"Racial isolation and the concentrated poverty of children in a public school go hand in hand, moreover, as the Harvard project notes.  Only 15 percent of the intensely segregated white schools in the nation have student populations in which more than half are poor enough to be receiving free meals or reduced price meals.  By contrast, a staggering 86 percent of intensely segregated black and Latino schools have student enrollments in which more than half are poor by the same standards.  A segregated inner-city school is “almost six times as likely” to be a school of concentrated poverty as is a school that has an overwhelmingly white population.”

“So deep is our resistance to acknowledging what is taking place,” Professor Orfield notes, that when a district that has been desegregated in preceding decades now abandons integrated education, “the actual word ‘segregation’ hardly ever comes up.  Proposals for racially separate schools are usually promoted as new educational improvement plans or efforts to increase parental involvement…In the new era of ‘separate but equal,’ segregation has somehow come to be viewed as a type of school reform”- “something progressive and new,” he writes- rather than as what it is:  an unconceded throwback to the status quo of 1954.  But no matter by what new name segregated education may be known, whether it be "neighborhood schools, community schools, targeted schools, priority schools," or whatever other currently accepted term, "segregation is not new...and neither is the idea of making separate schools equal.  It is one of the oldest and extensively tried ideas in U.S. educational history" and one, writes Orfield, that has "never had a systmatic effect in a century of trials."                                                                                                         

Thoughts?

Currently Reading The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America By Jonathan Kozol see related

Dr. King and friends

As i cherish the freedom of transitions periods before being shackled by our lovely, capitalist society, i thought i might read a bit about freedom in one of Dr. King's many biographies. 

One interesting fact is that he threw himself off the second story of his house when he found out his grandmama died.  He loved her so much, he wanted to leave with her. 

"All people in this world are tied into a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality."

Before his love of Gandhi's teachings, he admired a theologian named Walter Rauschenbusch, who wrote Christianity and the Social Crisis.  This dude thought that sin was the product of an evil society- in this case, capitalist society.  Exploitation, prostitution, crime- all were inherent in a social system that exalted profit over virtue, selfishness over brotherhood.  A socially relevant faith must deal with the whole man- his body and soul, his material and spiritual well-being.  It must work for the kingdom "down here" as well as "over yonder."  Any religion that stressed only the souls of men and not their social and economic conditions was "a socially moribund religion awaiting burial."

Gandhi showed him a means not only of harnessing his anger, but of channeling it into a positive and creative force.  Gandhi's goal was not to defeat the British in India, but to redeem them through love, so as to avoid a legacy of bitterness.  Satyagraha- reconciled love and force in a single, powerful concept.  King's closest definition to this was agape love- a disinterested love for humankind.  Through agape, one perceive all human life as interrelated, all humanity as a single process. 

On harnessing anger and channeling into positive force, if i don't get into Teach for America, it's Arab-American Resource Corps all the way!!

Currently Reading Let the Trumpet Sound: Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., The By Stephen B. Oates see related

Tryst with Destiny

Speech delivered in the Constituent Assembly, New Delhi, 14 August 1947, on the eve of the attainment of Independence

Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.  At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.  A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.  It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures.  Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength.  We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again.  The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us.  Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

Freedom and power bring responsibility.  The responsibility rests upon this Assembly, a sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India.  Before the birth of freedom we have endured all the pains of labour and our hearts are heavy with the memory of this sorrow.  Some of those pains continue even now.  Nevertheless, the past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.

That future is not one of ease or resting but of incessant striving so that we may fulfil the pledges we have so often taken and the one we shall take today.  The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer.  It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.  The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye.  That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

And so we have to labour and to work, and work hard, to give reality to our dreams.  Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart.  Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments. 

To the people of India, whose representatives we are, we make an appeal to join us with faith and confidence in this great adventure.  This is no time for petty and destructive criticism, no time for ill will or blaming others.  We have to build the noble mansion of free India where all her children may dwell. 

-Jawaharlal Nehru

i read one of my fav't pieces of writing this year with an indignant resolve, unequivocally different from years past.  this time around, i don't reflect on Gandhi's practical idealism, the downfall of British reign over the motherland, or the fight against AIDS in my country.  freedom feels grey tonight....

i reflect on how i feel trapped in my home                                                                  while my brother is taken away from his home, replaced by barbed wire and blank walls

i reflect on how i cook abundantly for my family                                                  while my brother is still hungry after a piece of hard bread and sliced potato

i reflect on how i get excited over HEB $1 movies                                                     while my brother wonders if he should get paid $1 a day to do inmate's laundry

i reflect on how it may be too hot to go running                                                           while my brother gazes through a negligible hole that welcomes the sunlight  

i reflect on being born in the Houston Medical Center                                                while my brother is told to get the fuck out of "our" country

i reflect on my respect for houses of worship                                                             while my brother is told to respect federal buildings

i reflect on a picture of the three musketeers on my desktop                                          while my brother can only picture it in his mind

i reflect on teaching my dad PC language regarding race                                       while my brother can be thrown in the "segregation" hole if he ever speaks up

i reflect on tears that fall on my inaction, my indecision                                                 while my brother must hold back his tears, lest a guard see his weakness

i reflect on the freedom to pray anytime, anywhere                                                     while my brother, my Muslim brother, prays next to his prison bedside five times a day

i reflect on how our tryst used to be our homes, IHOP, Chacho's...                               now a distant destiny we can only imagine in our motherlands, in our hearts

"We're the best representatives for peace between Indians and Pakistanis...why don't they just hire us?!!"

-two brothers whose mission will never die....shalom

man, i heart debauchery. 

goals??

leave the country.

graduate.

vegetarian for 365 days.

spend time with kiddos.

maniacal running.

confidence.

freakish risks.

cross-dressing...in public.

read.  draw.  movie.  sleep.  read.

mural baby.

love family, friends, roomies.

welcome change.

plan.

counseling.

jump off a plane.

L.A., D.C.

explore faiths.

learn to f'n swim already....cliff dive, drown, and be resurrected.

active meeting people.

Ssssoooooo after 2 months of exciting turmoil among four doctors, Dr. Adkins [my sports medicine doc, ironic name i know] says the MRI shows that my leg is NORMAL!!! ok, so usually, i hate the word "normal" however today it allowed me to breathe a gimongoussss sigh of relief

progression:  no fracture--> stress fracture [get on crutches immediately]--> possible fracture--> no fracture [GO HOME AND RUN]

so Adawg made up this slow, somewhat rigid 5-wk running program for me of alternate walking/running.  as i ran down red river, he observed the mechanics of my running style and came up with this:  your lower body is great, however your upper is asymmeticral and you have a gimp in your arm and head.  so basically i run like a hunchback.  thanks doc! 

sad news:  i can't run marathon in the spring =(.  but he told me that as we keep working together, i can eventually run it as long as i watch my diet/sleep/exercise (which i let him know all suck at this point)

lesson learned:  check out your pain less than 6 months after it happens [preferrably within the first week haha] ,  research the problem yourself, see multiple docs....and have hope!!  after all this misdiagnosis and such of PHYSICAL problems, i'm a bit horrified about future assessment issues i may have in the bootiful realm of psychology and social work, however, paradoxically,  it gives me more reassurance that we're fallible creatures that only have a limited scope of what the heck we're talkin about.  this is why i absolutely HEART health care teamssss.  one of my classmate's mottos is GO TEAM...yes, she encourages herself all the time with this multifaceted, dynamic phrase.  i know, i know....too cuuuute!!

after my depressing round of abuse tests, i declare it's time for a friggin break....when the break involves Mr. Bono  and my mommy  all in one ALL-STAR weekend, ME HAPPY!!

sopaipilla says:

Clear a Path to a Safer World: November 3, 2005.
Night of A Thousand Dinners
Join us! See flyer for details.Proceeds benefit
Adopt-A-Minefield