“Racism
is profitable”. This truth, credited to
Malcolm X, offers an explanation for the longevity and strength of racism. Racism is inextricably connected to economic
exploitation. Consequently, many
activists and scholars have understood economic justice as being integral to
racial justice. That is, there can be no
civil or human rights without labor rights and the appropriate protections of
the same. People of color have fought
against racism in and the protections of unions to secure their rights in the
workplace and since the 60’s, they have been served
well by labor unions, especially those in the public sector.
The
tacit threat of the now month-old Vergara decision is the particular usage of
race and otherness against teacher unions (and likely unions in general as
education is the canary in the coal mine).
This usage of race, from the featured plaintiffs downward, is an
“elegant” use of racism. Unabashedly, I
borrow this term from Ta-Nahesi Coates of The
Atlantic. In this
posting from early May, Coates explains
exactly what elegant racism is (though I suggest that you read the entirety of
it):
Elegant
racism is invisible, supple, and enduring. It disguises itself in the national
vocabulary, avoids epithets and didacticism. Grace is the singular marker of
elegant racism. One should never underestimate the touch needed to, say, injure
the voting rights of black people without ever saying their names. Elegant
racism lives at the border of white shame. Elegant racism was the poll tax.
Elegant racism is voter-ID laws.
The graceful usage of
racial (and class) empowerment discourses in Vergara, and now Davids
v. New York, welcomes minority groups to work against their own interest,
that is, labor interests, in the name of education reform. Poor,
minority students are best served by stable educational environments –
environments that are more likely to be provided by teachers whose labor is protected
as opposed to those being subjected to an unstable cadre of contract
workers. In their blindsiding of unions,
Students Matter--by sponsoring the
nine Vergara plaintiffs, seven of which identified as minorities--will most
likely upset the ideal learning conditions for those they argue they are
helping. (As an aside, not all of the students in Vergara are economically
disadvantaged. These students did not
fit the categories that they case was built on.
As the defense
noted, the facial claims, including these, had little merit – but that was
not the standard upon which Vegara was judged.)
Notably, the first four plaintiffs in the Davids’
case are identified by race, with the rest being nominally identified. The children who must be saved from the questionable threat of “grossly ineffective teachers”
and teacher tenure serve as a part of a flawed argument. What they represent historically and
culturally is being used outside the very context of that history as questions of
racism and economic inequality were eschewed by both the judge and parents
alike. Poor Black and Hispanic students are caught at
the nexus of racism and classism, with the realities of each compounding the
effect, penetrating all aspects of social life and their life chances.
Taking
a historical view of race and labor, it should not be lost that even after the
mandate that would be realized as the EEOC became a part of the Civil Rights
Bills that passed some 50 years ago, the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement
saw Dr. King deeply concerned about poverty, civil rights, and labor rights. The project of the Civil Rights Movement
often meant working with unions, challenging unions to end their own racist
practices, and charging them to take on racism in the labor market. At the beginning of the next decade, the National Alliance for Black School Educators
was started, in part to allow for greater cooperation by Black school
administrators. Indeed, some sense of racial
and labor solidarity was important to its founder, as he traced the rise of the
black principalship back to the Brown decision.
Such notions seemingly remain important to the NABSE today. A branch of
this organization in Oakland provides a case worth noting in light of their
stance following the Vergara trial.
Vergara and the OABE
Since
the decision at the Vergara trial, the OABE’s (Oakland Alliance of Black
Educators, a branch of the National Alliance of Black School Educators) support
of the Vergara decision had been fore-fronted by Students Matter on their
website in their scrolling images, and is now is featured on the sidebar of many of their pages. I do not think this
statement or the associated
image is an accidental usage of blackness.
Moreover, the nature of the language of the OABE, not only serves
Students Matter, but serves to drive a wedge between minorities and labor. The OABE writes:
Further, OABE categorically rejects the shallow and callously
patronizing assertion that “this case is about firing African-American
teachers.” The historical mistreatment of teachers (including
African-Americans) may have created the context and emboldened the movement
through which these laws were created; however, it does not excuse us from
assessing the current impact the laws are having on our students, nor does the
moral authority of past movements automatically transfer to every position
taken by the generational and organizational descendants of those prior
movements.
Not only does OABE endorse the plaintiffs’ position that these
statutes be struck down because their impact violates the rights of children as
articulated within California’s Constitution, but we encourage all interest
groups to “stand down” from the constant state of impermeably vigilant and
aggressive protectionism that stifles healthy communication and, rooted in
fear, obscures common sense.
This
statement elucidates the very real fears that Black parents, teachers, and
community members have about schooling, yet, in doing so it supports an agenda
that favors a particular brand of “reform” in education that has not corrected,
but in many cases exacerbated, discrimination and segregation in
schooling. Groups like Students Matter,
which has aligned itself with powerful
neoliberal organizations like the Walton and Broad Foundations, Students
First, and other organizations with intertwined missions, have taken a path toward
free markets in education which take a view that histories, including a history
of racism, are of little consequence.
The push toward markets, codified as choice, simply exacerbates
segregation and reinvigorates white flight.
This
issue with history is exhibited in the statement as the OABE noted that past
movements, and the moral authority derived from these movements, is not the
automatic inheritance of the present members of the same group or organization.
This statement is seemingly meant to impugn unions. In considering this statement, I wondered if
OABE itself has any current moral authority upon which to ask other interests
groups to stand down? Given the
entanglement of organizations and political motives, can any one group be
considered the arbiters of what constitutes common sense and healthy
communication? If so, where does such an
authority originate? That some part of
their moral authority comes genealogically from the Civil Rights Movement
should not be understated in considering answers. The national or local organization may not
have survived thus far or be taken seriously if it weren’t for some sort of
bestowed authority of the era in which it was founded. Knowing this, and the failure to acknowledge
it, undercuts their claim to such a moral high ground.
One
last thing with respect to the OABE: Despite being “comprised of current and
retired teachers, administrators, parents, and school support-staff”, the organization
does not take the time in the statement above to acknowledge the power that
administrators have in dismissing pre-tenure teachers who have shown themselves
to be ineffective or ineffective teachers who are tenured through Ed Code
section 44939 and other statues. That
does not mean that they did not consider such issues in their many community
talks and other events. Though, if we
are to believe that this is an endorsement from an even-handed organization, a
consideration of the power and responsibility of school administrators should
have been offered.
This
driving of a wedge between race and labor becomes more important as this
strategy moves eastward, toward the other large labor unions in urban areas
with high minority populations. This strategy
relies, in part, upon the appeal to civil rights that many have written on in
corporate school reform, which is insulting, as it forwards ahistorical
meritocratic falsehoods. Yet, the past
two Presidents have engaged such rhetoric when discussing education.
The anti-labor usage of race also denies the rich,
but possibly ignored, lineage of thought that consciously interrelates race,
class (with labor inclusive to that), and society. These ideas take form in an activist,
rhetorical, and literary history, which I cannot do justice now. But given the hearkening of the Civil Rights
Movement and civil rights, generally,
in education reform, it should not be lost in this historical record that Dr.
King supported
teacher’s strikes for better working conditions, saw labor as a “missing
ingredient in the civil right struggle as a whole”, and understood the
mutual interest between minorities and labor unions. Though mutual action was
sporadic at best, the radical possibility was not lost on King:
Labor
and the civil rights movement, the unemployed, the aged, and elements of the
church world can unite for a dynamic crusade for a two-dollar minimum wage
covering all who work, not merely some. A public works program that will level
ghettos, create fine housing for the millions now living in fifty-
and-sixty-year-old tenements, build new schools, hospitals, recreation areas,
will do more to abolish poverty than tax cuts that ultimately benefit the
middle class and rich. (Speech to District 65 AFL-CIO)
This coupling of labor and minority groups still
has such a powerful potential, especially so with regard to education outcomes
and life chances. Understanding labor
rights as civil rights and vice-versa employs a history and a discourse that
problematizes current reform movements and puts other possible profit motives
at risk. Though I doubt that the Vergara
case was sponsored with a racist, hurtful intent, the reality it sustains and
worsens, or the possibilities it imperils, should give us all pause.
There are no magic
bullets to fix social or educational shortcomings. With regard to issues of race in the teacher
workforce, there should be a space to discuss possible problems like stereotype
threats (which may be an actual threat given teacher-student racial mismatches
in places such as Los Angeles and New York), the failure to attract and retain
minority – especially male – teachers, building wider notions of knowledge, the
mixed bag of correlations between teacher unionism and student achievement, and
what these issues of race and labor might mean for students based on the
present body of research. This post,
however, is not meant to be that space and these are not the arguments that
have been and will be put forward in Vergara and the cases that have and will
follow.
by Paul Myers
