Richard Carranza’s prejudicial race politics have gone too far
With corruption, incompetence and indifference so routine under Mayor Bill de Blasio, Democrats hardly need another reason to give him the cold shoulder in his silly presidential campaign. What, they wonder, could he possibly do that is worse than what we already know?
Here’s what: His school chancellor is using anti-bias training as a rationale for discriminating against white and Asian American students. Publicly, Richard Carranza is preaching equality, but behind closed doors, consultants and bureaucrats are coaching school supervisors on how to practice prejudice.
Racial politics are at the heart of the Department of Education’s $23 million program to dismantle what it calls “White Supremacy Culture.” The Post has exposed the Orwellian nature of the effort to stamp out bias by having educators introduce more bias.
Sunday’s report featured this quote: “If I had a poor white male student and I had a middle-class black boy, I would actually put my equitable strategies and interventions into that middle-class black boy because over the course of his lifetime, he will have less access and less opportunities than that poor white boy. That’s what racial equity is.”
The speaker was Darnisa Amante, a consultant hired by the city to train school supervisors on spotting discrimination and achieving equality. Her method involves advocating racial favoritism in ways that turn the Constitution and civil rights laws on their head.
Then, in a Monday article, The Post reported that a separate group of consultants showed parents a racial-advantage hierarchy with whites at the top and blacks at the bottom, with Asian students not included. When a parent of an Asian child asked about the omission, the consultants reportedly said that Asians were near the top, “in proximity to white privilege,” and were benefiting from “white supremacy.”
The entire effort is a toxic brew of grievance and ignorance. Instead of educating children, Carranza is indoctrinating them to believe they are society’s victims.
see also
Teachers allegedly told to favor black students in racial equity training
In controversial “implicit bias” training, New York City’s public-school educators…
Putting that poison in their heads will make it more difficult for them to succeed in a complex and competitive world economy. Rather than being prepared to fulfill their dreams, they are being taught to make an excuse for their failure.
Oddly, Carranza’s life story is proof of the lunacy of what he is doing. The grandson of Mexican immigrants, he grew up in Arizona speaking Spanish at home and learned to speak English in Tucson public schools.
He has said he worked his way through the University of Arizona by “gigging” in a mariachi group, earned a master’s degree in education from Northern Arizona University, and has done some work toward a Ph.D.
His twin brother, Reuben, is a highly successful businessman in the beauty care products industry.
If America is dominated by white supremacy, how did the Carranza brothers break through? Wouldn’t the story of their hard work and achievements make a better case study for New York students than the excuse-making the students are getting?
Unfortunately, the distortions of the bias program are part of a larger warped view of education that Carranza and de Blasio share. Simply put, all the things they want to be true are false.
They look at the minimal success black and Latino children have on the elite high schools’ color-blind admissions exam and see a system rigged in favor of whites. They are not interested in other potential reasons or how they could improve failing middle schools.
Rather, they rely only on the nonsensical argument that, if the test were fair, students would excel in proportion to their overall share of the population.
In what part of life is that true?
Carranza, after reading about how a 1971 law mandated the exam for Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech, concluded that lawmakers acted to keep the schools predominately white.
If so, they failed miserably. In recent years, a large majority of students in Stuyvesant and Bronx Science are Asian, as are about half of those in Brooklyn Tech.
see also
DOE-sponsored group said Asians benefit from white privilege: parent
A city DOE-sponsored panel designed to combat racism told parents…
But instead of studying the extraordinary success of Asian students and their families, Carranza and his bias consultants are using that success against them. Because of their achievement, Asians are no longer viewed as underserved “minorities,” but are more like whites and thus part of the problem.
It is indeed disheartening that only about 15% of next year’s classes at the top high schools will be black, Latino or of mixed race, but the racial quota plan Carranza and de Blasio cooked up will not help anyone. Some of the best students will be denied entry to make room for those who have shown no ability to do advanced work.
And the plan, which would admit the top 7% of all middle school graduates to an elite high school, foolishly assumes all middle schools are equally rigorous.
As Public Advocate Jumaane Williams said, scrapping the test is like “saying your kids are too dumb to pass.”
A graduate of Brooklyn Tech, he called the plan unacceptable and said it “makes people believe that their communities are somehow dumber than others.”
Williams got it exactly right — Carranza and de Blasio are spreading hopelessness. Shame on them.
And shame on those New Yorkers who know better but remain silent in the face of this reprehensible policy of blatant prejudice. Dumbing down the schools and inflaming racial hostility is a formula for civic disaster.
Roaring economy can’t be Don-ied
Breaking news: The American economy is so strong that even the New York Times is forced to credit President Trump.
The paper that loves to hate the president concedes that the economy is “easily the strongest in two decades, with an unemployment rate at 50-year lows.”
It makes the observation in an article noting that Trump’s success is a problem for all the Democrats challenging him. No kidding.
Beanie Bobby
The German government minister who warned Jews against wearing skullcaps in public because of anti-Semitism has reversed course, sort of.
Now Felix Klein says, “I call on all citizens of Berlin and across Germany to wear the kippah next Saturday if there are new, intolerable attacks targeting Israel and Jews on the occasion of al-Quds day in Berlin.”
Al-Quds is an annual protest against Israeli control of Jerusalem and takes place Friday.
The problem, of course, is that Klein didn’t really retract his earlier warning, despite criticism from Israeli and German officials. Instead, he simply made an exception for Saturday — if there is violence Friday.
So strange, so German.
Albany’s fuzzy math
Albany is fudging the numbers as usual. The Citizens Budget Commission says that, despite the claim of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers that they stayed within a 2% increase, spending in the new budget actually will rise by 4.9%.
If you are shocked, you must be new to New York.
