Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/561035
GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS By Jason Stanford Thebestresponsetothe Black Lives Matter movement is the one solution we're not considering: integration. Black and white Americans live largely separate but unequal lives, living in segregated neighborhoods and attending segregated schools that seem foreign to each other. We lack the political will for forced integration—even though it worked—but we should consider a student ex- change program to build bridges between our commu- nities. For a year, a black student could attend a white school and live with white families, and vice versa. This would be modeled after foreign ex- change programs where schools and service clubs would send a local teenager to study in a foreign country in exchange for hosting a student from that country. I was a Ro- tary Youth Exchange student in West Germany where I did little to dispel suspicions that Americans were stupid. Nev- ertheless, that experience left me—family-by-family, friend- by-friend—better able to un- derstand the world and my place in it. An exchange program could do the same for black and white Americans. I realize how naive it is to think that creat- ing mutual experiences could engender mutual understand- ing, but these days I'll grasp at whatever straws of hope are within reach. If we wanted to do what worked, we'd go back to forced busing, but there's no desire to do that despite the fact that school integration cut the achievement gap in half. According to New York Times Magazine writer Nikole Hannah-Jones on a recent episode of the "This Amer- ican Life" podcast, the gap between the reading scores of black and white students went from 39 percent to 18 percent in the school inte- gration era between 1971 and 1988. "People say, well, we tried to force it, and it just didn't work out," said Hannah-Jones. "And typically, what people are thinking of are places like Bos- ton, where busing was used, and where it was violent and ugly, and white people just left and didn't want to deal with it." Without ever saying so, we returned to separate-but-equal after that. School districts serving children of color sued states for equal funding but not integration, reasoning that equal funding meant equal op- portunity. That led to the bait- and-switch of the 1990s, when the business community sub- stituted accountability for eq- uity, blaming the poor perfor- mance of black and Hispanic students on the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Meanwhile, we left all the children behind in the same segregated schools where we found their parents in the 1970s. In a 2013 University of Texas study, education pro- fessors Julian Vasquez Heilig and Jennifer Jellison Holme discovered that Texas schools were as segregated as they were under Jim Crow. Urban schools were "intensely seg- regated" with student bod- ies made up almost entirely of Black and Hispanic stu- dents. They were separate but not equal; funding and perfor- mance were stubbornly low. "So, 50 years after the Brown v. Board of Educa- tion ruling, the data reveals that very little has actually changed when it comes to the segregation of African Amer- icans and Latinos in our schools," said Heilig. Hannah-Jones has found the same racial regression in her reporting of schools in Tuscaloosa and St. Louis, where white parents have what she calls a "barricading mentality" against black chil- dren attending school with their children. Don't look to her for hope. After she "laid out this in- credibly adaptable racist sys- tem that is harming genera- tions of black children, people want me to give them hope," she said on the PostBourgie podcast. "And I understand it, because you don't want to be- lieve that it's intractable, but it is, and it's intractable because we have absolutely no will to do anything about it." There's no hope if we're talking about forced busing or cash reparations. The only ideas out there are grad-school fantasies such as giving black citizens five thirds of a vote— that is, make their votes count almost twice as much as oth- ers'—to make up for the three- fifths compromise. Systems are intractable. People are not. Through a vol- untary student exchange pro- gram, white and black Amer- icans can walk a mile in each other's shoes if even for a lit- tle while. We have a long way to go, and this could be a good first step. JasonStanfordisaregular contributor to the Austin American-Statesman, a Democratic consultant and a Truman National Security Project partner. You can email him at stanford@oppresearch. com and follow him on Twitter @JasStanford. Commentary Exchange program for racial integration Cartoonist's take Another example of main- stream news (MSN) complic- ity with Democrats is their fa- vorable treat- ment of Emperor Obama's unilat- eral, unconstitu- tional immigra- tion executive ac- tions (in case you forgot, he said 22 times that he couldn't just set aside immigration laws passed by Congress; he said he wasn't "an emperor"). I've cited the reluctance of the MSN, and even local news, to honestly inform Americans about the many crimes committed by il- legal immigrants. They offer us similarly agenda-driven "news" by put- ting a positive spin on the ef- fect of border-crossing and visa-overstaying workers on our economy and employment. In "Obama immigration plan good, not great for economy" (AP, Chico Enterprise-Record, 1 3/14), the writer might have discovered the fact that immi- grants were taking American jobs and driving wages down, which is the actual case. No, he instead asserted, "President Barack Obama's ex- pansive executive action on immigration is good for the U.S. economy—just not as good as partnering with Con- gress on broader reforms." Further into the article it is explained that, while Obama's actions would be a "boost to labor income by $6.8 billion, helping to generate 160,000 new jobs and $2.5 billion in additional tax revenues… Their economic potential is being held back" (Raul Hi- nojosa-Ojeda, UCLA profes- sor). Get it? If only Congres- sional Republicans would pass complete amnesty, the eco- nomic benefits would be even greater. Does that make sense to you? If only illegal immigrants would arrive with qualifica- tions to be university profes- sors, reporters or editors, or news media employees—and work for a fraction of current wages and salaries. Am I being cynical to sus- pect that such cheerleaders for massive, illegal immigra- tion might suddenly find it has a detrimental impact on their respective professions? "Still, any gains from the ex- ecutive action would be mod- est in the $17 trillion econ- omy." Yes, modest in the big picture, but it's pretty darn significant if an immigrant, le- gal or otherwise, is filling your job, or if you haven't had a raise because the labor market is skewed towards the lower compensation that visa-carry- ing foreigners accept. The elites of academia and MSN advance the "immi- grants are great for America" spin, while avoiding the down side of immigration—particu- larly the illegal flood of recent years. These elites are just doing their well-paid jobs, forming everyone else's opinions, with- out any fear of being replaced. They also have the satisfaction of being among the progres- sive "group think" leaders of America—but leading Amer- ica where? As if to double down on us- ing the "news" to influence readers' thoughts in the pre- ferred direction, another AP article in the same paper pre- sented us with "Winners and losers under Obama's immi- gration plan" (not labeled analysis or opinion, mind you). If you think that the re- porter researched and discov- ered the possible, even likely, downsides to providing le- galization for illegal immi- grants—the costs for school- ing, health care, subsidies, downward pressure on wages, and the public money needed to support jobless Americans— you would be mistaken. No, that "news" story re- galed the reader with anec- dotes of illegal "winners" who will become part of Ameri- can's economy without both- ering to go through our immi- gration requirements. Those are juxtaposed with sob stories of unfortunates who won't be legalized al- though they crossed the bor- der, or over-stayed their visas, just like the "winners." Perhaps you think I'm just blowing my own spin; you would be wrong. In "Does il- legal immigration explain the disconnect between jobs and wages?" (June 9), John Hin- deraker observes, "After seven years of 'recovery,' the jobs picture is finally beginning to brighten a bit…economists are puzzled. If hiring is picking up, why are wages and GDP stagnant, or even shrinking?" He refers to Tyler Durden's writing, at ZeroHedge.com, for a likely answer to the lack of wage growth: immigration. Durden's focus on immigra- tion is only the most recent analysis to factor that phe- nomenon into our employment doldrums. Look up "CIS study: All growth in employment since 2000 has gone to immi- grants" (6/26/2014, National- Review.com and 6/28/2014, Powerlineblog.com), "Where did the jobs go?" (12/20/2014), and "Net U.S. job gains since the recession have gone to for- eign-born workers" (2/07/2015, Brietbart.com). For over a year, the answer has been in front of our faces in the Bureau of Labor Statis- tics data, which conveniently separates foreign-born em- ployment from native-born employment in America. Dur- den: "But the biggest surprise came from Table 7, where the BLS reveals the num- ber of 'foreign born workers' used in the Household Sur- vey. In May this number in- creased to 25.098 million, the second highest in history, a monthly jump of 279,000…this would mean that there were just 1,000 native-born work- ers added in May of the total 280,000 jobs added. "Alternatively…then the 272,000 increase in total Household Survey civilian em- ployment in May would im- ply a decline of 7,000 native- born workers offset by the in- crease of 279,000 'foreign borns.' Using the BLS's own Native-Born series, we find the following stunner: since the start of the Second Great De- pression, the US has added 2.3 million 'foreign-born' work- ers, offset by just 727,000 'na- tive-born.'" Only a candidate who acknowledges, and will fix this, deserves our vote. No Democrat will touch it; our fu- ture depends on the right Re- publican. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@yahoo.com. The way I see it Immigrant job gains, native-born losses If we wanted to do what worked, we'd go back to forced busing, but there's no desire to do that despite the fact that school integration cut the achievement gap in half. Don Polson StateandNational Assemblyman James Galla- gher, 2060 Talbert Drive, Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 895-4217, http://ad03.asmrc.org/ Senator Jim Nielsen, 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator. nielsen@senate.ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown, State Capital Building, Sacramento 95814, 916 445-2841, fax 916 558- 3160, governor@governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug La- Malfa, 507 Cannon House Of- fice Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202 225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Fein- stein, One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415 393- 0707, fax 415 393-0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, 1700 Montgomery St., San Fran- cisco 94111, 510 286-8537, fax 202 224-0454 Local Tehama County Supervisors, 527-4655 District 1, Steve Chamblin, Ext. 3015 District 2, Candy Carlson, Ext. 3014 District 3, Dennis Garton, Ext. 3017 District 4, Bob Williams, Ext. 3018 YOUR OFFICIALS OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, August 25, 2015 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6