This last diary in the 2008 Electorate series has bits and pieces that I didn't develop into full diaries, mainly maps from the exit polls. Below you'll find a bit about Democratic loyalty, education gaps in voting behavior, and where rural voters liked Democrats.
(By invitation, following Jeff's great diary about Gerald Bracey. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
The Center for American Progress is "progressive." Right? After all, CAP's website touts it as a source for "Progressive Ideas." The homepage lists its "progressive priorities." And the "About Us" blurb declares CAP's mission to draw from the great progressive "social movements of the 20th century."
So you would expect that any thoughts about education policy emanating from The Center for American Progress would be, well, progressive, wouldn't you?
CAP's most recent opportunity to push for a more progressive agenda for reforming America's public schools was released to the world earlier this month with the publication of "Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Innovation," a follow-up report to another one bearing the same name two years ago. Even though the report was created in partnership with two well-known conservative organizations, you would expect that CAP would have inserted some fairly substantial representation of progressive education values in the report.
For instance, you would expect there to be some reference to educating children in ways that are similar to those pioneered by Francis Parker, who believed that children learn best by doing and that schools have to be child-centered. You would expect to find the influence of the great American thinker John Dewy, whose laboratory school proved that schools work best when they function as a community. And you would expect to see at least some reference to the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget and the work of Jerome Bruner who established that children aren't empty vessels that schools can just pour a standardized content into.
After all, the research base that proves that progressive education practices are effective has a pretty long history and is fairly well understood.
But anyone looking for a progressive influence in the "Leaders and Laggards" report will be sorely disappointed. Because there's none. Phrases such as "active learning" and "child-centered" never even occur. Nothing about schools functioning like communities, or kids being encouraged to construct their own meaning about academic content.
(I would have done this myself, but I knew that Jeff could do a much better job. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Quick! Who is your go-to expert on American education policy?
In a lot of political arguments, that's frequently the crux of the matter, isn't it? On the economy, you go to Robert Reich or George Will. For the Middle East, Juan Cole or Max Boot.
But when you're looking for opposing sides in the debate on America's public schools, the initial appearance is that, well, there aren't any opposing sides. For sure, there are differences of opinion on specifics that people often argue about with great passion - whether to give out school vouchers so students can attend private schools, whether to teach intelligent design in science classes. But among political leaders in Washington DC and prominent pundits in the MSM, there's a startling uniformity of belief about the state of American education - an over-arching narrative that provides a context that is rarely disputed even when people argue about the merits of year-round schools or whether or not to teach phonics.
For instance, when you look at the education policies that Republican presidential candidate John McCain was pushing for in his campaign, you'll find that these are the exact same policies - school accountability based on standardized test scores, merit pay for teachers, charter schools to compete with public schools -- that are being implemented by the Obama administration. And when the Bush administration's Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings passed the policy baton to the Obama administration's Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, she welcomed him as a "fellow reformer" of what's wrong with US schools.
The reason for this is that, for decades, the popular perspective on American education has been dominated, almost exclusively, by a single, simple narrative. Whether you listen to E.J. Dionne or Lou Dobbs, America's schools are "failing." American education is in a "crisis," we've been told again and again. Our students can no longer "compete" against the students of other nations in the race to, um, whatever we're all supposed to be racing toward. Educators themselves are seen as part of the problem. And only the leading business captains or the famed entrepreneur dé jeur - such as Bill Gates or Louis Gerstner - can possible know what to do to fix our "broken" schools.
For years, the most prominent and powerful antidote to this contagion of lock-step thinking has been the writings of Gerald Bracey. Like the impertinent youth who persistently remarked that the emperor had no clothes, Bracey wrote a different story about our schools, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what was really true and not true about what was being said about them. In his books, his recurring column in Kappan magazine, and his diaries at HuffingtonPost, he argued persuasively - with actual facts and steel-eyed reason - that the conventional wisdom about our nation's public schools was not only false; it was a cover-up for what is, at the heart, a problem of our democracy.
Unfortunately, Dr. Bracey has left us. And as commenter craigspinks lamented at washingtonpost.com, "Who will take his indispensable place?"
A report issued by the White House and the Education Department on Monday showed that the federal economic stimulus package (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) has so far created or saved 250,000 education jobs. The report is the first hard evidence of the Recovery Act’s contribution to the nation’s economic health, and previews more extensive data that will be released October 30.
The report is good news for at least two reasons. First, it documents how public investment is helping to pull the nation back from the brink of a devastating economic depression. And, second, it includes crucial information that should inform the ongoing investment of stimulus funds to achieve a full recovery—especially when it comes to job creation. In analyzing the full October data, however, it is important to ask not only how many jobs were created and what infrastructure was built, but also whether we are investing in a lasting economic recovery that will include our entire nation.
Because stimulus funds are flowing largely through traditional state and local channels, particular attention is needed to ensure that they reach the communities and populations that need them most, that distribution is fair and transparent, and that progress is measured in terms of greater and more equal opportunity for all Americans.
Lost in all the hubbub over the potential threat of using budget reconciliation for health care, which would void the need for 60 votes in the Senate to pass health care, is that the budget passed back in April also included the possibility of reconciliation for education reform.No really, its true:
It appears that House and Senate Democrats have agreed to include "budget reconciliation instructions" aimed at reforming federal student loan programs in the fiscal year 2010 budget resolution. The House and Senate each adopted their own versions of the 2010 budget resolution several weeks ago and will bring a final compromise version up for a vote this week. The most important piece of the budget resolution for education programs is the reconciliation instruction.
In fact, not only was the possibility of using budget reconciliation for education reform included in the budget this past spring, but it appears that Senate Democrats are actually going to use reconciliation for education reform. Again, this is really happening:
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is risking an intra-party battle by fast-tracking legislation that seeks to cut off federal subsidies to student loan companies.
Harkin said he will attempt to use special budget rules that only require a simple majority vote to advance a bill that would end the Federal Family Education Loan program, which would free up money for other education programs.(...)
Harkin, when asked this week about centrists' worries, said he plans to go ahead with the special procedure because the budget resolution, approved by Democrats in April, tells him he can.
"We've already been instructed by the Budget Committee to do this, so we're going to do it," said Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
Senate Democratic leaders have also signaled openness to force the majority vote.
The eventual fate of the planned education reforms is unclear. Five Democratic Senators--Begich, Bingaman, Lincoln, Ben Nelson, and Tom Udall--are currently opposed. Seven others are on the fence. Assuming that all Republicans are opposed, the reform has between 48 an 55 votes in the Senate. This means that education reform has to be passed through reconciliation, or else it currently does not have enough votes to reach cloture.
The bill won't move in the Senate until lawmakers make more progress on healthcare legislation, Harkin said. If Democratic leaders decide to use reconciliation rules for the healthcare bill, they would have to package it with the education reforms, since Senate rules allow for consideration of only one reconciliation bill each year.
This significantly improves the argument for using reconciliation to pass a public option. According to our whip count, there are enough votes to pass health care reform with a public option through reconciliation. If important education reform can only be passed through reconciliation, then reconciliation should be used for education reform. Further, if reconciliation is used for education reform, then why not use it for a public option, too?
We need these important pieces of legislation--student loan reform and a public option. We have a procedural path to pass both. Abandoning one, or both, for the sake of Senate manners is simply not the kind of governing we need. It is time to put principle over politics, and take the procedural steps necessary to pass important legislation.
Once upon a time, education really was the key to opportunity and advancement in America. Although we did not collect comprehensive statistics throughout most of the era in which this was true, we do have some statistics from the tail end of that era, which I've summarized below. As you can see, non-high school graduates gained a small amount of ground from 1967 to 1973, while high school graduates and above gained 10% or more. "All" workers did better by over 10%, too, because the mix of workers was becoming more and more education.
Over the next 17 years, however, only those with a college degree or more showed any improvement (as a group, obviously individuals gaining experience and seniority did better, while some also did worse). High school drop-outs faced a drastic drop in income. Meanwhile, the super-high income groups--the top 0.1% and top 0.01%, who had been in the doldrums from 1967 to 1973, saw their incomes start to skyrocket:
(Note: p90 means 90th income percentile = top 10%. p95, 95th percentile = top 5%, etc.)
These changing trends only intensified in the years 1991 to 2008, although things were relatively good during the 1990s. Altogether, however, people with advanced degrees saw their incomes drop significantly over this time period--83.2% down for those with professional degrees, and 92.2% down for those with doctorates. Meanwhile, those in the top 1% and above showed strong to astronomical income growth:
According to leading "education researchers" (sub required), the draft guidelines that the Obama administration has published for federal economic-stimulus money and Title I aid for schools "have no credible basis in research."
The researchers point to two regulatory priorities in particular that are lacking in research evidence: evaluating teachers based on students' standardized test scores and promoting the growth of charter schools.
"One theory of action seems to be that holding teachers more accountable for the gain in their students' test scores will induce them to become better teachers," writes Duke University's Helen Ladd. "At this point, I am not aware of any credible evidence in support of that proposition."
And research on the performance of charter schools has shown that their track record is "highly variable." ....
I wrote an earlier diary, back in June, about the research on charter schools--which came from charter school advocates, actually. I also managed to find an open link to the article, here.
Jeff goes on to say:
The article points out that the Bush administration was famous for insisting that schools adhere to policies and programs that were based on "scientific research" while it promoted an agenda that had nothing "scientific" about it.
Now, the Obama administration is insisting that schools make decisions based on "data that shows what works," while it pursues mandates that have no data to support them.
What's the difference?
The difference is, apparently, that just like Clinton with NAFTA, a Democratic President has much easier time screwing the Democratic base than a Republican would.
The U.S. economy is lurching towards recovery. We continue to see nearly as many disheartening indicators as we do reasons to be optimistic, but it does appear that the worst is behind us. Even if the freefall is over, though, the question of whether or not we will return to pre-crisis levels of inequality, or emerge as a nation with a robust economy that is able to create economic security and mobility for all, has yet to be answered. That question will be answered, in large part, by how recovery efforts are structured and the degree to which resources expended on recovery reach the communities that need them most. If we are truly committed to ensuring a fair and equitable recovery, and to building a foundation for future prosperity, we will make investments in education a key component of our recovery strategies.
The reasons for enhanced investment in education are myriad—economic development, global competitiveness, ending the school to prison pipeline—but, ultimately, it’s simply a matter of our responsibility to our children. There is nothing more basically human than a desire to create a life that is more secure and more fulfilling for the next generation, but we are failing. Our children are not learning the skills they need to provide for themselves, nor are they developing the tools of cultural appreciation that will make their lives rich and meaningful. If we are the first generation in U.S. history to leave our children worse off than ourselves, we will never forgive ourselves.
Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor, said he hadn't seen it but he said if voters think city schools are better today than they were under Thompson's leadership at the Board of Education, they should vote for Bloomberg.
The record will show that the control of New York City Public Schools was firmly gripped by the New York City's Mayor's office.
Rudolph W. Giuliani made New Yorkers three promises when he campaigned for mayor in the early 1990s: He would fix troubled schools, cut crime and boost the economy.
New York City schools went through eight years of political chaos during Giuliani's terms, which ended in 2002. His bare-knuckle tactics contributed to the departure of three chancellors, according to interviews with former school administrators, Board of Education members, teachers, parents, union officials and outside experts.
This was the Rudy Giuliani Show. Chancellors made guest appearances and the Board of Education, students and parents were a captive audience.
This is part 2 of a two-part diary on two new articles that provide insight into the newly visible weakness of Obama's politics. Although I have serious disagreements with some of their content, their main thrusts are both accurate, they complement one another, and though they reinforce arguments from the left, they both primarily grounded in pragmatist arguments. In part one, I examined "The Character of Barack Obama", by David Bromwich, which was really more about the process side of Obama's politics. In this part, I turn to Michael Lind's critique of Obama's cult-like faith in neoliberalim, asking, "Can Obama be deprogrammed?".
The main thrust of Lind's piece is unassailable: New Deal liberalism worked. Neoliberalism does not. New Deal liberalism produced the broadest prosperity, the largest and most affluent middle class in the history of humanity. Neoliberalism produced a bubble economy in the 1990s that briefly balanced our federal budget, but utterly failed to stop the erosion of our manufacturing base and our rising trade imbalances.
By neoliberalism I mean the ideology that replaced New Deal liberalism as the dominant force in the Democratic Party between the Carter and Clinton presidencies. In the Clinton years, this was called the "Third Way." The term was misleading, because New Deal liberalism between 1932 and 1968 and its equivalents in social democratic Europe were considered the original "third way" between democratic socialism and libertarian capitalism, whose failure had caused the Depression. According to New Deal liberals, the United States was not a "capitalist society" or a "market democracy" but rather a democratic republic with a "mixed economy," in which the state provided both social insurance and infrastructure like electric grids, hydropower and highways, while the private sector engaged in mass production....
The transition from New Deal liberalism to neoliberalism began with Carter, but it was not complete until the Clinton years. Clinton, like Carter, ran as a populist and was elected on the basis of his New Deal-ish "Putting People First" program, which emphasized public investment and a tough policy toward Japanese industrial mercantilism. But early in the first term, the Clinton administration was captured by neoliberals, of whom the most important was Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Under Rubin's influence, Clinton sacrificed public investment to the misguided goal of balancing the budget, a dubious accomplishment made possible only by the short-lived tech bubble. And Rubin helped to wreck American manufacturing, by pursuing a strong dollar policy that helped Wall Street but hurt American exporters and encouraged American companies to transfer production for the U.S. domestic market to China and other Asian countries that deliberately undervalued their currencies to help their exports.
Lind is also very astute in capturing how Obama's agenda seeks to elide the deeper economic problems that neoliberalism is not prepared to tackle, and how it seeks to rationalize doing so:
Instead of the updated Rooseveltonomics that America needs, Obama's team offers warmed-over Rubinomics from the 1990s. Consider the priorities of the Obama administration: the environment, healthcare and education. Why these priorities, as opposed to others, like employment, high wages and manufacturing? The answer is that these three goals co-opt the activist left while fitting neatly into a neoliberal narrative that could as easily have been told in 1999 as in 2009. The story is this: New Dealers and Keynesians are wrong to think that industrial capitalism is permanently and inherently prone to self-destruction, if left to itself. Except in hundred-year disasters, the market economy is basically sound and self-correcting. Government can, however, help the market indirectly, by providing these three public goods, which, thanks to "market failures," the private sector will not provide.
But there is another layer that Lind gets wrong-a layer dealing with race from the New Deal forward on the one hand, and the nature of post-50s progressive politics on the other. I'll first review what Lind gets right, and why it's important to advance this perspective, then I'll look at what he gets wrong, and what its significance is.
A new report, ""Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States.""(pdf) (pdf executive summery / pdf press release), from Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO, finds that charter schools significantly underperform overall compared to the traditional public schools they are supposed to improve on--a major embarrassment that will no doubt be ignored, just as all evidence of privatization and corporatization are ignored, especially since Obama's basketball buddy and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is a huge charter school booster.
Here's the graphic representation of results:
And the accompanying text:
The Quality Curve results are sobering:
• Of the 2403 charter schools reflected on the curve, 46 percent of charter schools have math gains that are statistically indistinguishable from the average growth among their TPS comparisons.
• Charters whose math growth exceeded their TPS equivalent growth by a significant amount account for 17 percent of the total.
• The remaining group, 37 percent of charter schools, posted math gains that were significantly below what their students would have seen if they enrolled in local traditional public schools instead.
Nore from Democracy Now!, Gerald Bracey and Rethinking Schools on the flip.
I never played myself--wrong generation. But he really spells it out beautifully. Play is the mother of many skills and much wisdom. That's why all mammals play for hours on end while growing up.
Of course, "more work, less play" pretty much sums up the "consensus" on education reform, 'cause we're not quite stupid enough as a nation yet.
But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that it deserved more than a comment--a lot more. Obama's education policy is, quite frankly, atrocious. And this article is a great little piece of outside-the-box truth-telling that can help us see why, help us see what's lacking, and maybe even help us feel inspired again to start fighting for something dramatically better.
There is a broad consensus that access to a quality education is a fundamental human right. This consensus is reflected in the fact that every individual within our boundaries, regardless of race, ethnic background, nation of origin, or ability to pay, is entitled to a seat in a classroom from kindergarten through grade 12. However, the education that children actually receive varies dramatically by those very factors which are supposed to be immaterial. There is real hope though, as a new crop of leaders and entrepreneurs is applying solutions that range from the systemic to the technocratic to move us from a standard of universal class time to universal high quality education.
Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, Newt Gingrich, and Michael Bloomberg all walk into a room...
Such a line would no doubt be the beginning of a good joke, but instead I refer to the meeting between the above individuals to discuss the issues of education.
One of the problems with education 'reform' today, is that it isn't. Lawmakers are consulted by supposed educational experts, and themselves consult with people such as Sharpton. Now ask yourself, what does a radical minister like himself have to do with the issue of education?
No wonder we're all drowning in debt. Over the past 30 years, a college degree has become increasingly necessary for anyone who hopes to earn a middle-class standard of living. Yet over the same period of time, the cost of tuition and fees at public four-year universities has increased ten times faster than the median family income for families with children. That's a crisis of stagnating wages as well as a problem of soaring college costs. Either way, something's got to give.
At the Drum Major Institute, we've been making that point for years (see, for example, former DMI Fellow Maureen Lane's substantial body of work on higher education as a route out of poverty), but the statistics never cease to amaze me. The effort to afford higher education is the essence of the middle-class squeeze. So it makes an excellent subject for Vice President Joe Biden's Middle-Class Task Force.
When the task force convened for its third meeting in St. Louis last week, they followed the now-familiar format. They issued a staff report that defines the problem as the administration sees it; highlights what the administration is already doing to address it; and lays out a potential future path without committing to any new policy initiatives.
The staff report captures the problem beautifully and sets precisely the right goals for the Administration. "The ability to afford a college education without being buried in debt is an important aspiration and a legitimate expectation... for any family in America...The President is committed to making sure that every student has the opportunity to earn a postsecondary credential or degree." So far so good.
The round up of existing accomplishments includes an array of impressive first steps. The value of the maximum Pell Grant is up, and the President wants to shield funding from the vicissitudes of the annual appropriations process; the stimulus includes an expanded tax credit for college tuition; finally, the President's budget proposes to shift student lending away from the pork-laden program to subsidize private lenders and back toward the more efficient Federal Direct Loan program.
The task force is less inspiring when it comes time to suggest next steps. Since the report states that "the Obama administration does not officially endorse all of these ideas, but the task force views them as worth of further analysis" we might expect some expansive thinking. And there are some good - if hazy - ideas in there: bolster community colleges, improve "529" college savings plans, help states cope with economic downturns without cutting college funding. The most intriguing idea involves enabling graduates to pay back their loans at a fixed percentage of their income, so people who pursue less lucrative careers aren't crushed by debt. Still, none of this quite matches the magnitude of the problem.
The reality is, the nation's public colleges and universities have raised tuition and shifted costs from the states onto students and their families in good economic times as well as bad. A critical part of the story about rising public college costs is tremendous public disinvestment from higher education. The policy not only undermines the middle class but harms the nation's economic competitiveness. To reverse course, the federal government should consider how to help states renew their commitment to public colleges and universities. The middle class depends on it.
The Arkansas Progress Team began organizing three months ago to bring new leadership, ideas, and membership to the Arkansas Young Democrats by focusing on progressive offline and online grassroots organizing. Their three main goals are to increase membership (check this one already), increase fund raising, and increase awareness on the issues important to Young Democrats. On Saturday, April 18th, over 200 Young Democrats turned out to vote at the State Capitol Building and delivered the Arkansas Progress Team a victory.
Left to Right: Eric Bell (Sec/Treas), Jonathan Spinks (Committeeman), and Chris Burks (President)
As Obama’s first 100 days draw to a close, new research shows that addressing today’s economic crisis will require reinvesting in a bedrock American principle: Opportunity. The State of Opportunity, released last week by The Opportunity Agenda, measures our nation’s progress in ensuring that all Americans, and our nation as a whole, have a fair chance to achieve their full potential. The results are sobering.
Drawing on a large body of government data, the report charts opportunity on a range of indicators—economic security and mobility, equal access, democratic voice, the chance to start over after missteps or misfortune, and a coherent sense of community—across a variety of sectors—from employment to education to housing to criminal justice and beyond. Because the most recent year for which most government data is available is 2007, the report provides a unique picture of opportunity just before today’s crisis took hold.
It shows that Opportunity was both highly uneven and highly unequal for millions of Americans before the recession that began in December of 2007. Over 37 million Americans—12.5% of our nation’s population—were living in poverty in 2007, while the rates for Latinos and African Americans were a staggering 21.5% and 24.5%, respectively. Almost 11% of full-time workers were already living in poverty that year.
Significant gender and racial wage gaps existed in 2007, with women making just 78.2% of men’s median wages, and women with a college degree earning just 65.2% of the wages made by equally-educated men. Latinos earned just 72.6% of the white median wage, and African Americans earned 75.2%. Latina women earned just 58.7% of all men. Overall, the richest 20% of Americans earned almost half (47.3%) of all income in the country, and the richest 5% earned 20.1%.
The Opportunity Agenda is pleased to announce the release of our 2009 State of Opportunity in America report. The report documents America’s progress in protecting opportunity for everyone who lives here, and finds that access to full and equal opportunity is still very much a mixed reality.
By analyzing government data across a range of indicators, this update of our 2006 and 2007 reports assesses our progress in attaining opportunity for our nation as a whole, as well as for different groups within our society. The report paints a vivid picture of opportunity at the dawn of the current economic crisis. But even before the downturn, different American communities experienced starkly different levels of opportunity. The nation has made great strides in increasing opportunity in some areas and for some communities, but many groups of Americans are being left behind in ways that hard work and personal achievement alone cannot address.
These past few years have seen an economy in turmoil, impaired financial mobility, marginal prospects for educational advancement, and a broken health care system. These conditions thwart the nation as a whole as it strives to be a land of opportunity for the 21st Century. At the same time, women, people of color, and moderate- and lower-income individuals and families are being hardest hit and left behind as they face multiple barriers to opportunity.
These barriers are a problem not only for individuals and families, but also for our economy and nation as a whole. They also present an opportunity. Addressing them now would translate to thousands more college graduates prepared for a 21st Century global economy, millions of healthier children in stronger communities, higher wages and greater productivity for American workers, far fewer mortgage defaults and bankruptcies, and far less strain on our social services and justice system. Conversely, the areas of improved opportunity revealed by our analysis represent a foundation and lessons on which to build as the nation works to restore the American dream for everyone who lives here.
Mudflats reports on a public hearing and rally in Anchorage in opposition to Sarah Palin's refusal of federal stimulus funds, and takes note of just how bizarre this turn of events really is:
The fact that Alaskans actually had to go to these lengths to reaffirm their desire for money coming into the state probably came as a bit of a shock to the likes of Congressman Don Young and former Senator Ted Stevens, whose long reigns in the congressional delegation were based largely on their ability to bring home the federal bacon. This whole "we don't need the money" meme is brand new.
Apparently there are Alaskans who are so madly in love with Palin that they don't mind the fact that she as the advocate for the state of Alaska, suddenly feels more of a sense of duty to save the country money than to represent the interests of her constituents.
Particularly weird given her Alaska Independence Party roots. But then, weird is pretty much all they've got going for them, isn't it? A kid with Downs Syndrome and she's cutting off funds for special education.
On Tuesday, Democracy Now! featured a segment, "Report: Communities of Color Bear Heaviest Burden in Recession". The title was actually a bit misleading, because the report, though taking note of the recession and the need to respond pro-actively to it, wasn't specifically limited to the effects of the recession, it was about geographical patterns of opportunity and lack of opportunity that have long persisted throughout good times and bad. And-Surprise! Surprise!-those patterns turn out to be strongly related to race. As I'll explain below, this report was remarkable to me in part because of how many different familiar threads itg brought together, in addition to the threads of the opportunity sub-indexes it brought together.
It's not bad enough that blacks suffer twice the unemployment rate of whites (with Asians and Latinos falling in between), they also suffer inferior housing, health care, and education, along with greater exposure to pollution. Indeed, the report identified six broad areas, constructing an index of indictors for each, and found similar patterns of racialized opportunity in all six of them.
It's important to realize that none of this necessarily depends on old-fashioned racism. But that doesn't make a bit of difference when it comes to the effect, which is to place disproportionate, and often debilitating burdens on minorities. (Sub-prime mortages, for example, not only were targeted disproportionately at minorities, in many cases minorities who qualified for standard financing were simply not offered the option that would have been routine, had they been white.) Furthermore, as minority populations grow, and minorities collectively come to constitute a majority, these patterns of suppressed opportunity are increasingly a problem for our society as a whole--as, indeed, was the case with the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.
It's not just a noble sentiment, it's increasingly simply a fact of life-allowing large segments of our population to be held back by substandard opportunities to advance creates mounting problems for our society as a whole. The converse is also true: effective strategies for advancement as a whole require a special focus on those who are being held back the most. That's the message behind the report, "One Region: Promoting Prosperity Across Race" [pdf]
