I got to thinking about this yesterday after I was on a panel discussing the Left and Barack Obama. It was a great panel, with a great crowd (lots of young people). And yet I had the same feeling as I did circa 1994 when I realized, "Oh, maybe I'm not a black nationalist." I still think I'm a lefty, maybe just a pragmatic one. Anyway, I thought about it again when I saw a guy below attack Megan McArdle for having "bad politics." And I thought, hmm what are my politics? Maybe I'm an Obamacon!!! I did vote for MIke Bloomberg and if he ran against David Paterson, I'd have to think long and hard.
Anyway I got to thinking about arguments that I will and won't entertain. There are very few things I've completely made my mind up about. Most of the ones that I have, are social issues. I can't listen to anyone make a case against gay marriage--I just don't think there is one that doesn't involve prejudice. To me, this is the most disappointing aspect of the Obama campaign. I can't listen to anyone make a case for the government prohibitions in regards to women's health. I understand being pro-life, to the extent that you think that abortion is wrong, but not to the extent that you think the state should outlaw it.
Don't ever say the words "intelligent" and "design" in that order around me. My eyes will glaze over, and I will stop paying attention. Don't talk to me about how black people--all 30 million of us--have a "culture of failure" or anything like that, as I'm likely to assume that you're either a racist or someone who keeps the company of racists. I think I want drugs legalized--maybe all of them, I'm not sure. I think I want aggressive prosecution of violent criminals--a couple weeks ago some punk rolled up and down Lenox Ave. spraying fools. That dude is out of his mind, and is a danger to my son. I want him treated as such.
I didn't think the guys who killed Sean Bell should have gone to prison. I just didn't buy the idea that they set out to murder him, and prison for negligence horrifies me, especially for people who are trying to be good guys. I did think they had no reason to be on the force anymore, and I hope that comes to past. I looked at it like someone botching a major surgery, and letting a patient die. You probably aren't fit for the job, and we need to instituite some reforms to make sure people like you aren't on the job. But I don't think those cops--minus thier badges--are a danger to society. I generally hate jail, across the board. It strikes me as wrong to argue for leniency for first-offenders, and drug dealers, but not for public servants doing a job that would scare me silly.I think government should do something to help poor people--but I want that help to be premised on a partnership that enrolls poor people in the possibility of one day not needing help. I'm prepared for the possibility that there will be some people who will always need some help.
Outside of that, I'll basically listen to anything, mostly because I just don't know enough yet--even at the old age of 32--to draw many conclusions.. I try to stay up on my reading, but there is such a deluge of info out there. It's one of the reasons I'm considering quitting blogging at some point. I talk way too much. I want to go back to just listening for a while.
UPDATE: I didn't expound much on race, and that's because it's an area I'm fairly open on. I don't really want to talk to people who are convinced they know black people because, as I've said, they get BET in their cable package, or see black kids acting a fool on the train. That said, I'm "meh" on race-based Affirmative Action, not out of any great sympathy for those who yell "Unfair!", but because I'm not convinced it does much for those amongst us who need it most. I'm not convinced that black kids in Cali or Florida are any worse off because of Ward Connerly. I'm sorry, I'm just not gonna fight for your right to go to Berkley--so many more never even get a sniff of college. I kinda like class-based Affirmative Action--plenty of poor white folks who need help. I don't like it as a cheap Sista Souljah move, but as a matter of policy. More to the point, I want college period to be more accessible. I think color often functions as a lazy proxy for very specific issues that need to be addressed--por ejemplo, the problems of coming from a family with little or no wealth.
Anyway, I'd love to hear you guys chime in on your own politics, and those things which you just can't compromise on.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
what an interesting challenge & some surprising revelations (bloomberg, sean bell case... ok, i'm new to your blog)... what are my politics? what are my political non-negotiables? i'm gonna think on this and get back to you!
I think I'll do a "my politics" for my own blog later on.
I tend to be pretty liberal on ALL fronts. I totally agree with you on the folks who make a "case" against gay marriage. I can't even date a guy who I think is homophobic. It just doesn't make sense to me.
That Sean Bell comment probably wouldn't be well-received by most, but when the verdict came down, I looked at it from a legal standpoint: the case was not strong enough and that's that. People want us (Black folks) to be really pissed off about the whole thing. And while I AM pissed off by the way Black life is often disregarded and disrespected, I am not THAT pissed off by that particular verdict.
But yeah, thanks for the idea.
"the case was not strong enough and that's that. People want us (Black folks) to be really pissed off about the whole thing. And while I AM pissed off by the way Black life is often disregarded and disrespected, I am not THAT pissed off by that particular verdict."
That basically sums up my view. There needed to be micro and macro perspective. On a micro level, I just didn't see prison time. On a macro level, it's amazing that these mistakes never happen to drunk white frat boys.
About intelligent design - do you believe in God?
How about environment and energy? It's probably my own biggest issue, politically, but there are a lot of people who would and do argue that the environment is something that only the affluent have the luxury to worry about. I would beg to differ (the poor are probably the ones who suffer the most from environmental degradation, after all, and are also the ones hit hardest by rising energy costs), but would love to hear a conversation going on the topic.
Mr. Coates:
Appreciate the post; you covered a lot of ground. I’m new to your blog, so it caught me up on a lot of significant points in a hurry.
If I understand you correctly, I have had a parallel “maybe-I’m-not-one-of-those” epiphanies over the past year. I used to identify myself as “very conservative,” but somewhere along the line media pundits managed to redefine “conservative” such that I don’t recognize it any more. For both liberals and conservatives, the extremists have somehow laid claim to representing their corresponding mainstreams of thought. I guess that leaves everyone else having to identify as “moderate,” though that is so vague as to be nearly useless.
I will confess to my religion having a profound influence on my attitude on social issues. Having once spent many years as an atheist, I fully appreciate the perception that all religions are nothing more than contemporary mythologies, and I fully appreciate that many who hold to religion do so with a degree of blind devotion that is irrational. All I can say is that I highly value rational thought and I will have no part in any religion that requires me to check my brain at the door. If religion is deemed unfit to be part of a rational discussion (and I understand why many would think so), then I agree that topics like gay marriage and abortion are then reduced to indefensible prejudice. All I ask is that if you have not heard *why* I believe what I believe, give me the benefit of the doubt and don’t dismiss me out of hand as being irrational.
As for design by way of intelligence, … Dang! You’ve stopped listening. Never mind.
On crime I am a mix of mercy and Draconian justice. I agree totally that even good people make stupid mistakes and should be dealt with lightly. Negligence is a tough one. Negligence born of “I’m usually careful but I made this one mistake” is one matter. Negligence born of “all I care about is me and I don’t care what happens to anyone else” is another matter altogether. I also tend to want rapists to be executed, especially in our era of DNA evidence. Or perhaps tortured slowly first and then executed.
I own guns. I don’t think anyone outside of the military or law enforcement has any business owning a fully automatic weapon (rapid-fire machine gun). I don’t think bearing arms is an unlimited right. Just like driving a car, if you can’t prove you can use it safely than you shouldn’t be out in public with it. I think anyone who owns a gun is obliged to own it legally, know how to handle it safely, know how to shoot straight, and know when it is appropriate to draw a gun and when it is not.
Someone, maybe Yglesias, recently posted a hilarious music video about how "the gays" were causing this woman to leave her husband. Very funny.
I am really enjoying your blog, so I hope you won’t quit anytime soon.
Anyway, I'm basically a social libertarian as it sounds like you are: pretty much no harm, no foul. I hate the fact that many people confuse legality and morality-- I can be completely against drug use personally (and I am) while still seeing how drug laws cause more harm than good. And as far as sex-- man, keep the government out of my bedroom please! If gay marriage is against someone’s religion, fine-- no one is forcing religious approval. But I'm a taxpayer, not a member of an anti-gay marriage church, and I'm talking about a license from my county government, not from that anti-gay marriage minister. If people want to be all up in other people's business, I think they start by pinning scarlet "A's" on folks. I'm almost positive I read something about adultery being bad somewhere once.
I'm also a free market true believer. Capitalism is neither inherently good nor inherently bad; it's inherently neutral, and there are definitely bad things that can happen that need to be regulated or mitigated. But millions of people making free individual choices get it right way more often than a few "elites" making choices for them. The balance is figuring out when and where intervention is appropriate. Market failure exists (bad education for poor people, labor discrimination against minorities) and so do negative externalities (pollution) or just poor consumer information (check out the array “financial services” available in any poor neighborhood in America). Some things can be pretty good for most people yet really bad for a few people (moving a factory to Mexico that creates new jobs in Mexico and cheaper prices for millions of American consumers-- but creates newly unemployed factory workers in Cleveland or Detroit). So I support reasonable government intervention in addressing those problems. The definition of "reasonable?" Therein lies the rub (in the case of the unemployed factory workers, “reasonable” means a social safety net, job training, and educational incentives, but it does not mean stopping that factory from going to Mexico through tariffs, subsidies or tax manipulation). I can't get on the same page with people who are reflexively anti-capitalist, anti-globalization and/or anti-free trade.
(Side note: economically, Obama is probably to the right of Richard Nixon on regulation, taxation and government intervention. It’s pretty amazing how far the economic consensus has shifted over the past thirty years.)
Also, in the last ten years I’ve become convinced that the death penalty is a bad idea. It might be possible, in principle, to have a theoretical argument for how and why it should be applied. In practice, I think there’s very little doubt that we probably convict innocent people for capital crimes, and those innocents are almost always poor minorities. Since taking a life is the strongest exercise of government power, if it’s allowed at all, it should only be when it can be done right every time. Which will probably not be anytime soon.
"Abortions for some.
Miniature American flags for others."
Legalize drugs and prostitution (In an Amsterdam kinda way, but come down hard on High-Drivers, public heroin nodding, not shutting up when on blow, etc.)
Oh and tax the hell out of it.
Let the gay ladies and queer fellas marry
Healthcare for everyone making less than 35k
Uniforms in public schools
Flat tax on income. Rich folks not excluded.
Ease up on drug sentencing. Be tough on violent crime.
Build a wall on the mexican AND canadian border (not really, but security SHOULD be maximized on both borders, but let any non violent immigrqants slide if theyre already living in the country)
Parenting licenses. You need one for a dog, why not for a kid.
Healthier meals for school kids. No vending machines.
Installing a national daily lottery where the winner is stoned to death
I'm a new reader to your site. And since I was first linked to you by Andrew Sullivan about 2 weeks ago, I've been a daily reader. This short summation of your politics has crystallized exactly why I will keep coming back day after day. (Please don’t stop blogging and start “listening”—I’ve just started reading!)
Here's an observation though. You said, "I don't really want to talk to people who are convinced they know black people because, as I've said, they get BET in their cable package, or see black kids acting a fool on the train." Certainly there will be those who glance at, for example BET, and feel qualified to make sweeping generalizations. I can't speak for them. In fact, I’d venture that they’d have made those generalizations anyway. But there are others who have a genuine curiosity and reverence, for black culture, black opinions, and black history whose only window is through the media and/or random encounters in daily life. Sometimes people aren’t trying to Monday morning quarterback the black experience. Rather they, quite simply, care. They see the black experience in America not as “your” culture, but as among the many fabrics that make up “our” culture, and want to learn.
Not everybody knows how to say it right. Not everybody possesses the tact, the manners or the sensitivity to express this without sounding like an idiot. And maybe educating the clueless shouldn't be your cross to bear. But don’t admonish those who at least try.
As the product of a self-described “redneck” Appalachia-grown father, and a city-slicker, Tokyo born-and-bred Japanese mother, I’ve done my fair share of educating the clueless. My opinions on Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Korematsu, or sushi for that matter, are far from definitive. But who knows when the person I’m talking to will have another change to get real in-the-flesh personal opinion. So, I do what I can. Curiosity (however awkwardly expressed) today can become awareness tomorrow.
So is the basic deal that economic issues have too many counter-intuitive little details to have general outlooks on them beyond "we should do what doesn't suck"? because I think that's a pretty respectable position. After all you can't really know in advance the best way to help the poor, not fuck up the environment and maintain productivity growth.
Kind of funny how this stuff lines up with what would create a lot of tension in your personal life. My old roommate was a libertarian, but I can't even really imagine being friends with a racist, sexist, intelligent design spouting homophobe who wants to put everyone in prison.
As someone who grew up in Cali, who's in law school, and who's basically the only dark spot in his class, I can tell you Ward Connerlly and his minions did have an impact on our system. As for aggressively recruiting African Americans, now we have hordes of Morman couples, which my school as deemed to be a "proper" minority to recruit. Also the attendance at schools by Blacks has been dropping steadily since Connerly's handiwork. Maybe that's good for HBCUs 'cause that's damn sure why I went to one. I don't know. But since they're aren't any on the West Coast, again, it negatively affected people like me.
Also, as a man of color, many police officers, not all, but many ARE a threat to any young black child's survival. Punks shoot up my neighbors and then cops come in profile, harass, arrest, monitor, and in some instances, shoot and kill many more. You should be as concerned with police officers as you should be violent offenders. Only one of them gets suspended without pay if they kill somebody.
Just my opinion. Not saying your opinion is invalid. Just my take.
I would not say I'm a liberal. But I definitely hate conservatives. I believe the system should be reformed and divorced from politics and right wing ideology. I personally believe abortion is wrong but I support a woman's right to choose. I personally believe homosexuality is wrong (wrong for me, I would say) but I support gay marriage. Don't give me that crap about the sanctity of marriage -- that's the most disenguous argument I've heard in a while. I personally think a lot of shit is wrong but I don't care enough about it to think it should be regulated or outlawed. I'm also a tool so just cause I think something is wrong doesn't mean I'm right. Lol.
I'm fairly unconcerned about global warming, although I believe it's true. I believe in Affirmative Action race-based and class-based. I'm just not concerned about the white resentment arguments. Like the NAACP and BET has stolen civil rights from white people. You got the Heritage Foundation, CMT and the Daughter's of the Confedracy. Shut up.
I believe in prison reform and rehabilitation. I believe the appointment of federal judges shouldn't be political and I believe the habit of appointing prosecutors as judges should stop. I still haven't made up my mind about public schools versus school vouchers. Fiscal responsibility is cool but not a paramount issue for me. Personally it is. But governments just seems like they're always running in the red and too expect them not to is kind of presumptuous.
Diversity, utilitarism and egalitarism are qualities to be applauded not attacked. Federal programs for arts and lower-income groups are more important to me than relentless military funding. Patriotism is a non-issue to me. This country and I have a marriage of convenience and I appreciate it but there's no love lost. You won't find me sporting no lapel flag pin. Shit I haven't said the pledge of allegiance or sang the national anthem since I was like 8.
I believe the government should be run by people who believe in it, not people who sabotage it to prove a point. I believe in aggressive prosecution of financial market charlatans. I believe a good majority of poor people are poor for a reason not necessarily because of their own doing. Education is not the sole answer in my opinion.
Wow. I've thoroughly confused myself because I seem a lot more undecided about things than I thought I was. I guess I'm a true independent. S#!t or get off the pot already. Lol.
Thanks again Ta-Nehisi for an awesome blog and an awesome post. Sorry I started rambling.
"So is the basic deal that economic issues have too many counter-intuitive little details to have general outlooks on them beyond "we should do what doesn't suck"? because I think that's a pretty respectable position. After all you can't really know in advance the best way to help the poor, not fuck up the environment and maintain productivity growth.
Kind of funny how this stuff lines up with what would create a lot of tension in your personal life. My old roommate was a libertarian, but I can't even really imagine being friends with a racist, sexist, intelligent design spouting homophobe who wants to put everyone in prison."
Basically. You can throw global warming deniers in there also. That is just quackery.
I don't have politics so much as values. I don't empathize with your concept of believing strongly in a few things, but being willing to be convinced over the rest. The American system feels too adversarial to me as it is. Just as it doesn't make sense for a court to decide a person's fate by hearing two wildly confident (and mutually exclusive) truths, it doesn't make sense to decide my politics after listening to both sides of the argument. New political issues arise every day, and the folks who defined themselves by their politics are quickly getting left behind (and thankfully dying off), but the elders around me who defined themselves by their values are able to keep up with the gays and the intarwebs and the kids these days.
I tend to have strong beliefs about everything, and I think that's a good thing. I try to live them. I don't push them on others. I have these strong beliefs because certain political concepts violate my values and others don't. There are certainly complex issues and conflicting values, but I see those as an opportunity for investigation and introspection. I don't need to hear pundits arguing six hours a day to decide which side I'm on.
Great post. I was surprised to find out I'm probably not anti-death penalty. I haven't decided if that makes me pro-death penalty. I'll think about and post my politics on my own blog.
I hope I didn’t inspire the comment about people who think they know black culture because they’ve seen “black kids acting a fool on the train.” I don’t pretend to know black culture any more than I know white culture. I know urban police culture.
But on to the topic at hand. I too have no patience for anti-gay union people. I don’t care what we call it, but there’s got to be the same laws for gays and straights.
But, and despite being very pro-choice (I’ll even say pro-abortion), I have a bit more tolerance for anti-abortion people. If you believe that something is murder, well, that’s a pretty strong argument. Anti gay politics is just hatred. Anti-abortion politics is potentially more in justifiable beliefs.
On affirmative action, I think you’re missing some of the point. The purpose of affirmative action is (or originally was) to help black-Americans for past discrimination suffered. Given this country’s racist history, I think that’s fair.
But it’s not a general “minority” thing. It’s not a female thing (when did women become a “minority” anyway). It’s certainly not an immigrant thing. It’s not about “people of color.” To be honest, it’s not even about blacks. It’s about helping native black Americans who suffered under the sin of the Middle Passage and slavery, and for centuries of legal discrimination in the United States.
Many years ago, I gave a survey out to every black freshman at Harvard. I (but not Orlando Patterson, my Jamaican born advisor) was shocked to find that something like 80% of the blacks at Harvard claimed Caribbean decent and had stories of relatively recent family immigration to the U.S. Among my current students at a New York City public college, I can probably count on two hands the number of “native blacks” I’ve taught.
Morally and historical, only native black Americans deserve affirmative action. I don’t know how we could identify this historically wronged group for affirmative action benefits. But I suppose you could start by looking at our prisons.
Finally, what *I* really can’t compromise on? My tax dollars going to support a car-dependent culture. I don’t have a car. I don’t like cars. I don’t want you to have a car. If you do, I want it taxed; I want your gas taxed; I want you to pay for your roads; I don’t want people given tax subsidies for driving to work; and I don't want zoning that mandates free parking.
Nah, that "black culture" thing with me is pretty old. Scroll back through the blog, or any other writing I've done.
My Affirmative Action beef is that I have doubts about what i does for those black folks who so desperately need it. I'd much rather get more poor and working class black people into colleges period, than get more upper-middle class black kids into Harvard. I'm not against compensation, per se, but at this point AA goes to all sorts of minorities (heh, including women). That seems a bit far afield of slavery and Jim Crow. And then the Jim Webb critique comes in, what about poor whites?
On the point about Carribean culture, I'm not sure why that surprises anyone. They're immigrants, and thus self-selecting. It's not exactly a one-to-one comparison. Moreover, no disrespect to any of my Ivy League brethren, but the fate of blacks in the Ivy Leagues is pretty low on my priority list. At this point, blacks have been effectively citizens for about half a century--after about two centuries of disenfranchisement. As I said, I'm more focused on raising the overall rates of college admission and graduation. We can get picky later.
Re: Your indifference to affirmative action.
I'm a black Ivy League alum. While I agree with you that affirmative action programs at elite universities have a negligible DIRECT effect on most black people's lives, I think you're dismissing the QUALITY of the effect it does have due to the low QUANTITY of applicants who get into the universities.
You're right -- many more black doctors and lawyers come from HBCUs than from Harvard or Yale.
But many more black mayors in major cities (Cory Booker, Kurt Schmoke), governors (Deval Patrick, David Paterson), Supreme Court justices (Clarence Thomas), and presidents to be (Obama) tend to come from the Ivy League.
"Elite" by definition means a small group of people -- even the people of color within that elite. But it's important that "we" make sure that we are represented in that tiny circle. Because those are the folks who shape the policy of who gets a tax break and who doesn't, whether we invade a country or not, and whether a woman has a right to decide what happens to her body.
It's important that there are black faces in the corridors of power. The Ivies (and Berkeleys and Stanfords and Dukes) of the world are the pathways to that power. In New York, the black neighborhood doctor undoubtedly affects the lives he touches. But so does the black Columbia alum who sits in the governor's mansion, who may decide how much funding the public schools will get next year.
copy of an email i just sent to ALL my friends and even some acquaintances... feel free to forward to your crew too:
hello my friends,
black women and girls have had a rough time of late--from fox baby mama drama (http://sorkinsaturdays.blogspot.com/2008/06/enough-is-enough.html) to celebrity acquittals for sexual abuse (http://jelanicobb.com/content/view/39/27/).
frankly, the whole thing had me kinda depressed, but then i remembered that while i can't personally drag r kelly to jail, i can do my part to end the abuse and devaluation of young (black) girls and women. here are just 2 organizations doing amazing work on these issues and investing in young women of all hues that find themselves on the wrong side of the divide... they help them move from victim to leader... pls $upport, spread the word, & love the women in your life.
http://www.gems-girls.org/
GEMS provides preventive and transitional services to young women, ages 12-21 years, who are at risk for or involved in sexual exploitation and violence.
http://www.youngwomensproject.org/
The Young Women's Project is a multi-cultural organization that builds and supports teen women and girl leaders so that they can improve their own lives and transform their communities.
Ta-Nehisi
At 75, I know a lot less than I did at 32. Nevertheless, half my problem is that I still know a lot of things that just ain't so.
Incidentally, one of the things I know that I don't know is how to define a "black" or "white" person? It can't be to do with colour of skin because I have seen just about every human skin tone that exists, and none of them resemble the black and white see here on the screen. Nor is it African ancestry, we all seem to be descended from people who left that continent. Any ideas?
Question: do you think prison/jail should be for violent ciminals only?
I generally think yes, unless you directly hurt someone, you shouldn't spend time behind bars. I'd like it to be one of my "no-compromise" positions, but I wonder if there are too many exceptions I'm not thinking of. The Enron guys - causing thousands of people to lose their pensions - that's pretty serious and may warrant prison. Conspiring with terrorsts, that's prison worthy too. But are there too many other exceptions to make "no prison for non-violent criminals" a principled position?
Love to hear your/others' thoughts.
Regarding affirmative action: I get Peter's point about focusing on victims of a historic wrong. But I think that if the point of AA is atonement for an ancient crime, we should just compensate slave descendants directly and scrap AA completely. It's easier and more efficient. Also expensive and impractical and possibly morally unfair (since most of the payers of compensation wouldn't be descended from slave-owners).
On the other hand, if the point of AA is to advance citizens who are disadvantaged, does it matter why they are disadvantaged? If we want to affect poverty, there's an argument for class-based AA. If we want to affect racism, there's an argument for race-based AA. I lean more to the former than the latter.
I would push back on JP's defense of the value of AA at Ivy League schools for three reasons. First-- why should we assume that the people mentioned needed race-based AA to get into their elite schools? Cory Booker obviously didn't; he played football at Stanford. And as a Rhodes Scholar, I doubt he was a borderline applicant at Yale Law. The idea that the Bookers and Obamas wouldn't be at top schools without race-based AA is not clear to me.
Second, such anecdotes imply a causation (Harvard --> political success) that is misleading and probably backwards. Douglas Wilder went to Virginia Union. JC Watts went to University of Oklahoma. Colin Powell went to CCNY and Condi Rice went to University of Denver. Willie Brown went to San Francisco State and David Dinkins went to Howard. For that matter, Richard Nixon went to Whittier, Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College, LBJ went to Southwest Texas State, and I don't think Harry Truman even went to college. It's true that an elite college can open doors-- but it's not the sole determinant of future success. The people JP named have the intelligence, work ethic and people skills to have been extremely successful coming from any school.
Finally and most important-- Economic empowerment comes from more poor people who are literate, numerate, and not in jail (to start), and who are ultimately in college-- not from a larger Congressional Black Caucus. Rather than pushing to get an upper middle-class kid into a Northwestern rather than a U of Illinois, we need to focus our resources on getting "at-risk" youth of all backgrounds to (a) graduate high school and (b) pursue some sort of higher education-- trade school, community college, or 2nd Tier State U would each be a huge improvement. The battle to have it both ways (race-based affirmative action without regard to income) allows people to stop and think that the problem is solved when it is manifestly untouched.
The following are all more important than AA for our poor urban kids: early childhood development training for mothers, universal pre-school, 7:30am to 5pm (work-friendly) schedules starting in elementary school, summer academic programs, intensive drilling of math and reading comprehension at an early age, home intervention when necessary, constant exposure to successful role models, and a peer environment that does not discourage academic success. Also, expansion of teacher recruitment programs like Teach for America and merciless accountability for teachers and administrators at all levels. Without programs like that, AA is just a band-aid when the patient needs a suture.
Jihad, anti-imperialist/anti-colonialist justifications of.
America and Israel are not excuses for stuff that goes down in the Philippines, Thailand, India, Sudan, or Nigeria.