Philadelphia Congregations Lead in the Struggle for Social Justice

(HuffPost Black Voices)  The recent events in Baltimore -- including the killing of Freddie Gray in police custody, and the protests and unrest that followed -- point to the need for community-based movement building. Baltimore, like many other cities in America, is hurting, and black people in particular are feeling the pain.

Meanwhile, a little over 100 miles to the north, Philadelphia -- the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection -- is offering a model for communities of faith to seek justice and transform the place in which they live. POWER (Philadelphians Organized to Witness Power and Rebuild) is a grassroots interfaith coalition of congregations across the city. Part of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, they are dedicated to bringing people together around social justice issues such as jobs with a living wage, fair funding and democratic, local control of the public schools and an end to police practices such as "stop and frisk."

POWER is an example of the type of coalition building that cities need.

In the Atlanta cheating scandal, standardized testing is the crime

(theGrio)  Hard prison time for cheating on an exam? Really? What do you do when the real crime is the exam itself?

Sparks are flying in Atlanta as public school teachers were convicted of racketeering in connection with the city’s huge testing scandal. Eight of the 10 teachers who were convicted of conspiring to inflate students’ standardized test scores received prison sentences of up to 7 years.

A state investigation had determined that 178 educators, including 38 principals, had participated. Ultimately, thirty-five educators were indicted, with twenty-one pleading guilty and 13 going to trial. Beverly Hall, the former superintendent who was indicted in the scandal, did not go to trial due to illness and recently died of breast cancer.

State of Black America report: Blacks are treated 72 percent equal to whites

(theGrio)  The U.S. economy is rebounding, the stock market is thriving, and unemployment is down to levels not seen since the Great Recession. But how is black America doing these days? Not well.

This week, the National Urban League released its 39th annual State of Black America report. And according to the civil rights organization, there is something we should know — black America is in a state of crisis.

The report — available for the first time exclusively in E-book form — provides a detailed and sobering assessment of where African-Americans and Latinos stand with regard to injustice and inequality. Among the major topics covered are civic engagement, criminal justice, education, employment, healthcare, housing, income and poverty. The report was unveiled at a press conference Thursday in Washington, DC.

Sixteen states have more people in prison cells than college dorms

(theGrio)  College or prison: which is more important? In 16 states in the land of the free, the answer is prison.

As was reported in MetricMaps, there are 16 states where there are more bodies filling up the prisons than there are students living in college dormitories. What is truly fascinating, maybe even disturbing, is that nearly all of these 16 states are located in the South, the bottom portion of the country. You must view the map in order to appreciate the gravity of the situation.

Let than sink in for a minute. More people behind bars than in the dorms. What could it be about the South that would explain this? Could it be a tradition of slavery, racial violence and Jim Crow segregation, a legacy of criminalizing and dehumanizing people and of just not treating folks very well?

Waiting For Environmental Justice to Come

Environmental toxins and pollutants know no class or race, and yet government policies and corporate activities place an undue burden on the health of the poor and communities of color.

Throughout the United States, children of color and poor children are disproportionately exposed to health hazards while attending public school, placing them at high risk. Often, this problem is unaddressed in urban centers. However, one group of New York City parents is bringing attention to polluted schools, holding elected officials accountable, and in the process, becoming a focal point in the environmental justice movement.

Profiteering and Union-Busting Repackaged as School Reform

This is one of those stories that shows how far some people will go in America to make a buck—even if it means profiting at the expense of children, or exploiting the legacy of the civil rights movement.

Stand for Children is an unassuming name for an organization.  Just taken at face value, one would conclude that the Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit aspires to accomplish what the title suggests.  Their website says SFC is “an innovative, grassroots child advocacy organization.  Our mission is to use the power of grassroots action to help all children get the excellent public education and strong support they need to thrive.  Our members believe we need to stand up for our children now - particularly for their education from pre-school through high school - to create a better future for America.”

Now, that all sounds good, until you dig deeper.  The cofounder and CEO of SFC, Jonah Edelman, is the son of Marian Wright Edelman, the well-respected civil rights activist and head of the Children’s Defense Fund.  Critics charge that Stand for Children started out on the right side of the issues, devoting itself to progressive issues such as class sizes, affordable children’s healthcare and adequate funding for schools.  But then, things changed when they started taking the money, and lots of it— from wealthy interests who arguably care nothing about poor children of color in the inner cities, and care a great deal about a vision of privatization that extracts profit from the public schools. 

In an infamous YouTube video that went viral, Edelman discussed his strategy in Illinois at a July 10 Aspen Institute event.  That strategy was essentially to mislead the teachers unions, do a number on them, and pay off the state legislators to pass SB7, an extensive school reform bill.  The original bill would have stripped teachers of their right to strike, eliminated seniority as a factor in layoffs, and denied teachers their due process rights that come with tenure.  What this has to do with the interests of children is anybody’s guess.  A weaker version of the bill that passed still undermined labor rights by restricting seniority and the right to strike. 

Typically, when Edelman goes into a state, he sets up a PAC, raises a ton of money and hires the best lobbyists money can buy.  He benefits from his mother’s rolodex and the cache her name and reputation bring to the table.  SFC spreads money around in the community, in an attempt to soften up the black clergy and community leaders and get them on board as partners.  And they bribe public officials to pass union-busting legislation.

In Illinois, SFC raised $3 million late last year and hired 11 lobbyists.  They approached Illinois Speaker Michael Madigan—who failed to garner union support that year for passing pension reform— and donated $610,000 to nine state campaigns in both major parties. 

And Edelman attended a community meeting of black Chicago clergy with what observers have called a “slick dog and pony show.”  But the pastors didn’t take the bait.  According to Rev. Robin Hood, executive director of Clergy Committed to Community, SFC wasn’t the least bit interested in the concerns of the black community.

“One of the schools I’m working in has serious problems.  Their organizer wasn’t concerned about that, they were interested in getting people to see [the film] Waiting for Superman,” Rev. Hood said of SFC.  “Waiting for Superman did not fly here in Chicago.  It wasn’t a hit like they thought it was going to be.  It was about taking away the rights of unions to organize.  In the communities we live in we need living wage jobs,” he said.  “Most of these parents have been arguing about how we don’t have books in school.  Those are not the things Stand for Children were talking about.  They were talking about taking power from teachers,” Hood added.

From the start, Rev. Hood found Edelman and his group disrespectful and arrogant, with dollar signs and union-bashing on their mind. “I found they were anti-union when we met with Stand for Children.  It was all about money, it was nothing about children.  That’s why they had to build a grassroots component.  They did a switch up while they were working here,” he said. 

Although SFC spread around a lot of money in Chicago communities, Rev. Hood emphasized that not one of the pastors in his group would take any of it.  “How much money do you people have?” he asked rhetorically of Edelman.  “First they said they are doing political advocacy, and using community organizations as their base.  Six months later they said ‘we got our own base now.’  Then they gave $3 million to state legislators,” he noted.

“Instead of advocating they became lobbyists,” Rev. Hood concluded. 

Rev. Hood also shared his thoughts on the recent fallout from Edelman’s comments at Aspen.  “As much money as they put out, I didn’t think they would self-destruct,” Hood said.  “On a personal level, it was interesting to see him self-destruct, and I knew they weren’t focused on changing things for the children.  They were union busting and making money off the backs of our kids.”  Moreover, Rev. Hood believed Edelman’s public disclosure of his machinations with Speaker Madigan was particularly damaging.  “Speaker Mike Madigan is the most powerful man in the state.  The Governor doesn’t have that power.  To say what he [Edelman] did to him [Madigan] is what the Japanese call hari-kari.”

To put Jonah Edelman and his operations in perspective, just follow the money.  Susan Barrett quit her volunteer leadership position at SFC in Portland because wealthy investors are now driving the organization.  “I want to make sure that people pay close attention to who is on the SFC board, where their money is coming from, and think critically about whether or not the agendas they are promoting will bring the results parents and community members hope for in public education,” Barrett recently wrote.

SFC’s Illinois PAC amassed the state’s largest war chest, just days before new caps on state campaign contributions went into effect.  Those new restrictions limit individual contributions to $10,000, with $20,000 from corporations.  All of the contributions to SFC were five- and six-figure amounts, including $250,000 from the billionaire Pritzker family, and $500,000 from Ken Griffin, CEO of the Citadel Group and bankroller of GOP state candidates.  Sam Zell, owner of Tribune Co., contributed $100,000.  Meanwhile, of the $610,000 that Edelman gave to legislative candidates, his PAC handed over $175,000—a record for Illinois— to Republican state House candidate Ryan Higgins, who lost his contest.

Stand for Children’s donor list is quite impressive, and equally revealing.  For example, last year SFC received a $3.5 million grant from the Gates Foundation, its largest donor.  The Walton Family Foundation—of Walmart anti-union fame—chipped in $1.4 million.  And New Profit Inc., with ties to a firm running Muammar Gaddafi’s PR campaign, has donated nearly $1.5 million in recent years.       

Meanwhile, the SFC board of directors consists of venture philanthropists and private equity investors, including the extremely wealthy and powerful.  One would think that a “grassroots child advocacy organization” would have at least a token of community representation on its board, including educators and child advocates of color.  Laurene Powell Jobs, wife of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, is a board member, as is Emma Bloomberg, daughter of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Mayor Bloomberg, who is pro-charter school and seems to claim personal ownership of New York’s public schools, has a history of placing ill-prepared corporate types in charge of the nation’s largest—and mostly black and brown— school system.  Bloomberg’s most immediate past schools chancellor, a magazine executive named Cathleen Black, had no experience in education whatsoever.  During her brief and painful stint as chancellor, Black offended many with her jaw-dropping remarks, which included addressing shortages in classroom space by asking “Could we just have some birth control for a while?  It could really help us all out a lot.” 

Black’s predecessor, Joel Klein, now Rupert Murdoch’s deputy at News Corp., is overseeing an investigation into the company’s infamous phone hacking scandal.  Klein is the head of Murdoch’s new education technology business, which Murdoch plans to spend $1 billion to build.      

But the larger picture here is that corporate education reform is big business.  And the rightwing, plutocratic agenda— of school privatization, government austerity measures and deunionization— clashes with the needs of poor, working class, and disproportionately black and brown public school students.  

“What I can say personally is their true colors came out.  He won’t get a base in my community.”  Rev. Hood said defiantly of Edelman.  “We need to educate our kids, not get rich folks richer.  These are the same people that don’t want you to have a living wage and adequate housing.”    

Meanwhile, the education reformers, armed with a pocketful of billionaire money, rip off communities of color.  And as they buy off legislatures, they come off looking like the saviors of the black and brown children they just pimped.     

“I wish I could be wrong, but I think they’ll be back for vouchers,” Rev. Hood offered on a cautionary note.  “They’ll be back with a sad sack of legislators to write a bill for vouchers.” 

Racially Biased SAT Speaks To A Broken Education System

From BlackCommentator.com:

An interesting study was just released by the Harvard Educational Review on racial bias in the SAT Reasoning Test, that well-known college entrance exam that so many educational institutions swear by in the admissions process. Well, according to the study, not only does the SAT discriminate against economically disadvantaged students, but it also results in different scores based on race, even when the students are of equal academic ability.

This study finds, curiously, that more difficult questions on the college entrance test favor black students (yes, favor), while easier questions favor white test takers. As a whole, however, the exam is skewed towards white students-- not because of their skills or aptitude, but because many questions reflect cultural expressions that are prevalent in white society. In other words, and I smell a lawsuit somewhere, some questions are hurting African-American students. On the reading section of the SAT, blacks score an average of 429, 99 points below their white classmates.

The College Board has reacted to the score disparities based on income and race by saying hey, society is unfair, but the test is fair, and the gap is attributable to educational inequities. But somehow, that explanation just isn't good enough.

On one level, the Harvard study reinforces what many have known for quite some time. The SAT has received scrutiny over the years, and standardized testing as a whole has its origins in IQ testing and the racist eugenics movement. High-stakes testing has forced students to learn the test rather than to learn something valuable. Colleges and universities have over-relied on these standardized exam scores in the admissions process. However, a growing number of schools have decided to no longer require the SAT, and this report is another good reason for other colleges to follow suit.

Although the SAT is a big problem facing American education that needs addressing, it is not the only problem. Rather, it is merely the tip of the iceberg. After all, many young people are not even in a position to take an SAT test or go to college. The cradle-to-prison pipeline in poorer and disproportionately black and brown communities provides children with a poor excuse for an education in crumbling, crappy, subpar schools. They are programmed for a life with few options other than to go behind bars. The communities that provide the prisoners are predictable: North Philly, East New York, East L.A., Chicago's South Side. In Brooklyn, NY, some blocks in predominantly black neighborhoods are known as "million-dollar blocks": the state pays $1 million or more to imprison residents of that block. At a cost of $30,000 per prisoner, that's at least 33 prisoners per block. In 2003, there were 35 such blocks in Brooklyn, and even a $5 million block--at least 167 prisoners from a single city block.

Prisons are a big business, it cannot be denied. And the majority of the prisoners in the U.S. are people of color. But sometimes green trumps any other color. The "kids for cash" scandal in mostly white, rural Luzerne County, PA--in which judges were paid by prison companies to throw good kids into jail-- shows that any of our children might be sale, no matter their complexion. Might as well lock them up and throw away the key, the saying goes, in order to decrease the surplus population.

Education is regarded as a tool for upward mobility and personal success. Many jobs that once required only a high school diploma now require a college degree. And in any case, many of those jobs are being outsourced or otherwise shipped offshore to a cheaper labor source. Although college might not be for everyone, there are relatively few options for those who wish to pursue training and acquire skills outside of a college setting.

And for those who do make it to college, many are saddled from the start with a mortgage-sized debt--due to the exponential rise in tuition costs, and the cozy deals made over the years between unscrupulous lending institutions and equally unscrupulous institutions of higher education.

Meanwhile, to be frank, the Great Recession has cast serious doubt on the value of education as a tool for success in capitalist America. Education is important for personal enrichment and fulfillment, building character and creating better individuals, to be sure, but there are no jobs. A generation of young people is graduating with degrees, doing everything that society told them to do, and yet there is no work for millions of them. And their $100,000 to $200,000 in school loans is sticking around like baggage. Five of them are chasing one job. Extension of their unemployment benefits is precarious because Congress would rather throw the money into sinkholes for the military and Wall Street bankers. This is a lost generation of people who start their career in chronic, long-term unemployment, unable to make it out of the gate because they cannot find a job to get a career off the ground. Now, the black community never was a stranger to unemployment, due to institutional racism. And the black unemployment tends to be double that of whites, in good times and bad. Nevertheless, these days, with massive layoffs and millions of jobs disappearing, never to return in this lifetime, far more Americans are having a "black experience," if you will, than they would care to admit.

If we do not act now to solve the education crisis in our nation, and the related problems of inequality and deprivation, surely we will all sink together.

Black college students get a lesson in cyber-racism

From theGrio:

Is the web a hostile environment for African-American young people? Apparently, yes. Black college students experience more bias and discrimination online than their white counterparts. And they have more negative attitudes towards racial diversity on campus. This, according to a study conducted by Brendesha M. Tynes, a professor of educational psychology and African-American studies at the University of Illinois, and Suzanne L. Markoe, a psychology professor at UCLA. They surveyed 217 African-American and white college students in order to assess social networking, online victimization and the racial climate on college campuses.

The study found that black students, who generally have more diverse contact online and spend more time on the web, experienced more online victimization, and discrimination as simple as a racist image posted on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace. And they face a more negative racial environment at school.

For African-American students, negative online experiences outweighed the positives. Meanwhile, the study found that although diverse offline contact fostered a more positive campus climate, online contact did not accomplish the same result.

As this study suggests, one should not underestimate the effects of online racism on one's mental health, including anxiety and depression. And surely, those of us who are actively involved in online communications are acutely aware of the amount of racism in cyberspace, not to mention the dramatic increase in hate speech since the election of President Obama.


Professor Tynes received a $1.4 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to "study the risk and protective factors associated with online racial discrimination across racial and ethnic groups." This past March she and Markoe released another study, this one dealing with the responses of the same 217 students to racially themed party images. Examples of these images are of "gangsta" themed parties where white students mock black culture, typically dressing as black stereotypes, perhaps wearing blackface, and serving fried chicken and watermelon. For example, students at the University of California at San Diego made fun of Black History Month by holding a "Compton Cookout". The hosts of the event "urged participants to wear chains, don cheap clothes and speak very loudly."

A few years ago, students at Tarleton State University in Texas held a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party, complete with students dressed as Aunt Jemima and urban street gangs. And a blackface party at Clemson University in Greenville, S.C., participants dressed in knitted caps and jerseys and held 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor. Some women padded their pants to make their butts appear larger.

After viewing racially explicit photos, only 20 percent of white students in the study found the images offensive, as compared to 60 percent of black students. Moreover, white students who considered themselves "colorblind" on racial matters were more likely unfazed by the photos, while those who believed racial differences should exist were more likely offended. The survey appeared in the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.

These two studies are timely, given the most recent example of online student racism coming from Harvard Law School.

As a follow up to a dinner conversation, Stephanie Grace, a law student at Harvard, wrote an email message to a few of her classmates proclaiming her belief that blacks are "less intelligent on a genetic level" than whites.

"I think it is bad science to disagree with a conclusion in your heart, and then try (unsuccessfully, so far at least) to find data that will confirm what you want to be true," she added. "Everyone wants someone to take 100 white infants and 100 African-American ones and raise them in Disney utopia and prove once and for all that we are all equal on every dimension, or at least the really important ones like intelligence. I am merely not 100% convinced that this is the case."

That email has since gone viral and people around the world are getting familiar with Stephanie Grace's feelings about black people. As a black man who graduated from law school and has dual Ivy League degrees, I don't necessarily react to the Stephanie Grace story with shock. Many institutions of higher learning are filled with students who wear their sense of entitlement on their sleeve. Sheltered, they travel in circles where they are never forced to confront their prejudices.

And while law schools have diversified over the years, they have a long way to go. A white-male-oriented environment, with a curriculum based on the Socratic method of teaching, alienates students of color and women. Students such as Grace learn cold legal reasoning that allows them to test their "cute" racist arguments. But their education does not teach them character or compassion, nor does it ground them in the everyday world where everyone is not white and privileged, and where justice and equity are lacking. Sadly, they bring their racism in a large suitcase when they become leaders in society. Some even take a seat on the Supreme Court. While 90 percent of the legal profession is white, roughly 70 percent of the inmates in America's prisons are black and brown.

Sadly, a network connection only allows students to perfect their racism, with high-tech anonymity in some cases, and without accountability.

And to those who believe racism is over, think again. Hopefully the Tynes and Markoe studies will help us understand how to fight student cyber-racism, and possibly provide solutions to improving race relations at colleges and universities across the country.

Disproportionality is Killing America

The word disproportionality has been on my mind a great deal lately. The definition of disproportionality is the state of lacking symmetry or proportion; of being out of proportion, as in size, shape or amount; of being unequal. In order to better understand the concept of disproportionality, consider a punishment of ten years' imprisonment for littering. Now that's out of whack. That's disproportionality.

Unfortunately, when you look around you at life in the United States, at the culture and the politics of the place, this country is rife with disproportionality. And it seems as is if this dysfunctional state of affairs has been normalized.

Children are introduced to this concept in public schools, with zero tolerance policies that lead to the expulsion, if not the imprisonment, of students for minor infractions and silliness. At the same time, troubled youth-- lacking outlets, encouragement, self-esteem, and a person who will listen-- have not learned conflict resolution skills. Their approach is to react to all arguments and perceived disses through acts of violence, you know, just like nations do.

America's criminal justice system certainly is disproportional. In the land of the free, 5 percent of the world's population boasts 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Bad drug laws and sentencing guidelines fill the prison cells with nonviolent offenders. The vast majority of these prisoners are black and Latino, not to mention poor and uneducated. The vast majority of the judges and lawyers are white. And not only are these poor black and Latino inmates warehoused in rural white districts, they are counted in the population of those districts, thereby benefiting those areas. In the days of the Great Recession, state governments are smothered by the prison boom, as corrections spending competes with education and social welfare, and aims to win.

Disproportionality reigns supreme in our economic, social and political systems. In America, guns are in abundance, while millions of people cannot find a job or afford to keep their home. There is a right to own a weapon, but no right to employment or shelter. Such is the state of affairs in a banana republic such as the United States, equally bankrupt in finances and ethics. And a small group of people have all of the money, or most of it, at least, with the top 1 percent owning 42 percent of the wealth. Corporations are people, too, with just as much freedom of speech as the average human being, and just as much of a right to pour millions of dollars into a political campaign. Banks destroyed that artifact once called the American middle class, yet were rewarded for their failure and greed with a bailout. We were told the perpetrators needed that money, or else the entire economic system would have collapsed. But where is the bailout for the victims?

These days, the U.S. Senate is one of the more blatant examples of pure disproportionality in action. In this august body, great ideas find their final resting place, and laws are sold to the highest bidder. Under Senate rules, the minority has the power to control the game, although they lost the election. An individual senator can become king or queen for a day, a petty dictator with the power to shut down the entire joint by simply blocking the body's ability to vote. One person--whether through a manifestation of greed, vanity, cruelty, ignorance, mental instability, or other--can deny a million people an extension to their unemployment benefits, furlough thousands of federal workers, block a White House nominee, or shoot down crucial health care or financial reform. These are things of which crumbling empires are made.

Disproportonality from within, disproportionality from without. A nation that is supposedly broke has adequate resources to fight two unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and accounts for 41.5% of the world's military expenditures. America maintains military bases in many countries, including wealthy and technologically advanced countries such as Germany, Japan and South Korea. And as their children are groomed for a high-tech world of computers, millions of America's children are hungry, undereducated, and groomed for a life behind bars. And yet, the U.S. has to protect these nations because they are vulnerable?

Am I the only one who is concerned here? Perhaps I'm just blowing all of this out of proportion.

Hey, Who Turned Off the Music?

Did the music die? The recent passing of Michael Jackson made me ask that question.

Recently I started thinking about the songs of my childhood, actually the soundtrack of my youth growing up in Southeast Queens, New York. I have fond memories of listening to LPs with my father on his old but reliable stereo set, with the hand-crafted turntable, and sand-filled wooden speakers that gave an earthy, real-life sound. Here are some of the songs that come to mind from that day:

• “I Stand Accused” by Isaac Hayes
• Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”
• Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”
• “Harvest For The World” by the Isley Brothers
• “Ooh Child” by the Five Stairsteps
• Stevie Wonder’s “If You Really Love Me”
• “Get The Funk Out Of My Face” by the Brothers Johnson
• “Never Can Say Goodbye” by the Jackson 5
• “Ball Of Confusion” by the Temptations, and
• “Midnight Train To Georgia” by Gladys Knight and the Pips

Now, that was music! And it raises an important question in my mind, and possibly yours as well: Will music ever sound that good, ever again? Twenty or thirty years from now, will we remember the songs that are coming out today?

It seems that something went wrong along the way. Popular music, but specifically Black music, which dominates America’s and the world’s music scene, used to reflect the complexity of the human life experience, our emotions, our troubled times and our hopes and joys. In the music, there were the ever-present echoes of the drum rhythms and the storytelling griots of West Africa, of the Negro spirituals growing out of the experience of slavery in America, and of course the Blues. The cultural history was built into the music, and listening to it, at its best, is a religious and spiritual experience. And yet, the music always refined and redefined itself, through Jazz and Hip-hop and other incarnations. But all the while, the music reflected the aspirations and the full spectrum of what was going on in the community, the good and the bad, whether sitting on the street corner with friends, lamenting a lost love, or decrying injustice.

Then money entered the process. Don’t get me wrong, music has been a commercial venture for years. But it is worth noting that as the industry became more lucrative for its participants, or at least its owners, the music became more cookie-cutter, with more of the same and fewer options. Particularly in the past decade - when society was fed a steady dose of materialism and market growth - much of the music which was promoted reflected the materialism and hedonism of the times. Empty calories with little substance. There was much pain out there, to be sure, because after all the vast majority of people cannot afford a seaside mansion, a Hummer, diamonds, or a thousand-dollar bottle of whatever, and most common folk were slipping further as the moneyed few were getting fatter. But the music doesn’t reflect that reality, or at least the songs that get on the air do not. It seems almost fitting that the music industry is suffering financially, with a product no one is buying, just as the economy itself is suffering from systemic problems and is in need of big changes.

Part of the problem is that many talented musicians do not receive the exposure they deserve and we deserve. There are great artists out there, but they don’t get the air time. But on another level, society does not value musicians. Just look at the slashing of music and art education programs in public schools throughout the nation, as more focus is placed on teaching merely what appears on standardized tests. Music education is important to children’s lives as a part of a well-rounded education. Music develops creativity, self-expression, character and a sense of community. And it builds self-esteem, analytical and language capabilities, and innovation. I say this as someone who benefited from music programs throughout my childhood, and was introduced to the tenor saxophone as a sixth grader. Organizations such as the VH1 Save The Music Foundation and websites such as SupportMusic.com and Keep Music In Public Schools! are dedicated to restoring music programs in the schools.

So did the music die? Well, if it did, we need to make sure that we bring it back. We have the power to do it.

(Originally in BlackCommentator.com.)