Conservatives Think Black America is Stupid

Brent Staples has an op-ed in the New York Times in which he attacks the Civil Rights Leadership for failing to support the No Child Left Behind Act. He suggests that the Civil Rights movement has sacrificed its traditional independence for partisan loyalty. The target of this essay really isn't that heads of the NAACP, it is in fact black America. There's nothing Republicans would like more than the dismantling of the civil rights (i.e. minority) infrastructure and a bunch of black votes for Republicans.

Staples behaves as if the three most common objections to NCLB are just handwaving. The opposition of teachers, the failure of adequate funding, and the problems with testing are all legitimate criticisms of the program, but Staples' basic position is that "it's better than nothing" and "you know this will really work." He also implies that teachers are just being greedy liberals. In order, he commits the fallacies of binary opposition, begging the question, and poisoning the well. and Not the stuff of which great arguments are made.

But what if I accepted these second-rate objections as real ones? Well, there is one very important reason that the civil rights movement is opposed to NCLB: it is a backhanded way to return to segregation. What do I mean? Well, NCLB is a backhanded way to destroy the public school system and implement vouchers. The program states that if a school continues to "fail" parents will be able to use vouchers. Then the Bush Administration just happens to withhold funding for the program! It's no coincidence - this is an on purpose. Vouchers are little more than a subsidy to upper middle income people to send their children to prep schools. There is no way that private schools would accept the millions of disadvantaged minority children (it would pull down their test score too much). So the result of NCLB will be the creation of a two-track school system of private schools: one set of great ones with rich (white) students, and another set with poor (minority) students. Which is what we had in the 1950's.

So the Civil Rights leadership hasn't "lost its courage." It is attempting to preserve its greatest accomplishment in the face of a family whose father voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and a son who is trying to undo it. I wouldn't say that's political cowardice. I'd say that's consistency.