Yesterday a very worthy demonstration against Republican sponsored racism was held in Wilmington and was approved by all worthy citizens of Delaware..  Police shooting children because they are black?  No right minded person should ever defend such atrocities.

Protesters with the blessing of Governor Markell, Lt. Gov. Matt Denn, Mayor Dennis Williams, County Exec. Tom Gordon, and every citizen of Wilmington, New Castle, and Kent Counties, lay down in the middle of the road and pretended to be dead…..

The thought occurred to me, that if we as a people were solidly behind protesting the loss to society over these dead black children; how much rightfully we should solidly be behind protesting the loss of educational opportunity for black children who are still alive?  And in far greater numbers?

There is a movement to stifle Black Academic accomplishment.  It is called the Educational Reform Movement.(ERM)  It privatizes education inside untouchable charter schools where racism can flourish and thrive privately beyond the reaches of all law or government….

Now, even the most blatant racists won’t admit they are racists… and asking them if they are, is silly.  But watching them gives you all the evidence you will need.

When you put blacks in a charter school and then close it down, but put whites in a charter school and then give them $1000 prizes, things are not equal.

When you move to privatize poor performing black public schools forcing their children into indentured charter-ship, but do nothing to the poor performing white public schools because of white public backlash, .. things are not equal.

When you create a standardized test that is written in an obscure white mid-western dialect that only mid-western whites can understand, and then whisper blacks are stupider because they perform less well, … things are not equal…

When you move to separate blacks from whites, and then put more money into white charter schools and take that money out of black public schools…. things are not equal…..

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Now if you are willing to lie down in a city street to protest harm done to dead children…. why are you not willing to keep your child out of school during the SBA testing…. to protest the harm done to live children?

In opting out, you actually are doing your child a favor.  These un-Balanced tests are the equivalent of those oppressively hard poll tests designed to keep blacks in the South from voting…. These tests are designed to keep real education and jobs with real money, out of their reach…

If as a parent you allow your child to take these tests… you are not helping any more than if you kept sending him back to the polls in 1950’s with correct answers to harder and harder questions…. The entire point back then was to keep “the Negro”  in 2nd class status… As you became smarter, they made the questions harder.. Their goal was not to allow smart Negroes to vote. Their goal was to keep Negroes in their place. Make them passive and harmless. Now welcome to the 21st Century version of the same…..

The Smarter Balanced Assessment is the worst thing that can happen to a child this year. In fact, if one was shot and killed before taking the test, there would actually be an argument over which child had it worse…. the dead, or the living. The truth of that saddens me with the realization of how far back we have slid.

T