Julian Bond: “Gay rights are civil rights”
Veteran civil rights activist Julian Bond in a powerful interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN, discussing the reasons he supports the gay civil rights movement, and believes other African-Americans should also.
Anderson Cooper: Do you think some people who — African-Americans who do not like the movement for [gay] equality being described as a civil rights movement — do you think they feel that it somehow takes away from the struggle that African-Americans have gone through and continue to?
Julian Bond: Yes, I think they do, but wrongly so, wrongly so. If they knew that Bayard Rustin, a gay man, was the guy who put together the [1963] March on Washington, and it wouldn’t have been the success it was had it not been for him, I think they’d feel differently about it. If they knew that throughout the history of the black struggle for civil rights, black and white and asian and latino gay people, and lesbians, participated and sacrificed alongside their black brothers and sisters, I think they’d feel differently about it, because this is not — we don’t have a patent on rights in this country. Black people don’t have a patent on fighting for civil rights. This is something all Americans want to do and should do, and we ought to be proud that others have imitated us.
Anderson Cooper: it is interesting to me that in the past you have not had a lot of straight people championing this cause, and yet you have, sometimes at great — you’ve received a lot of criticism.
Julian Bond: Yes, I have, but I think — I served in the civil rights movement beside black people and white people and gay people and lesbian people and I often thought to myself, “These people are helping me. Can I help them? Shouldn’t I help them?” And when the gay movement, which is an old movement in this country, became more and more prominent, and it became something that people like myself, straight people could join in and participate, I was eager to play whatever part I could. Because this is something important to all of us. I don’t care if you’re gay or straight. This is something you ought to be concerned about.
I have recently argued that the one useful response to today’s teacher shortage is to expand sites of recruitment to places as yet untouched by teacher recruitment drives: state prisons, homeless shelters, gay bars, and blighted urban neighborhoods. At first I made this suggestion ironically, but as I had time to reflect on the challenges we face in recruiting teachers committed to social change rather than in reproducing the status quo, I have come to consider this strategy more seriously. If we are trying to shift our system of public education away from its role as a reproducer of social inequities, then we need teachers who are willing to challenge the status quo. Better yet, we need teachers with experience in challenging the status quo. Those who survive on the margins of society acquire an intense experience of being the outsider. These outlaws and social misfits may be more likely to advocate for the radical transformation of ideologies and for the dramatic restructuring of systems of education than are the traditional pool of people whom we cycle through teacher preparation programs.
What would our schools look like if their faculties were comprised of ex-cons, queers, and street people? How might the life chances of all children be different were there more welfare mothers working as elementary educators? If we filled our classrooms with people with heightened experiences of resisting and countering abuse, victimization, marginalization, and approbation, would we succeed at moving school closer to our social justice aims than if we continued to hire all the Miss Jean Brodys and Jaime Escalantes of the world?
What it means to learn has been transformed for a generation of urban children. Education is acquiring a basic body of knowledge needed to competently vote and play Jeopardy, appreciate music and art, go to college and get a job, communicate and so on.
But in the name of reform, it’s as if somehow the goalpost has been moved without our realizing it. Now education — for those “failing” urban kids, anyway — is about learning the rules and following directions. Not critical thinking. Not creativity. It’s about how to correctly eliminate three out of four bubbles. The whole messy, thrilling, challenging work of shaping young minds has been reduced to a one or a zero. Pass or fail.
Source: theroot.com
African Americans are still half as likely, and Hispanics are still a third as likely, as white students to complete college. This is despite minority college enrollment rates nearly doubling over the past 40 years.
Is College Worth It? Pew Research
Source: pewsocialtrends.org
