Racial Conflicts Surface at Berkeley School
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Doug Oakley, Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, California), May 25, 2008
It has been 40 years since Berkeley integrated its schools to foster “positive relationships across racial lines,” but a group of black parents claims they and their children are getting the opposite.
Two of the parents at Oxford Elementary have transferred their children to other schools since January, claiming racist treatment.
It’s a charge other black parents at the school support, but one the principal and some black staff members say is untrue.
{snip}
The school is in an upscale area of north Berkeley that is predominately white, but many of the black students are bused there from other areas of Berkeley as part of the district’s integration policy.
{snip}
In interviews with eight parents of black students at the school, complaints include an unwelcome environment at the school and overt racism. And they say the school refuses to alter its teaching to take into account cultural learning differences that contribute to the achievement gap nationwide.
Oliver’s husband, Albert Rayford, said he thinks the school was glad to get rid of his family because they spoke out.
“It’s like, when I tried to get a hold of the teacher to talk about some issues, they couldn’t seem to find the time,” Rayford said. “But when we asked for the paper work to transfer him to El Cerrito, it was all there ready to go.”
{snip}
Oliver said she and other black parents were initially excited to take part in the Oxford meetings and similar meetings held by the school district starting two years ago.
But parents say it has been all talk and no results, and the underlying anger that they sought to work out at the meetings festered and grew.
Parent Corey Johnson said he and others are considering filing formal complaints with the school district or the state Department of Education for what he sees as inequities in the treatment of black children on the playground and in the classroom.
{snip}
Levenson said that all data in the school district is broken down in many different ways, including race. That’s how school districts were able to identify and start addressing the achievement gap, she said.
Berkeley Unified School District spokesman Mark Coplan said there is nothing wrong at Oxford.
“The district doesn’t know of any kind of problem at Oxford nor any reason to believe there is one,” Coplan said. “There are many elements that affect the achievement gap, and institutional racism is one of those. There is institutional racism in our nation, and it affects Berkeley as much as it does anywhere else.”
{snip}
Aaron Grayson, a black man who is the head of the Oxford after-school program, said there have been “isolated incidents” of racism at the school, but parents have used them to “circle the wagons.”
{snip}
But Lee Glover-Owens, whose child went to Oxford from kindergarten through 2007 and is now in middle school, said being black at Oxford was difficult.
“The atmosphere at Oxford was not welcoming to black families,” Glover-Owens said. “There’s a lack of understanding, compassion. There are people who would beg to differ, but if I’m the one being affected, I know what I’m saying.”
{snip}
Email Doug Oakley at doakley@bayareanewsgroup.com.
(Posted on May 29, 2008)
Comments
Cultural learning differences? I love it. Let them segregate themselves and teach using their Afrocentric techniques then. We all know what the result will be. First they demand integration then they demand we conform to them? Time to say get lost!
Posted by Robert at 6:21 PM on May 29
It has been proven decade in and decade out that segregation is the most sensible, reasonable, workable solution to ALL of our problems. Some of us have known that all along. When I read (for the trillionth time this year) that White families do not show enough “compassion” for the black students and their families, I seethe with resentment. We’ve shown them a ludicrous, almost crippling amount of compassion and yet for naught. Not one iota has changed for them. Segregation today, tomorrow, forever. It’s the best option for everyone and always has been.
Posted by at 6:22 PM on May 29
Untold millions upon millions of white students have had to transfer schools, many of them privately pay for an education, in an ongoing Exodus spanning nearly a Century… leave it to the mass media to ignore all that while discovering 2 unhappy black parents in California.
Posted by Just another AmRener at 6:34 PM on May 29
why do I smell a lawsuit here? Its funny that the white liberal elites are being put on their heels by the very people they wish to champion the rights of. Maybe the parents read Jeremiah wrights recent comments and decided that its pure racism to not allow their children to get up and disrupt class as well as climb all over their teachers…
Posted by toonces at 6:41 PM on May 29
“There are many elements that affect the achievement gap, and institutional racism is one of those. There is institutional racism in our nation, and it affects Berkeley as much as it does anywhere else.”
The obvious answer is segregated schools. Blacks would be free to teach their children in any manner that they please without the real or imaginary specter of ‘institutional racism’.
Blacks made a horrible mistake in demanding integration as is evident in their increasingly lack of control of their own destinies. However, I don’t believe they’re going to admit their mistake because to do so would mean that their leaders and heroes, like Martin Luther King JR, were wrong.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 6:45 PM on May 29
“a lack of understanding and compassion”…!!?? 43 trillion dollars, and we still have no understanding or compassion?
How about one way busing back to the motherland of understanding and compassion?
Posted by at 7:03 PM on May 29
The black parents should take their children to an all black school.Every school should not have to bow down and kiss the feet of these trouble making entitlists.This school should stand their ground and not worship the sacred cows of our society.Every time blacks take their children to white schools the whole school has to change to accomadate the blacks needs.
Posted by THE MAN at 7:53 PM on May 29
Oliver’s husband, Albert Rayford, said he thinks the school was glad to get rid of his family because they spoke out.
“It’s like, when I tried to get a hold of the teacher to talk about some issues, they couldn’t seem to find the time,” Rayford said. “But when we asked for the paper work to transfer him to El Cerrito, it was all there ready to go.”
How do say “Here’s your ticket to the clue bus.” in Ebonics?
Berkeley, Kalifornicao…who’d have thunk it possible?
Posted by at 8:16 PM on May 29
It appears that the parents haven’t taken the hint.
That this should be happening in the most “liberal”, politically correct place on the planet (Berkeley, CA), is just too funny.
Oh yeah, “bussing is a wonderful idea”, err… but I don’t want them around my kids…
Posted by at 9:03 PM on May 29
” …complaints include an unwelcome environment … “
This new-age phrase seems to pop up again and again—an “unwelcoming environment”. Blacks (or illegal immigrants or any other ‘victim’ group) feel “unwelcome” in a town or a school, or pretty much anywhere whites are.
And there’s always a lack of “understanding and compassion” to accompany the “unwelcome” atmosphere.
What do these new-think phrases mean, exactly??
Posted by kitty at 9:14 PM on May 29
“There is institutional racism in our nation, and it affects Berkeley as much as it does anywhere else.”
How?
Posted by Cassiodorus at 9:43 PM on May 29
“That this should be happening in the most “liberal”, politically correct place on the planet (Berkeley, CA), is just too funny.”
I’d really like to hear it from some Berkeley residents. Is there anyone here who represents the sane remnant of whites who are left in in Berkeley? Surely there must be some.
Posted by browser at 9:53 PM on May 29
An unwelcome environment translates to “accountability”. Cultural differences means no “curve” on the grades. Racist treatment means being asked to follow the same rules as everyone else. There, problem solved! Go stick your collective heads back in the sand Berkley.
Posted by madmac at 10:36 PM on May 29
In interviews with eight parents of black students at the school, complaints include an unwelcome environment at the school and overt racism. And they say the school refuses to alter its teaching to take into account cultural learning differences that contribute to the achievement gap nationwide.
Oh, but this NEVER happens in urban area black dominated public schools attended by mere handfuls of disadvantaged White students who have to sit through Kwanzaa related indoctrination, black history month indoctrination and MLK indoctrination - not to mention daily threats against their saftey and educational standards that aren’t even challenging to slugs.
Posted by daisy mae at 11:05 PM on May 29
Their underlying anger seemed to fester and grow…yes, as it always does when around those who mysteriously outperform them…
Posted by Ken/Seattle at 11:30 PM on May 29
The S.F. bay area is also full of Japanese, Chinese and Koreans. “Cultural learning differences” do not appear to have handicapped their children at all. Quite the opposite, I suspect. When whites and northeast Asians send their kids to school each morning, it is with the expectation that they are off to get an education, rather than to have a “welcoming” parade thrown for them every day.
What these black parents are really saying when they cite “cultural learning differences” is they are not really “African-Americans”, but really just “Africans” and that after 300 years on our shores, they have not assimilated, will not assimilate, and can never assimilate. They are admitting that integration is a failed experiment that no amount of money can rectify.
Yes, there is plenty of bullying at schools, but kids are nasty that way. When I was growing up, I was picked on because I was little and smart. It was alleviated when I got big, and ended forever when I changed my mindset, replacing fear with hate and rage, which attitude eventually got me sent to prison. My first fights, in elementary school had me crying and trying to run away, and my last fights, in high school had me so angry I was shaking at the anticipation. I kicked a guy in his head after I put him down, once. His friend tried to intervene, and also went down after a throat-punch I don’t remember landing. I kicked him, too, during that attitude-adjustment seminar. These guys were white.
It wasn’t about race, as I didn’t even know I was partly Amerind until I was 30. It was about me being a little, smart guy. Eventually, I invented the concept of “claw-hammer aversion training”. Let us suppose you have a pet that makes messes in the house. Use a hammer. You will either wear out the pet, in which case you can buy another, or wear out the hammer, in which case you can buy another, or you will have a pet that does not make messes in the house.
On the whole, I liked school, in spite of the bullying. None of the bullies ever hit me as hard as my father did, and there were plenty of books around. High school was great, and my girlfriend was either the prettiest smart girl or the smartest pretty girl there. She’s an EPA lawyer now, and married to someone else. It would never have worked out; she was a Democrat.
“The atmosphere was not welcoming to black families.” Cry me a river.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 12:58 AM on May 30
“there’s always a lack of “understanding and compassion” to accompany the “unwelcome” atmosphere. What do these new-think phrases mean, exactly??”
The wording just gets shuffled around. The phrases mean about the same thing: White = Bad, Non-white = Good.
Posted by Just another AmRener at 2:27 AM on May 30
Think of those black kids being driven an average 20 miles one way so that wealthy white children can enjoy a mixed racial environment under controlled circumstances. The kids must feel like lab rats or even worse, pets.
The parents know that they are being meassured every day by their own cildren who wonder why the white kids have somebody called a father living with them or at least two mommies.
I would like to know what criteria Berkley uses to select these kids for white display. I doubt if they are right out of some Oakland housing project.
I am not one who believes that nobody can ever make up for the sin or not picking the right grand parents. I know of a black school that really works and it`s black kids are smarter, more well behaved, and blow the lid off Sats and other standardized tests.
This little school of about 250 kids has a waiting list a mile long. It is in Jacksonville and all kids are taught English from two sources, The King James Bible and the Compleat Works of Williaaam Shakespeare. They have 6 year old kids quoting Hamlet and reciting the Sermon On the Mount in Elizabethan English. The students wear uniforms and the parents are expected to work on the grounds regardless of how much or little they pay in tution. If kids don`t measure up becuase of lack of their own and parental effort they are kicked out.
They have fought and won three law suits because the public schools say they don`t have enough equipment , school guidance counselors and safety gear. The last time, the school had a federal Judge enjoin the district from hassling them again without his permission. Two Muslim church schools have aligned themselves with this place and I say God Bless them all.
Charles B. Tiffany
Kissimmee, Florida
Posted by Charles B. Tiffany at 2:37 AM on May 30
“There is institutional racism in our nation, and it affects Berkeley as much as it does anywhere else.”
If he’s talking about racism against blacks, I’d be interesting in hearing a couple of examples of such “institutional racism”. This “institutional racism” is like “white privilege”, taken on faith that it exists but nobody can point to specific instances of it and say “here it is”. Especially when we’re talking about leftist hotbeds like Berkeley, blacks are worshiped and any negative comment/action toward blacks means an end to one’s reputation and career.
Posted by jewamongyou at 3:55 AM on May 30
The upside down world of liberal ideaology is at work in schools across America, and the result is, now U.S. schools have fallen behind schools of 3rd world countries.
Posted by abc at 5:52 AM on May 30
“It’s like, when I tried to get a hold of the teacher to talk about some issues, they couldn’t seem to find the time,” Rayford said. “But when we asked for the paper work to transfer him to El Cerrito, it was all there ready to go.”
Maybe left wing radicals can get fed up with your little moron, Mr. Rayford, just like everybody else.
But the great thing here is that they deserve any injustices or punishment they are about to unfairly receive.
It is the liberals after all that continue on with the mantra that blacks can learn on a par with the other races, when admitting they cannot wouldn’t have these black miscreants whining about one thing after another when they’re little retards can’t learn and wind up disturbing the entire learning process with their loud mouths and unruly behavior. To accept the truth that blacks are NOT on a par with the rest of the world, would force the leftist elites to search around for another nutty program to keep the tumultuous black hordes occupied, like dribbling a basket ball with one hand while they learn to drive a nail with the other.
It doesn’t help when Hollyweird continually portrays every black as an accomplished professional, causing the entire group to blame something or someone else when they obviously can’t grasp the concepts involved in even basic subjects, let alone those necessary to achieve more learned occupations.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 9:00 AM on May 30
“Cultural learning differences” is a code word for low IQ’s due to racial differences.
American blacks average an IQ of 85, borderline mental retardation is around 70 - do the math.
Some day clear eyed historians will look back in horror and wonder what the hell we were thinking to allow these “people” to remain in this country after emancipation.
Posted by Dave at 11:30 AM on May 30
> “Parent Corey Johnson said he and others are considering filing formal complaints with the school district or the state Department of Education for what he sees as inequities in the treatment of black children on the playground and in the classroom.”
On the playground [laugh]. Now the racism sniffers are trying to get the government to rule on the playground?
Posted by at 11:53 AM on May 30
Having been taught for decades by the LMSM that they are victims, blacks judge everything through a victim’s resentment, and the fear of racism in their minds is constantly attributed to racism in events, institutions, and people.
In blacks this mindset has become as strong as a religious belief, and indeed, as we have recently seen, it has actually become an intregal part of their Sunday church services.
These perverse black attitudes are so embedded they are now beyond change or help, and it will simply take as many decades as will be needed for them to grow above their fear and self-pity.
Posted by Gary at 3:02 PM on May 30
… the school refuses to alter its teaching to take into account cultural learning differences that contribute to the achievement gap nationwide.”
At least these days, thanks in part to the Rev. Wright, these strange “cultural learning differences” can now be mentioned. That’s some progress toward the truth, at least.
Posted by Jane T. at 3:23 PM on May 30
The blacks probably felt the same way as I would if I had to spend every day at work in the presence of a majority of PhD nuclear physicists. Only, I couldn’t blame it on discrimination.
Posted by Skot German at 6:02 PM on May 30
“Cultural learning differences”,,,????
So 2+2=4 for Whites, but 2+2=5 for blacks?
Posted by at 9:41 PM on May 30
Claims that “institutional racism” is to blame for black failure in Berkeley schools is dishonest, pseudo-philosophical buck-passing. The only “institutions” in question are the Berkeley school boards, the teachers and administrators of these schools and, arguably, California state education bureaucracies. These comprise a relatively small number of people: which of them are responsible for “racism” in this “institution?”
Posted by Cassiodorus at 10:43 PM on May 30
Blacks never address why northeat asians do so well in school and in society with the least problems when they were treated as badly as blacks in the ‘bad ole days’. Why why why???? Answer me this. They were as alien as blacks and not given any ‘white privilege’ and from very different from whites and europeans. Why do you always fail and they don’t??? Let’s focus on this rather than on whites and ‘racism’ for all your problems. M’kay?
Posted by realist at 3:31 AM on June 1
“Blacks never address why northeast asians do so well in school and in society with the least problems” when they were treated as badly as blacks in the ‘bad ole days’. Why why why???? Answer me this.”
— realist
I can’t answer it, but I can tell you this much: that in a place I formerly managed, the occasional Oriental employee we got was viewed with great frostiness and hostility by my overwhelmingly black staff. The Orientals were efficient, cooperative, polite, and they even showed up for work every day. Imagine that! Nor did they form cliques, blackmail you, or try to exploit the “race card”. They were the opposite of the blacks in every way. Their work was excellent, and they tended to earn promotions quickly.
The blacks hated them.
Posted by manager at 6:15 PM on June 1
Blacks are attacking White democrats with a fury, and I ask why would they attack an ally? They only think about today! I used to be a liberal until blacks reported me to HR for saying the word deported. If those two blacks knew the consequences of their actions they would be shocked. No longer will I ever pretend that we can all get along, because we cannot. I am the person they dread now; a muscular and politically activist White.
Posted by Lars at 11:06 PM on June 1
>>>Cultural learning differences?
Must be a code phrase explaining continual Black underachievement and genetic predisposition to failure and crime, I guess. But then what else would you expect from a race which has been a continual failure since its first appearance?
Posted by Fed Up at 1:28 PM on June 2
This sounds in “left brain” or “right brain” ethnic differences which, to all logically thinking persons, is a “no brainer”!
MoMo
Posted by MoMo at 2:20 PM on June 2
“Nor did they form cliques, blackmail you, or try to exploit the “race card”. They were the opposite of the blacks in every way. Their work was excellent, and they tended to earn promotions quickly. The blacks hated them.”
Posted by manager at 6:15 PM on June 1
That’s weird. I’ve always found that blacks form cliques, make fun of you, blackmail you, have you doing their work, all while wearing a race card; And get promoted very quickly. Or lavished with praise for it, if the situation is something like school. Often both. Usually both. Praised and promoted. And everyone acts like they are angry about it all…
Is there a word for doubly hating someone, really really hating them… ?
Posted by Not a manager at 3:28 PM on June 2
Just about every white person in Berkely is a marxist, white hating racist, crazed earth goddess worshipper and health food freak. Berkely whites absolutely worship blacks. I doubt McCain will get even ONE, YES ONE vote in the coming election.
Berkely school district deserves a lawsuit and millions of dollars in fines and horrendous Maoist retraining camps for all the white hating teachers and administrators.
Welcome to reality Berkely liberals!!!!
Ha ha ha
Posted by at 9:21 PM on June 3