Plainfield blogger beat Ledger to punch on use of N-word in West Orange schools

The language in question derived from a mystery novel by Agatha Christie.

It was a month ago that Plainfield blogger Nat Singleton, writing at Dumbed Down America, wrote about an incident involving the use of the N-word in a West Orange middle school language arts lesson (see here), beating the Star-Ledger to the punch.

The incident led to a complaint to the District by the student's parents, Demond and Tauheedah Baker-Jones, a friend of whom had tipped Nat to the story. Eventually both the NAACP and ACLU were drawn into the matter.

That complaint led to a meeting and proposed steps by the District to address the issue which formed the basis of a front-page Ledger story yesterday (see here).

Baker-Jones did not object to the use of the material per se, but to the lack of proper introduction and context-setting concerning the language in the selection given to the students.

The class was handed an excerpt from a stage adaptation of a 1939 novel by the famed English mystery writer Agatha Christie, a story which ultimately came to be known as 'And Then There Were None' (see more here).

The N-word reference was dropped long before the 1945 movie version.

The plot concerned ten guests invited to a remote mansion for a weekend house party -- a classic English mystery motif. One by one, the guests are murdered in grotesque fashion, playing on the song of the title. (I remember seeing the movie as 'Ten Little Indians'.)

To date, the book is still Agatha Christie's most popular mystery, with over 100 million copies sold.

Christie is not thought to have had any racist intent in using the N-word, but was referring to a song that would have been well known to an audience of her time and place -- exactly the sort of condition that Baker-Jones says calls for teachers to set the context and perhaps have an important 'teaching moment' with their students with regard to ethnicity and racial stereotyping.

West Orange superintendent Anthony Cavanna, in a CYA move, says the district will hire an outside consultant to assess 'what the district is doing right and what it could do better'. Gimme a break.

Good pedagogical sense should have prevailed all along, no matter how large a percentage of the District's students were white, nor how small a percentage were minority. The fact that Cavanna says the unit has been in use for years without any prior complaint only makes the conduct more egregious, in my opinion.

There have been several film, TV and stage adaptations of the novel. It should be noted that the N-word reference was withdrawn very early on, in favor of an old rhyme concerning the fate of 'ten little Indians'.

Not really more sensitive, by my lights, but they must have thought so seventy years ago.

Nat closed his essay by noting he hoped he was wrong and that someone had played a practical joke on him.

Not so lucky.


DISCLOSURE: Nat is my partner. He has not seen this piece prior to my publishing it.

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• Dumbed Down America:  "N-word taught in West Orange middle school"
• Ledger:  "School officials review diversity training, curriculum after class handout includes racial epithet"
• Wikipedia:  "Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None"
  

-- Dan Damon [follow]

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Obama fearmongers hit Plainfield

Right-wing Obama-in-whiteface flyer
pasted to stop sign at Myrtle and Rock Avenues.

Plainfield has been immune to the nonsense fueled by wealthy right-wingnuts like Richard Mellon Scaife, who many suspect is behind the countrywide rash of town hall rudeness over healthcare reform this past August.

But no more.

While the wealthy wingnuts tapped into real fears some people have over whether changes would affect them adversely, there has been an added layer of racist hysteria, in particular with charges that President Obama is a 'Socialist', 'Nazi' and/or 'Fascist'. (Anyone with a sense of history will wonder how all that can be crammed in one bag.)

On her way to work Wednesday morning, reader Nancy P. called to report she saw one of the racist Obama-in-whiteface flyers pasted to a STOP sign at the corner of Myrtle and Rock Avenues, across from the Plainfield Health Center.

Hopping over, I managed to catch some snaps before the police came and scraped the flyer away.

But not for long.

Yesterday, Nancy reported the same flyer had reappeared -- not only on the STOP sign, but on a nearby Corzine campaign sign and on STOP signs in Green Brook Park.

Looks like Oz is part of the real world after all.

This time, unfortunately.

Send me an email (with photo if you can) or Tweet me at '@ptoday' if you spot any more, and let me know the locations.

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• Richard Mellon Scaife: "Funding Father of the Right" (Washington Post)
• Wikipedia: "Richard Mellon Scaife"

-- Dan Damon

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Muhlenberg: The Washington Post gets it right...mostly

In making the front page of the Washington Post (see here), Muhlenberg has become the national poster child for the vexed questions of charity care and hospital closures.

There is a reason the Washington Post is considered one of the country's two national newspapers and the story does not disappoint: the writing is crisp, well-researched, and covers much of the breadth of the story. But not all, or -- in my humble opinion -- even the most important point.

But first, the good parts.

All those who have labored mightily in the 'Save Muhlenberg' struggle deserve a tremendous amount of credit for bringing Muhlenberg's crisis -- and the plight of similar hospitals -- to national attention. Without the weekly meetings, the planning, the rallying, the posters in store and home and car windows, the letters to the editor, all the thousands of little details and efforts, this heroic story would have been lost in the buzz.

And it cannot have hurt that the Courier News, Gannett's local paper, has devoted copious ink to the story -- both by its award-winning writer Brandon Lausch and (before he took early retirement) its health beat reporter Clem Fiorentino, as well as heavy play on the editorial page (I count EIGHT editorials in 2008 alone). All of which provided invaluable background and context for the Post's reporter if he checked it. [The Courier contrasts sharply with the Ledger (O Ledger! Our Ledger! Where are you?!), where the editorial decision from on high appears to have been to limit coverage (not the fault of Plainfield's beat reporter, Alexi Friedman).]

Keith Richburg, the WashPost reporter, covers the bases: the financial costs to Solaris, the impact on the poor and uninsured, the alarm among the state's hospitals over deteriorating finances, and interviews with hospital users and local activists. Huzzah!

But the story suffers from TWO GLARING WEAKNESSES.

First, the RACISM.

We only have to get as far as the fourth paragraph to find --

The situation has come to a head in this city of 48,000 people -- majority black, largely poor and with many new immigrants moving in. (Emphasis added.)

Here we go again. Majority minority communities must be 'largely poor', right?

This common racist assumption just doesn't stand the light of day. Take a look at the 2000 United States Census and see for yourself --

Median household income: Plainfield - $46,683 | US - $41,994
Median family income: Plainfield - $50,774 | US - $50,046
Families below poverty level: Plainfield - 12.2% | US - 9.2%
Individuals below poverty level: Plainfield - 15.9% | US - 12.4%
Plainfield families making between $50,000 and $99,999 - 33.8%
Plainfield families making over $100,000 - 17.0%

Data are from the Census' American FactFinder pages (more here).

Plainfield does NOT compare shabbily with the rest of the country in either family income or household income. And, while the number of families and individuals below the poverty level is above the national medians, it is hardly by a margin such as to earn the term 'largely poor'. Even the harshest statistic, that nearly one in six residents is below the poverty level hardly means 'largely', and is only 3.5% above the NATIONAL median. Plainfield is NOT Camden, or East St. Louis, or Oakland. Or, may I dare say, Washington, D.C.

The Washington Post's bias only echoes that I once found as the city's public information officer -- ranging everywhere from my contacts with the New York Times and the AP to the cable and TV news channels back in 2005, our annus horribilis with 15 homicides.

Isn't it time the media grew up and moved on? Does a largely white-dominated media STILL need to assert its superiority by defining majority minority communities as 'mostly poor'? Where we are looking at the high probability of having an African American president, I certainly hope not. And the Washington Post is just as good a place to begin as any other.

Second, the ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.

One simply cannot discuss public policy and public policy decisions in New Jersey without putting POLITICS in the picture.

As City Council candidate Annie McWilliams so eloquently put it in her testimony to the Health Advisory Commission in June, Muhlenberg simply does NOT meet the criteria set out by the state's own commission appointed to 'rationalize' hospital closings. To wit, we are not in an area that is 'overbedded' and by every measure, we ARE in an area serving an underserved and indigent population.

The problem, as always, is the spinelessness of our political leaders in the face of difficult decisions that might anger voters. Far safer to close Muhlenberg, in a reliably Democratic stronghold like Plainfield, than to discuss closing other hospitals where voters might go to the GOP if angered. After all, next year will feature both gubernatorial and legislative races.

Having intently followed Muhlenberg's application a number of years ago for a cardiac surgery license, it was illustrative to see that though Muhlenberg's application was deemed masterful, compelling and accurate, the licenses would instead go to hospitals in Hudson and Essex counties and South Jersey. Three years later, the Hudson County hospital had yet to fund the program or build a facility. But they had the license, which is what counts. In New Jersey, compelling can't trump clout.

At the time, that license was projected to be a lifesaver for Muhlenberg, for which the clouds were already on the horizon. Assemblyman Jerry Green proved to be powerless against the mightier pols of Hudson and Essex.

For those of us who were paying attention, it seemed that only a concerted effort on behalf of Muhlenberg by both Solaris and the city could save the day. Mayor McWilliams proposed a 'medical enterprise zone' which would have brought the financial and other advantages of the state's Enterprise Zone program to the Muhlenberg/Park Avenue corridor. Alas, Mayor Robinson-Briggs never picked up on the concept and it was apparently abandoned.

Solaris seems to have calculated that it was better to try and save JFK than to have both hospitals go under (the April 2007 subdivision of the Muhlenberg property should have been a warning).

Of course, this is background that would have been very difficult, if not impossible, for a reporter writing on deadline to ferret out -- especially if players like Solaris or political figures were loath to cast themselves in anything but the best light.

Nevertheless, the lack of this angle leaves the promise of this story unfulfilled, making it merely good as opposed to outstanding.

Richburg's closing quote from Jim Colvin, UCC pastor and Muhlenberg activist, that "from a 'survival of the fittest' standpoint, it makes sense" evoked what has been my experience of the politics of health care in New Jersey all along, that it is remarkably evocative of Alfred Lord Tennyson's famous lines --

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine*, shriek'd against his creed

where, in our experience, political expediency trumps all else.

And is it wrong to conclude that what Plainfield is facing is 'genocide lite'?

*'Ravine' is a variant of 'rapine' -- see here.

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• Washington Post: "Without funds, N.J. hospitals face crisis"
  

-- Dan Damon

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Race: Barack brings barbershop talk to the fore

Plainfield, as much as any town in America, has the kind of history of which Barack Obama spoke in his speech on race in America given in Philadelphia Tuesday morning.

That history includes the owning of slaves by some of its founding families for the first 150 years of the community's existence.

That history includes patterns of residential segregation that used to include covenants forbidding the sale of homes to Blacks or Jews, only finally formally done away with in living memory -- though one may wonder if it is gone completely.

That history includes patterns of segregation in the public schools to end which Charles Booker, the NAACP, and many, many people had to struggle.

That history includes the riot of 1967.

Yes, Plainfield is part of the shameful racial history of this country. To a great extent, the glories of the 'Queen City' were built on the shabby base of race, class and caste.

But Plainfield has moved on, as Barack Obama hopes that America can.

And I think that all people of goodwill in Plainfield share the same hope.

If Barack thought we would not have to have this conversation, he was mistaken. But he shows he is up to having it -- and leading it.

If, as I suspect, the Clinton campaign has been behind the sudden surge of stories in the media about Barack's former pastor, the now-retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity UCC in Chicago, they may well be surprised by the outcome. If there was the thought that the endless looping of sound bites from Wright's sermons would deny Barack a foothold among 'blue-collar Democrats' (Clintonspeak for the Archie Bunker vote), this may well blow up in their faces.

The media have been busy trying to report the news and impact of Tuesday's speech. I have gathered a sampling at the end of this post.

Of the many observations recorded, two have caught my eye --

Covering the reaction to the speech in Obama's hometown, Chicago, the New York Times stopped in at a barbershop near downtown Chicago ('The Loop' to Chicagoans),

[where] Manny Koop, a barber working just west of the downtown Loop, credited Mr. Obama with taking a political risk. Mr. Koop watched the speech while he cut hair. “It’s touchy stuff, it’s barbershop stuff,” he said. “A lot of people don’t want to address that kind of thing on national television, but he did and he did it well.”

Maureen Dowd (I am partial to Irish redheads), writing in her regular OpEd column caught an Irish resonance --

Obama’s warning about race in America was redolent of Eugene O’Neill’s observation about Ireland: “There is no present or future,” O’Neill said, “only the past happening over and over again.”

I think Barack is right, it IS time for the past to stop happening over and over again.

Plainfield -- though far from perfect -- is living proof that it can be done and that it is worth doing -- that "people can come together and say, 'Not this time.'"

America should thank Barack Obama for the courage to take on this conversation.

We will all be better for it.

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Transcripts: NYTimes (as prepared) | WashPost (as delivered) |
Video: WashPost | Obama Campaign |

Star-Ledger:

• John Farmer: "Obama pleads for end to 'racial stalemate'"
• Editorial: "Obama's rare candor on race"
  

Washington Post:

• News: "Obama Urges U.S.: 'Move Beyond Our Old Racial Wounds'"
• Analysis: "A Sensitive Topic at a Sensitive Moment, for Disparate Audiences"
• Analysis: "Speech Aimed at Diverse Audiences Draws Some Comparisons to JFK"
• Eugene Robinson: "Obama's Road Map on Race"
• Editorial: "Moment of Truth" -- "Barack Obama squarely addresses the issue of race."

New York Times:

• News: "Obama Urges U.S. to Grapple With Race Issue"
• Analysis: "Obama Chooses Reconciliation Over Rancor"
• Analysis: "An Effort to Bridge a Divide"
• Maureen Dowd: "Black, White & Gray"
• Trinity UCC, Chicago: "In Chicago, More Talk About Race After Speech"
• Editorial: "Mr. Obama’s Profile in Courage"

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--Dan Damon

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West Virginia bias crime: Woman pleads guilty

While America's attention was fixed on the Jena 6 case last fall, a horrific crime against a person of color went almost without national attention.

Megan Williams, an 18-year-old African American woman was kidnapped, raped and tortured by a group of six whites, three men and three women, in Logan County, West Virginia, in August of 2007. She was eventually found and freed after an anonymous tip.

Now word comes -- if you look hard enough for it -- that the grand jury finally added 'hate crime' as one of the charges in the indictments it returned and that one of the women involved has pleaded guilty. The five remaining defendants have yet to be tried.

There is widespread sentiment that the news reportage of the case reflects a racial bias on the part of the media, partly because the victim was African American and partly because she had pressed domestic battery charges against one of the accused, Bobby Ray Brewster, with whom she had a prior relationship.

In protest against the lack of mainstream media coverage, an NYU student, Crystal Boyd, set up a Facebook page "Students Against the Rape of Megan Williams and the Media that Ignores Her" which quickly had 250,000 members (see more here).

While appearing on the Montel Williams show this week, Megan Williams learned she is the recipient of a $40,000 scholarship to a technical institute, a new computer and tutoring to help her earn her GED.

Sentencing in this first trial is set for March 3.

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• MSNBC: "Woman pleads guilty to W.Va. hate crime"
  

-- Dan Damon

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Cosby and Poussaint fight Black victimhood

Actor Bill Cosby and Harvard professor Alvin Poussaint got a whole hour on Tim Russert's 'Meet The Press' Sunday to discuss their new book, Come On People, which lays out their analysis of the problems facing Black Americans and the duo's thoughts on what can be done to 'save the soul of Black American', as NY Times columnist Bob Herbert says.

Cosby and Poussaint have been traveling the country for three years with their message, which has just been released in the book, which is available from Amazon and other retailers.

Links below to Herbert's OpEd, a video from Meet The Press, and Come On People at Amazon.com.

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More on Cosby and Poussaint's crusade --

• MSNBC (video): "Cosby and Poussaint on 'Meet The Press'"
• NY Times: Bob Herbert: "Tough, Sad and Smart"
• Amazon: "Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors"
  

-- Dan Damon

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ARCHIVED POSTS OF PLAINFIELD TODAY FROM 11/03/2005 THROUGH 12/31/2006 ARE AT
http://plainfieldtoday.blogspot.com/

PT gets ink for Caldwell 'slavery lesson' story

As the Ledger's Kelly Heyboer pointed out yesterday, the Caldwell school's lesson on defending slavery has drawn the attention of bloggers nationwide.

In her weekly column, she focused on the reactions of five New Jersey bloggers, leading off with citing yours truly's post.

Almost broke my arm patting my back.

Seriously, though, you DO want to check her column out every Thursday in print as well as her regular updates on the Ledger's website -- another set of eyeballs watching what's going on.

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• Ledger: "Did Slavery Assignment Teach the Wrong Lesson?"
• Plainfield Today: "Caldwell school assignment: Defend slavery"

-- Dan Damon

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ARCHIVED POSTS OF PLAINFIELD TODAY FROM 11/03/2005 THROUGH 12/31/2006 ARE AT
http://plainfieldtoday.blogspot.com/

Caldwell school assignment: Defend slavery

Plainfielders were no doubt shocked to open their Ledger this morning and find that a 6th-grade teacher in Caldwell's Grover Cleveland Middle School had given the class an assignment "to write a catchy slogan and a poster advertising why slave labor was the best way to run a cotton plantation."

Huh?!

And this is the school in the Caldwell/West Caldwell District that bills itself as "Proud to be the first Middle School Professional Development Site in New Jersey in partnership with Montclair State University."

Maybe we should have a contest to help the teachers come up with other interesting and challenging social studies projects.

Perhaps an assignment explaining why slave labor and concentration camps were the way to avoid "catastrophic personal and financial ruin" in Nazi Germany?

Makes you wonder WHAT was on this teacher's mind -- and how many other similar assignments are made of which we never hear a thing.

Everyone owes a debt of gratitude to Ayana McPherson-Jackson for challenging her school.

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On the Web --

• Ledger: "Slavery lesson offends a mother"
• Ledger: "Middle school assignment"
• Caldwell/West Caldwell Schools: "Grover Cleveland Middle School"

-- Dan Damon

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ARCHIVED POSTS OF PLAINFIELD TODAY FROM 11/03/2005 THROUGH 12/31/2006 ARE AT
http://plainfieldtoday.blogspot.com/