimulus package, primarily behind closed doors.

source: The Economist

Nancy Pelosi? Are you serious? I would bet the typical New York Post reader doesn’t even know who Nancy Pelosi is or what the breakdown of the vote on the bill was. They are not calling it the “Pelosi Stimulus Bill” or the “Democrat Congress Stimulus Bill”. They’re calling it the “Obama Stimulus Bill”. In fact I saw a much better cartoon on the cover of the February 14th edition of The Economist. Notice what they’re calling it? One could argue that both the corresponding article and the cartoon itself are critical of the President and Congress. But neither are racist. It’s not racist to be critcal of our President. But you must call The New York Post‘s cartoon what it is. Also notice the conspicuous absence of Nancy Pelosi’s caricature in The Economist‘s cartoon. Amy give me a break.

Here’s more:

SANCHEZ: But the question that is being raised here is should this guy have known better? You’re talking about the very first African-American president of the United States and whether you’re referring to him or not -

HOLMES: But that’s the question. Are we talking -but that’s the question. Does this cartoon talk about Barack Obama or is it talking about the Democratic Party and the legislative process? I looked at that cartoon and thought it was talking about the latter… We also know there was this hugely disturbing, shocking story in Connecticut about this chimpanzee that mauled the neighbor. Those were the connections I was making, not the racist ones.

SANCHEZ: How about it, Professor?

SAWYER: There is not connection between a chimpanzee and the stimulus bill. [Thank you professor!] Everyone knows the stimulus bill is most associated with the president. And look, I mean, Amy is very interesting. But when you try and defend the indefensible it just sounds foolish. There’s just no connection between these two stories.

Amy, there are one of two things going on. One, you’re just straight stupid. And not because of this one incident. It’s the culmination of stupid stuff you’ve said. This is just the proverbial straw. In fact you could have said the cartoonist’s intent was not racist. I could have accepted that. But again the cartoon is racist. If you’re a jerk to everyone you meet but you intend to be nice, it doesn’t make you not a jerk. It just makes you a clueless jerk.

Or, the other possibility is that you’re putting on an act just to get on TV. I’m not against profiteering. Clearly you’re on a lot because you present a rare combination of looks, ethnicity and political opinion. Go for yours. I mean it could be that I’ve become a victim of your master plan. Maybe you want folks talking about you in any way, no matter what you have to say to make it happen. Could be I’ve been hoodwinked. C’est la vie.

But, I implore you Amy, whether it is that you’re just not that quick on the uptake or you’re just executing a big con, when offering your opinion, draw the line when it comes to issues that either take some common sense or some conscious. I’m not sure you possess either.