As a teacher, union president, and education researcher of urban education, the bulk of my work involves being aware of narratives that influence conventional wisdom and policy, identifying errors and blindspots in popularly understood narratives and confronting them – none of which can be done while wearing rose-colored glasses.
In calling attention to the linking of urban education reform and redevelopment during the Christie years in Camden, I am identifying the misunderstanding of “failing” urban schools, and identifying the insufficiency of “college and career readiness” for urban students, part of my responsibility as a union leader and researcher is, to be honest about what I’m seeing and what research indicates.
My conclusions do not elicit a sense of joy or motivation but, hopefully, a sense of contextualized understanding and realism
We are dealing with an exceedingly tenuous moment in American history and looking away from reality will not save us any more than insufficient solutions will. The late Barbara Ehrenreich commented, “delusion is no way to confront reality.”
Collectively, the bulk of our American public seems to be wishing and hoping that the problems that plague our modern society will work themselves out. That somehow the legitimation of rightwing nationalism; the embeddedness of racist Republican legislation; the erosion of a woman’s right to bodily autonomy; the sustained attacks on public education by fascistic Republican governors and neoliberal Democrats alike; the expanding national and global wealth gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else; the looming collapse of our global ecosystem and many other catastrophic occurrences can be corrected by remaining optimistic and electing the right people is wrong thinking.
Not having a sober understanding of where we are, and how we got here, yields such delusion.
While the Black struggle in America is marred by two and a half centuries of slavery followed by another century of Black Codes, Jim Crow, and de jure subjugation, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965 of 1965, Fair Housing Act of 1968, LBJ’s War on Poverty and affirmative action resulting from years of deliberate and purpose-oriented activism and rioting, legislation was passed that began to equalize the playing field for millions of Black Americans.
This subsequently caused the reaction of what Anderson calls, “white rage” or “white backlash” where a sizable chunk of the white majority believed themselves to be losing ground to undeserving Blacks and that it was their calling to maintain their rightful place atop America’s social and economic hierarchy.
To keep Blacks in a perpetually subservient position in society, swaths of southern white Democrats switched their party affiliation and aligned with the religious conservatives in the late 60s and early 70s to form what we recognize today as the base of the Republican Party.
Though the era of pushing to achieve change and collective societal advancement presented an actual mortal danger to both Black and white activists, it may have been strategically easier to accomplish in those days.
Largely under the radar in 1971, a manifesto was authored by corporate attorney and board director at Phillip Morris, Lewis Powell, to Eugene Snydor of the US Chamber of Commerce where he railed against the “attack on the American Free Enterprise System”.
In identifying civil rights activists, environmental protectors, and educators on college campuses and in high schools as “leftist” enemies of capitalism, Powell urged the Chamber of Commerce to push back by investing money and human resources in media, establishing think tanks, approving textbooks, drafting academic literature and publications to influence the American political and education system to advance a capitalist ideology.
In 1972, Powell was appointed to the US Supreme Court by Nixon and presided over First National Bank v. Bellotti, a precursor to Citizens United where he concluded corporate influence in political elections was tantamount to free speech that warranted vigorous protection. At this point, explicit and exorbitant corporate influence over our judicial system and political system was born and codified into law and has only expanded in the five decades since.
The impact of the Powell memo, and his appointment to the nation’s highest court, contributed to a systemic rolling back of both individual rights and collective progress across every sector of American society since the early 1970s.
Both worker rights and union power have been crushed in the interest of maximizing corporate power; sustained deregulation, detaxation, corporate mergers, industry concentration, and mass layoffs emblematic of the 1990s and 2000s yielded obscene profits for corporations and the wealthiest among us.
For forty years America’s education system has been hijacked by the demands of the business community that seeks to optimize efficiency and testing while minimizing opportunities to develop critical thinking of younger generations – even the contemporary attacks against teaching accurate history in schools are supported by ultra-rich conservatives.
News channels, think tanks, and social media personalities — all of which are financially supported by wealthy corporations and wealthy individuals — serve to deliver ideological content to their consumers rather than reporting accurate content, deliberately keeping citizens ill-informed and less capable of making informed decisions even in their own best interest.
Corporate influence has harmed our society in a multitude of ways. However, my home state has made an effort to tip the scales more in the favor of people by protecting a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, ensuring NJ students learn a more accurate history in schools, and even protecting the labor rights of the incarcerated against the wishes of big business. These remedies are a start.
We must not remain ignorant about the corporate chokehold over our future, nor can we hope to vote our way out of this morass – moving forward we must actively seek new ways out of this conundrum.
