Author: mopress

By Greg Moses

In the Spring of 2003, two months before the

Supreme Court announced its Grutter decision, US Secretary of Education Rod Paige was in Florida,

denouncing affirmative action in college admissions as “un-American.”

And only a week

after the Texas A&M University Regents announced their decision to bypass affirmative action in college

admissions, Secretary Paige was in Texas, not far from College Station, urging his audiences to stay

the course in educational reform. In a series of speeches delivered in Florida, Texas, and in front

of national conferences in Washington, DC, Secretary Paige has enunciated a hard-charging vision of

educational reform that adheres to so-called race-neutral strategies deployed under Governors Jeb and

George Bush. But he also employs images of racialized experience when he seeks to communicate the

persistence of racism and the strengths that have won great achievements in the face of racist

assaults.

“And I’ll just tell you that President Bush and I are of one mind on this,”

said the Secretary in Florida, shortly after he was introduced to a “Race Neutral Conference” by

Governor Jeb Bush, on April 28,

2003.

http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/2003/04/04282003.html

“I have known

President Bush a long time and I can tell you that this is a man who believes that education is a civil

right, just like the right to vote or to be treated equally. He believes it’s the duty of our nation

to educate every child well, not just some of them.”

With fierce persistence, Secretary

Paige steers his remarks toward the President and his leadership, often repeating the proud claim that

within days of taking office, the President got started on the educational reform known as, “No Child

Left Behind.”

“Both he and I are committed to greater diversity and greater

opportunity for all Americans from all backgrounds and all walks of life,” said Paige at the Florida

conference. ”But we believe that we can–and we must–achieve these goals without resorting to methods

that divide, that perpetuate stereotypes, and that pit one group of Americans against another.”

Affirmative action in college admissions, argued the Secretary, is a cause of such

divisiveness.

“Think about it,” argued the Secretary. “If our goal is harmony and

diversity, then why would we use methods that are divisive, unfair and impossible to square with our

Constitution? The Michigan system unfairly rewards or penalizes prospective students based solely on

their race.”

In his references to “the Michigan system,” the Secretary makes no

distinction between the two cases being deliberated by the Supreme Court. Indeed, the Michigan

undergraduate point system was ruled unconstitutional. But in the case of Grutter and the Michigan Law

School, the Supreme Court’s majority decision, authored by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, ruled that it

was indeed possible to square the Constitution with affirmative action in college

admissions.

“This [affirmative action in college admissions] is not only wrong; it’s

un-American,” declared the Secretary prior to the Supreme Court’s findings. “It is not right to fight

discrimination with discrimination. And that is what the Michigan system promotes.”

The

context of the Secretary’s accusations, his pre-emptive declarations, and the way he compares Texas and

Florida, help us to formulate possible reasons why, politically, the George Bush campus in Texas was so

quick to run around the Grutter ruling, back into the framework of “right” and “American” race-neutral

college admissions.

I call the Texas A&M University campus at College Station the George

Bush campus, because that is where the presidential library for the first President Bush is located,

and that is where the Dean of the George Bush School, a former assistant to President Bush and former

director of the CIA, was promoted to University President.

“If we are truly committed

to greater opportunity and diversity on our nation’s campuses, then we have the responsibility and the

obligation to be proactive,” said the Secretary last Spring. “And in this effort, we have a great ally

in President Bush.”

As it turns out, President Bush had pushed from very early in his

administration to get the Department of Education onto the race-neutral track of civil rights. Says

the Secretary of the President:

“At his insistence, the Department of Education took a

hard look at the potential for race-neutral admissions approaches to increase the number of minorities

on America’s college campuses….But the upshot is this: colleges don’t have to fall back on admissions

quotas and double standards to achieve racial diversity. Promising alternatives not only exist, they

are working.”

Secretary Paige argued that “percentage plans” in Texas, Florida, and

California, “are proving that you can achieve broad racial and economic diversity through such race-

neutral means as: guaranteeing admissions to top students from all high schools–wealthy and poor; and

considering a broad range of factors in admissions, including a student’s potential, life experiences

and economic obstacles.”

“The early data is heartening,” continued the Secretary. “It

suggests that many university doors have now opened to rural and low-income students who never before

had a prayer of attending those schools. Where once students from a small number of high schools held

the monopoly on elite colleges, students from low-income and low-performing schools are now winning

admission.”

But we should not ignore Secretary Paige’s careful use of the words “early

data.” The conclusion of the report, prepared by the Office for Civil Rights says plainly that, “No

single race-neutral program is a panacea. What is needed now is more research and discussion about the

varieties of race-neutral programs that might be employed in different settings.” When compared with

the widely-tested methods of affirmative action, the race-neutral movement has not yet produced a

convincing case for a wholesale policy

shift.

http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/edlite-

raceneutralreport.html#_Toc32306620

Last December, with Texas A&M’s rejection of

affirmative action still fresh in the news, Secretary Paige was back in Texas, talking up the coming

revolution in education.

Speaking at Sam Houston State University, not very far down the

road from College Station, Texas, Secretary Paige delivered a fine “seize the moment” speech, fitting

for a winter commencement. He talked about dreamers who acted without hesitation. He talked about Sam

Houston and Mother Theresa, back to

back.

http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/2003/12/12132003.html

Two days

later, the Secretary was speaking before the Greater Houston Partnership, an organization widely

credited with the city’s educational reforms. The Houston Independent School District had led the

nation for fourth-grade test scores among African American children. And Secretary Page told his

audience that it was the example of Houston that the President had in mind when he set out to build a

national policy for education.

In the words of Secretary Paige, the President’s reforms

in education are very much bound up with a concept of civil rights. He bluntly told his Texas audience

that educational challenges today are signs of persisting racism.

“I know, as someone

who grew up in rural Mississippi, that this situation is unjust and a latent vestige of racism. I know

that 50 years after Brown v Board of Education, we still have battles to fight before an equal

education is availab
le to all,” the Secretary told his Houston

audience.

http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/2003/12/12152003.h
tml

“And I

know this is a battle that we must win. No Child Left Behind is the logical next step in fostering

racial equality and equal opportunity. As Thurgood Marshall said in his oral argument before the

Supreme Court in the Brown case, ‘There is no way you can repay lost school years.’ I agree…no way!!!

There isn’t a form of compensation that makes up for lost time and for lost opportunities.”

The Secretary gave quite a pep talk to the Houston audience. He encouraged them to

continue the reforms they had started, “in the 1970s,” and he told them not to be deterred by the fact

that Houston education had become the target of a politically-charged debate.

Secretary

Paige makes a good point when he argues that political agendas often drive the analysis and

interpretation of facts. In the case of the President’s educational strategy, an agenda of race-

neutral civil rights is hard at work.

But here is the puzzle to consider. Why is the

Secretary himself so ambivalent about the value of race-neutral language? For example, when he is

speaking before the National Council of Negro Women (on the same day that the Texas A&M Regents

announced their race-neutral policy), Secretary Paige uses race-laden language with

exhuberance:

“There is a long, proud tradition of education in the African American

community. We have produced some of the greatest educators in history. Frederick Douglass and his

Sabbath Schools. W.E.B. DuBois and the “talented tenth.” Benjamin Elijah Mays opening his office door

to young Martin Luther King, Jr. Maya Angelou sharing thoughts about Langston Hughes. Wynton Marseilles

conducting master classes, and endlessly talking about John Coltrane and Louis Armstrong.”

http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/2003/12/12052003.html

Or speaking more

personally to the audience of black women, Secretary Paige recounted the example of his mother: “My

mother, who was a teacher, used to sternly tell me that there was no more powerful force on earth than

black women. She said that if you wanted to see physics in action, just turn African American women

lose on a problem. And then don’t get in the way!!! If they want change, it will happen!!!

“I noticed she always said that with my father in the room,” remarked the Secretary.

“And he nodded wisely…what else could he do?…she was right!!!”

In this speech, the

use of racialized language points to strength, power, and greatness.

In a January speech

to the American Enterprise Institute, however, Secretary Paige makes reference to a William Raspberry

column. For Raspberry, when black college students declare their support for affirmative action for

the rest of their lives or longer, they are declaring themselves inferior: “The implication is, that we

are permanently damaged goods, and in permanent need of special concessions.”

http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/2004/01/01072004.html

To be sure, Paige

and Raspberry point to one of the conundrums of civil rights enforcement. In a land where well-

documented racism persists, there is a danger that common-sense references to race are also laden with

popular conceptions of inferiority. But a college student’s support of affirmative action need not be

based on presumptions of self-inferiority. Just as Paige celebrates the strength of black women, when

he is speaking to black women, affirmative action may be seen as a way of insisting that such strength

be brought to the table.

By Greg Moses

IndyMedia Austin / Houston

With the joyful news of an Ibrahim family reunion tonight–as father Salaheddin returns home from his lockup in Haskell–we remember two other families of Palestinian heritage whose lives were trashed by hardline immigration enforcement.
First we remember the Suleiman family whose deportation to Jordan has exiled twin citizens of the USA age four.

“They definitely would like to come back,” says Riad Hamad of the Palestine Children’s Welfare Fund, who purchased the plane tickets that allowed the family to leave at their own expense.

“They didn’t want to leave the country, but they did want to live, and that’s why they left,” explained Hamad over the phone Friday afternoon. The 61-year-old father of the family, Adel, was receiving such inhumane treatment in Oklahoma jails that he feared for his life.

Adel was born into a Palestinian refugee camp during the 1948 displacement of the Palestinian people, then in 1967 he was driven from the West Bank by war. And in 1991 he fled Kuwait when the first Gulf War hit there. Now he waits for his furniture to catch up to him in Amman, Jordan after being thrown out of the USA.

In Dallas, Adel and his spouse had their future before them.

“They had just purchased their first house,” says Hamad. “They put down $20,000.” Now the furniture from that house is all they have. Hamad will have the furniture shipped to them next week.

“This is a disaster for them,” says Hamad. “The furniture will provide a sense of continuity.”

Are they interested in returning to the USA?

“Yes they are,” says Hamad quickly. “It’s not like they wanted to leave the country.”

A relative who saw Adel at the Dallas airport on Jan. 29 as he was being deported with his exiled daughters said he looked like a famine picture.

The pre-dawn operation that uprooted Adel from his American dream was called “Return to Sender.” But who sent Adel to America? And why should he not be invited to return with profound apologies from even the President himself?

Hamad remembers trying to cheer up 17-year-old Ayman Suleiman, who was worried what would happen to his education.

“I told him I have paid tuition for 20 Palestinian students to complete college and I would pay for his too,” says Hamad. “When Ayman heard me promise him an education, he dropped his head down for a minute or so to hide his tears.”

“Get to Jordan, I told him. Find a high school and tell me about your college plans.”

Hazahzas

When Immigration and Customs Enforcement abruptly notified Hazahza family relatives Wednesday night that a mother and son would be release from the T. Don Hutto prison, Hamad was called to pick them up.

Hamad knew the mother, Juma, because he had brought her favorite food to prison–Zaazatr. From the prison authorities she requested a tomato, “but she didn’t see a tomato in three months.”

As Hamad drove Juma and her 11-year-old son, Mohammad, from the Hutto prison he heard the boy ask, “Mama am I dreaming?” First thing he asked for was a hamburger.

Juma and Mohammad were last reported resting at the home of a relative in Dallas after a long night of driving made necessary because airlines would not issue them tickets since they lacked proper identification upon release.

The rest of the Hazahza family sits at the prison in Haskell–father Radi and four adult children: 18-year-old Ahmad, 19-year-old Suzan, and 23-year-olds Mirvat and Hisham. They are the ones to free next.

As for the Ibrahim children who tonight will see their father for the first time since early November, Hamad remembers the first time he saw them.

“I saw those children behind bars and I was not allowed to touch them,” he said.

“Even if I was a donkey with no feelings, I would hear this story and be moved.

As a child in Beirut more than forty years ago, Riad Hamad would look out the window at camps filled with white tents.

“What are those tents, Daddy?”

“Those are the Palestinians, Riad. They are waiting to return home.”

**************

Note: to see daily videos from Palestine via laptops that Hamad has donated, visit marhabafrompalestine.com

Email from John Wheat Gibson, 3:17pm

Tonight the Ibrahim children will be in their own home in Richardson, Texas with their mother and their father. I just received a call from Salaheddin Ibrahim, to tell me he was in a car on his way home from the prison in Haskell.

Plato says “Tyranny grows in dark places.” Thanks to all who helped shine the light on the benighted Frauenlager and the persecution of Palestinians by the U.S. government.

This project will be over when the U.S. government stops putting children in prison, stops torturing prisoners, and stops funding the murder of children abroad, so that no child has to flee his or her homeland.

“In questions of powers, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” Thomas Jefferson

John Wheat Gibson Or, here’s how the AP breaks the news:

Authorities offer tour of immigrant detention center

02/10/2007

By ANABELLE GARAY / Associated Press

Showing off playgrounds and computer labs, officials at a rural immigration detention center that held a Palestinian family for three months disputed civil rights attorneys outside who called the facility unsafe and dehumanizing.

The tour of the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, a former state prison near Austin, came a week after the Ibrahim family was released when a federal immigration board agreed to reconsider their request for asylum.

Attorneys for the Ibrahims, who arrived in suburban Dallas in 2001, say the five family members felt humiliated by the conditions at Hutto. Court papers allege that 5-year-old Faten Ibrahim was yelled at and threatened because she didn’t stand still during head counts.

But during a rare glimpse inside the facility to the media, Hutto officials disputed allegations that detainees are threatened with solitary confinement and shackled.

“We’ve done a number of things to soften the facility and make it family-friendly,” said Gary Mead, assistant director for detention and removal at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Immigration authorities opened the facility last year hoping detention would serve as a deterrent to illegal immigration. The facility houses roughly 400 men, women and children either awaiting deportation or seeking asylum.

Families are housed in adjacent cells and there’s no use of force, ICE officials said.

Children attend school during the day and have access to a computer lab and libraries. There’s a playground surrounded by two layers of chain-link fencing, parts of which have barbed wire at the top.

“This is a work in progress. We’re trying to turn it into the best family facility,” Mead said.

But advocates say many of the people housed at Hutto left repressive and violent regimes in their home countries, only to be incarcerated in the U.S. after seeking asylum.

“The entire facility is dehumanizing and inappropriate for children,” said Lisa Graybill, legal director for the ACLU of Texas.

Graybill said ACLU officials have requested to tour the facility but has not be granted permission.

Attorneys representing some of the families detained at Hutto say that clients have complained of inedible food, weight loss and inadequate classroom instruction for their children.

Kids have been told that if they misbehave, they will be separated from their parents, Graybill said. She spoke while holding a drawing from a 7-year-old detainee that read “HELP, I hate this place.”

The Ibrahims were released after a federal immigration panel ruled that escalating violence in the Palestinian territories since Hamas came to power was grounds to reconsider the family’s asylum request.

The order issued by the federal Board of Immigration Appeals came more than two years after the Ibrahim family’s initial request for asylum was denied.

On Friday, Salaheddin Ibrahim, the family’s father, was released from a separate detention center near Abilene, said his brother, Ahmad Ibrahim.

Attorneys for the family said no date has been set for a new asylum hearing.

Republican U.S. Rep. John Carter, whose district includes the Hutto facility, said in a statement that the center “offers the optimal solution to our nation’s growing illegal immigration problem” and that he has been assured the center is “running in an appropriate and humane manner.”

ICE and Hutto officials said they are working to build more classrooms and portable buildings, and to remove barbed wire around the facility.

__

Associated Press writer Thomas Peipert in Dallas contributed to this report.

Latino Civil Rights Organizations File Legal Action to Improve Bilingual Education Programs in Texas

MOTION AVAILABLE IN WEB LINKS SECTION UNDER "BILINGUAL LAWSUIT"

San Antonio – MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and META, the Multicultural Training, Education and Advocacy, Inc., filed a motion on behalf of LULAC and the American GI Forum seeking to require Texas to monitor, enforce, and supervise the State’s bilingual education and ESL program for English Language Learner (ELL) students in Texas pubic schools. GI Forum State Commander Paul Herrera stated “Texas has failed to ensure equal educational opportunities for the over 600,000 English Language Learner students in our public schools. The State’s neglect of its duties has failed these students for 25 years and now it’s time for the State to stop the passing the buck and address its failures by implementing the program the way it was meant to be.”

The motion, which was filed in the United States Eastern District Court of Texas, seeks further relief from the Court under its continuing jurisdiction in the landmark case of US v. Texas. The motion comes 25 years after the State promised the Texas Court to implement effectively a bilingual education program for all ELL students.

Roger Rocha, Texas President of LULAC added, “The Texas Education Agency is abandoning its duty to oversee the program, resulting in thousands of English Language Learner children being pushed out of the very system meant to educate them. This is a recipe for disaster not only for our students, but for the future of Texas. Instead of wasting time looking at failed theories from other states, it’s time for the TEA to roll up its sleeves and make sure that our own program does the job.”

Founded in 1968, MALDEF, the nation’s premier Latino civil rights organization, promotes and protects the rights of Latinos through advocacy, community education and outreach, leadership development, higher education scholarships and when necessary, through the legal system.

META is a national legal advocacy organization that for over 30 years has devoted itself to improving the education of English language learners and immigrant students.

February 9, 2006, PRESS RELEASE