Author: haroldblackphd

The Winter Olympics are coming soon. I doubt if I will watch any of it – not because they are in China – but because I am not a fan of winter sports. Oh, I admire the amazing skill level and prowess of the athletes, but I am no fan of snow and ice. I have often said that I will never live in a place where the stores sell white camo and that I have redlined any place that does not have red dirt. Yet  several questions come to mind. First, when they do the medal count, do they count just one event or all the medals earned in that event (1 gold for women’s hockey or a gold for each team member)? Second, who is the greatest American Olympian of all time? The speed skater Apolo Ohno has been cited as America’s greatest Winter Olympian. He has 8 metals (2 gold, 2 silver and 4 bronze). Personally, I think it’s interesting that a celebrated athlete is named “Ohno” but I disqualify him from being the greatest. If all his medals were gold, then he would at least be in the discussion. Some have touted Michael Phelps as the greatest Olympic athlete of all time. There is no doubt that he is most medaled swimmer and Olympian.  Swimming and gymnastics are sports with multiple opportunities to win medals with team and individual sports. Phelps has a remarkable 18 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze but he has the same number of individual gold medals as Carl Lewis (sprints and long jump). Lewis medaled in the 100, 200, 4×100 relay and the long jump in two separate Olympics. The great Jesse Owens (go Buckeyes!) won gold in the same four events in the Berlin Olympics. By going back-to-back, Lewis displaced Owens as the greatest American track athlete but Owens’ golds and the circumstances surrounding the 1936 Berlin Olympics keep him in the argument for greatest Olympic athlete of all time. The most gold medals were the 8 won by Ray Ewry in 1900 and 1904 in events no longer in existence (standing long jump, standing high jump and standing triple jump). I know that Usain Bolt won 8 gold medals and won gold at three consecutive Olympics, but Bolt is from Jamaica. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my favorite female athletes, Wilma Rudolph (Tennessee State), Wyomia Tyus, Evelyn Ashford and Simone Biles.

Speaking of Jesse Owens – whose name is actually James Cleveland (J.C.) Owens. Much is made of the fact that Adolf Hitler refused to shake his hand. But I thought that Hitler only shook the hand of German winners – so he would not have shaken Owens’ hand even if he were white. You can understand the snub – if there was one – but can you explain why FDR snubbed him? There was no commendation, no visit to the White House, no acknowledgement at all. Truman ignored him as well and it was left up to a Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, to finally honor him. This is just another long line in the irony of American politics where the democrats are the racists and the republicans (Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan (MLK birthday) are not and yet the republicans are branded as racists and lately white supremacists.  Go figure.

Our musical heritage is full of songs depicting the American love for the automobile. That love now seems to be gone. I remember when 4 on the floor made you the envy of your friends. Cars were jacked up. Cars were lowered. Accessories abound. Chrome trim, mag wheels were the rage. So I am wondering will the truly awful looking teeny cars, plug-ins and greenie weenie hybrids inspire the next generation of songs? “I’m gettin’ a jolt from my Volt” or perhaps “I plugged into my Charger into my charger?” Yes I know that Tesla owners constitute a cult. No car is rated lower in quality yet no car has a higher owner satisfaction. Hence, a cult is the only explanation for its owners fanatical love.

There is actually a website that lists the number of mentions of all car brands in the songs but not necessarily in the title. Mercedes has over 5,000 while Tesla has only 140 and most of those are either in German and/or parodies.

I have listed a few below songs with cars in the title in no particular order – I’ve omitted mentions such as ”drove my Chevy to the levy”.  I am especially fond of Maybelinne, Pink Cadillac, Freeway of Love and Mustang Sally. I’m waiting for a song about a lowered Tesla with mag wheels and the driver doing a gangsta lean.

What are your favorites?

Maybelinne – Chuck Berry

Freeway of Love (Pink Cadillac)- Aretha Franklin 

Little Red Corvette – Prince

Jaguar – The Who

Mustang Sally – Wilson Pickett 

From a Buick 6 – Bob Dylan

64 Chevolet Impala – Dr Dre 

Wild, Wild Mustang – The Del-Tones 

Little Deuce Coupe – Beach Boys 

Mercedes Benz – Janis Joplin 

Pink Cadillac – Natalie Cole

Trans Am – Neil Young

Little GTO – Ronnie and the Daytonas

Jeepster – T-Rex

I’m Changing My Name to Chrysler – Tom Paxton 

Chevrolet – ZZ Top

Long White Cadillac – The Blasters 

Who’s Cadillac is That? – War 

The left is making clucking sounds about equity. The Biden administration has wholeheartedly embraced the concept with virtually every facet of government being charged with furthering equity. The pivoting to equity from equality is another embrace of Critical Race Theory, postulating that whites have rigged the American system in their favor to the exclusion of minorities – especially blacks but not Asians.

Yes it is true that many blacks are successful but the equity crowd would posit that either they are the exceptions or they would have been even more successful had they been white. This is a throwback to the segregated South and Jim Crow days when there were racial silos, one white and one black. Those silos were both stratified by earnings and education. However, when placed on top of each other, the highest ranking black was lower than the lowest ranking white. 

As we used to say when we heard the Civil Rights anthem “We shall overcome,” white folks don’t mind us overcoming just so long as we didn’t come over. Martin Luther King led a movement to merge the silos, a movement for equality. 

Today’s left wants to have separate silos in order to addresses inequities through reparations. Statistics show racial income and wealth gaps (note that there is also a gender gap but that would mean paying reparations to white women so the left ignores it). If blacks and whites with the same education have different incomes and different wealth then the left posits that the differences are due to systemic racism and should be addressed via equity. This reinforces the notion of “separate but equal”. 

The problem is that giving remuneration to the lower earning group provides a disincentive to make oneself better off while providing a disincentive (and resentment) to achieve more for the group that is having its earnings taxed away and reallocated to the other group. Thus, a movement from equality to equity will foster an economic race war. 

The move toward equity rather than equality is at its roots an attack on the fundamental concept of American meritocracy. A basic tenet of our economic system is that merit is rewarded rather than birth. The American democracy was a rejection of the British system of aristocracy which was based on wealth and birth. In America, it was proposed that those who work harder will be rewarded more than those who are equally endowed but who choose to work less. The equity crowd would argue that two individuals who are equal in all aspects except for race are rewarded differently. A rejection of rewarding innate talents and hard work in favor of rewarding based on race is a rejection of basic American principles and a rejection of capitalism. 

Indeed, the proponents of Critical Race Theory state that capitalism is antithetical to equity. Thus, even though I have achieved virtually every goal I set for myself professionally, the equity advocates would argue that I would have achieved more had I been born white. There, of course, are exceptions but they are few and far between. Even Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Lebron James embrace Critical Race Theory. What the left doesn’t tell us is that Critical Race Theory and equity do nothing more than institute a rewards system based on their own tastes and preferences. 

To some of us looking on from the outside it seems that Defense Secretary Austin and the Joint Chiefs’ Milley are intent on degrading our military. Here is an incomplete list: the reversal of Trump’s transgender policy, the removal of sexual assault cases from the chain of command, the instituting of Critical Race Theory, the hiring of a Pentagon chief of diversity and inclusion, the purging of “extremists”. One retired general said that the Biden Administration is intent on changing the military into “woke social justice warriors” ignoring the words of former defense secretary Mattis who said that “there should be only one measurable standard for our defense policies and priorities: Does the action make us more or less lethal.” In this administration’s case, the answer is “no”.

Austin and Milley’s mandating of  COVID vaccines for the military adds to the list. Why the mandate? As of this writing, there were a grand total of 27 military deaths attributed to COVID. That is a death to infection rate of 0.0001 percent. Note that the military does not report if these were deaths from COVID or with COVID. Nonetheless, COVID does not pose a serious threat to our military. It is clear is that the mandate has not scientific justification and is politically motivated rather than health related. Military personnel are in the main not among the COVID at-risk group. Although the “let’s keep them scared” crowd is fearmongering the recent rise in infections, there is little evidence that the death rate is increasing among those infected. Indeed, some statistics show falling death rates and less severe illnesses attributed to the Delta variant. I doubt that the mandating of vaccines will add to military readiness. Rather, it could adversely affect morale. The miniscule death rate does not even compare with that of suicides. There were 541 military suicides and 6,425 veteran suicides in 2018. One wonders if the suicide rate will increase due to the COVID mandate.

A House Republican introduced a bill with 24 sponsors to prohibit the military from forcing vaccines on the troops. Of course, it has no chance of passage. The bill was proposed because the Representative claimed that he had been contacted by military personnel saying that they would quit if the vaccine were mandated. It will be interesting to see if the mandate will provoke a mutiny in the ranks and an increase in court martials. There will likely be a constitutional challenge as well. 

I guess one could chalk up the mandate to the long list of stupid orders given by commanders to the ranks who are expected to follow them without challenge. Commands such as Pickett’s (Longstreet’s) charge at Gettysburg come to mind as are a myriad of lesser ones. My brother was a B-52 pilot flying missions over Viet Nam and talked about all the stupid orders they received during that conflict. Most were obeyed but some were not because they would be dangerous and yield little if no benefit. Ask any soldier or any veteran. They would give you a long list of stupid orders from their superior officers.

COVID mandates will just be added to the stupid list.

My musings typically generate comments. In twelve years the most negative comments I received were over the letter “b”. A copy editor had capitalized all the “bs” in black – where it designated race – and not the “w” for white. I was asked why I did that and my response was “I didn’t” and “I don’t”. After George Floyd the oracle-who-names at the Associated Press decreed that henceforth and forever more, black was Black and white was white. Before George Floyd a couple of newspapers had started the practice but it became universal after George Floyd. The Associated Press gave the following justification for the rebranding: “AP’s style is now to capitalize Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black, including those in the African diaspora and within Africa. The lowercase black is a color, not a person. AP style will continue to lowercase the term white in racial, ethnic and cultural senses.” The AP further said that only white supremacists capitalize white and the New York Times opined that “White doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black does.” 

Of course, the explanation from AP and the New York Times is pure garbage. If we go back into history, we find that there has always been fluidity is what people are called. We once said “American Indians” and it is now “Native Americans.” I don’t think the naming oracle consulted the Indians what they would like to be called. They probably referred to themselves by their individual tribe. However, the oracle-who-names (who is likely white) decreed “Native Americans” even though they were not native to the Americas. “Indigenous Peoples” would have been more apt.

As to blacks, we were first referred to simply as “slaves”. Then whites used the term “Africans” inferring that blacks were alien to this soil. During the Civil War, black Union soldiers were often called African Americans or troops of African descent. Then came Afro-Americans (which never got traction), colored and “negro”. The great WEB Dubois campaigned to have the “n” capitalized rightly arguing that the lower case “n” was intended to convey subhuman status and that “negro” was a proper noun. The oracle-who-names agreed and henceforth “negro” became “Negro”. The Civil Rights movement brought forth the effort to change the usage of the term black which conveyed something dark, evil and sinister in contrast to “white” which conveyed purity. Hence “black is beautiful”, “black power”, and black people as a corollary to white people.

Now we have Black versus white. See how the white oracle-who-names has  artificially elevated black people over whites in print. This is contrasted to the progressives who argue that systemic racism places blacks beneath whites. Again the AP’s justification is that blacks as a race share history, identity and community and whites don’t. Excuse me? What is shared by American blacks is America. Africa is much more diverse than Europe, with more distinct tribal groups, cultures and languages. American blacks in the main come from a small slice of the African continent. My black African ancestors come from the countries surrounding Ghana and had nothing in common but their color. They were not from Ghana which was the home of the black slave traders. So when I went on Safari three times in South Africa, no one came up to me saying “welcome home my brother” in Ndebele. My people came from farther north.

Our shared history is not African but American. Our shared history began with slavery in American and not from the wide range of cultures from the African continent. The oracle-who-names implies that we all alike. We aren’t.  Only in Tarzan’s New York Adventure could the Ape Man and Jane identify blacks by tribal groups. My father’s family initially disapproved of my mother for being too white while Mom’s family thought my Dad was too black. Indeed, my father said he was rejected when he applied to an certain HBCU because he was too dark. When I was in South Africa, I could tell tribal groups but not here in America. I dare you to tell me my tribal origins. My DNA lists 10 distinct groups only three of which are African.

Black is not a proper noun – unless it is my last name – and should not be capitalized. When the oracle-who-names decreed that African American should replace “black” I was asked to referee a scholarly paper in my field. I found that several of my papers were cited but attributed to someone named “Harold African-American.”

The oracle-who-names is offering a lame explanation that tries to justify his own political view. As pointed out by a very smart observer “George Orwell had a character in his class dystopian novel say, the destruction of certain words “narrow the range of thought” to the point that individuals in society are not as capable of a broader range of thought. Words can be weapons, and different individuals ascribe differing meanings to words, largely due to their own personal experiences.” So adopt the AP’s spelling or not. It depends on your personal views. But it is not grammar. It is purely political.

Knoxfocus.com

January 10, 2022

Just to make sure that I am fair and balanced, I read some of the left-wing press. It seems to think that the border crisis is some made up right wing fantasy concocted to keep the base inflamed. I wonder if the authors have ever gone to the border and talked to the citizens there? Well unlike the president or vice president I went to the border in November – albeit to deer hunt near Eagle Pass, TX on a 16,000 acre ranch. There the border crisis is real. The rancher, his wife and his three teenage children all have 9mm pistols strapped to their legs. He has electrified the area around his housing compound and lets his dogs patrol the perimeter at night. His trail cameras show young men – both Hispanic and African – in camo with backpacks on his land. He confronts trespassers who want water, food and to charge their cell phones. When denied they often get threatening. His family has operated the ranch for generations but he says that the past year has been unlike any he has seen and has been pure hell. They find dead bodies, evidence of sexual activity and drug use. The border patrol is overburdened but is trying to do its job. The rancher showed me a chart with the number of illegals caught in mid-year exceeding those apprehended the previous year. More troubling, the illegals were from over 100 different countries. Who knows how many were not caught.

The question is why does the left want open borders and illegal immigration? Some democrats say that the increase in the flow of immigrants will lessen inflation by depressing wages. This is idiotic and likely cause the opposite as the burden on welfare programs will increase. Another is that the democrats see the illegals as a pool of new voters. Is this true? Cuban-Americans knowing too well the horrors of socialism tend to vote republican. Many of the illegals also have experienced socialism firsthand. It is doubtful that they sympathize with Bernie Sanders and AOC. The illegals from the countries to our south are mostly Catholic. Given the teachings of their church, I wonder if they support the abortion-on-demand-up- to-and-until-birth position favored by the democratic party, including the CINOs (Catholics in name only) like Biden, Pelosi and Sotomayor. Consider that the citizens along the border are predominately Hispanic want the inflow of illegals to stop. Local municipalities are overburdened. The ousting of Hispanic democrat politicians by Hispanic republican ones in local and congressional races should send a warning to the left that their strategy is not working.

The last reason why some democrats favor open borders is probably too esoteric to be taken seriously. Some academics have postulated that open borders would lead to the lefts’ dream of a guaranteed annual income. This would come about by overwhelming the current welfare system. However, I don’t view this as a plausible explanation. First, it would call for the elimination of all welfare programs. This won’t happen because of the huge constituency of people who make their living by servicing the poor that would be thrown out of work. Second, the leftists in congress such as Bernie Sanders and AOC are not deep thinkers and would want a continuation of current welfare in addition to a guaranteed annual income. Lastly, a guaranteed annual income would not eliminate wealth disparities. Since we all have different tastes and preferences, much to the dismay of the naïve left, we could all have the same income, but have very different wealth. 

Joe Biden just punted on COVID. After campaigning blaming Donald Trump for every death and stating that only he could fix the problem, he has now given up. The COVID deaths on his watch have exceeded that on Trump’s.  Remember when he said that he would “immediately put in place a national strategy that will position our country to finally get ahead of this virus and get back our lives?” Well, whatever was the strategy obviously failed. Realizing that he could not stop the virus and knowing that his allies in the media would have short memories, Biden said “Look, there is no federal solution. This gets solved on the state level.” Huh? I thought that Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida were Neanderthals because they were ignoring the federal government and seeking local solutions. Didn’t the media skewer them and Trump for saying that the solution lay with the sates? Hasn’t the media been painting DeSantis as a messenger of death – despite hard data showing otherwise? Of course, the media assumes that most of us are shallow with limited memories and can keep lying to us without us knowing it.

Another media challenge is the sainted Dr Fauci who seems to also have some difficulty with the truth. I am confident that Fauci consulted with Biden in proclaiming that Christmas would be the season “For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.” What are the odds that this is true? Even though the omicron variant is now predominant, all data point to it being relatively mild. We are now being told that if you have a cold, it’s probably COVID. What I think is hilarious is the report that in the socialist republic of Vermont, the hospitals are being overwhelmed, not by the unvaccinated but by the vaccinated who have tested positive for COVID despite having no or mild symptoms. So the government has gotten people so scared that they will run to the hospital even when there is no need. Fauci, in addition to being the grinch that stole Christmas is also proclaiming that we should cancel New Year’s parties due to the spread of the omicron variant. I am surprised that he didn’t advise the canceling of all the bowl games and any sporting event (super spreaders anyone?). This is in addition to all the government figures telling Americans that “they should shun unvaccinated family members for Christmas, mask up around family members from other households or even cancel their Christmas gathering altogether for the second straight year.” 

Pardon me if I ignore all the doom and gloomers. It has gotten to the point where I do not believe anyone associated with the government on the subject of COVID. It is apparent that in the face of decreasing deaths that they are trying to keep instilling fear in the population. If the data are to be believed, then we need to add natural immunity to those vaccinated. We need to question why any child should wear a mask and be vaccinated. We need to know that the chance of dying from COVID for those under 45 is minuscule (yes I know that we need studies on any lingering aftereffects). Given what we know, our efforts should be concentrated on the truly vulnerable – those over 65 with a co-condition rather than trying to scare the begesus out everyone else – as apparently what has happened in Vermont.

Knoxville Focus (knoxfocus.com)

December 13, 2021

I have always been confused by the abortion debate. The democrats who are abortion’s most ardent supporters are reducing their future voters while republicans are trying to stop them. It seems to me that this is opposite of what should be. As to abortion itself, I have wondered for some time why isn’t the unborn baby accorded citizenship and constitutional rights when it becomes viable. Perhaps one day that will be the basis of a court case. In the meantime I have asked why Planned Parenthood is not characterized as being predatory. 

The left routinely excoriates high rate lenders as predatory, alleging that they prey on low income and minority communities. They point out that the clientele of the lenders of subprime loans, payday lenders and pawn shops are disproportionately low income and minority. There are “advocates” who argue that no loan is preferable to loans at high rates. Obviously, these “advocates” have good credit, live in upscale neighborhoods and can borrow at low rates. “Advocates” say that “the financial institutions that do exist in minority areas are predatory—for example, pawn shops, payday lenders, and check cashing services that charge high fees and rates of interest—so that minority group members are accustomed to exploitation and frequently unaware that better services are available elsewhere.” Predatory lenders are said to aggressively market in minority communities and the location of the lenders is enough to confirm in some minds predatory behavior. 

What is ironic is that using the same criteria, Planned Parenthood is should be classified as predatory, preying on low income and minority communities. Seventy eight percent of Planned Parenthood’s clinics are in minority neighborhoods even though blacks make up less than 14 percent of the US population. It seems reasonable to ask if Planned Parenthood is targeting black communities and poor women.

Targeting black women was the objective of Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger who said that “Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated”. She gave speeches to women’s auxiliaries of the Ku Klux Klan and talked about purifying the human race by establishing a birth control clinic in Harlem in 1930. She said “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” Thus, Sanger may have been the first to employ black spokesmen who would urge other blacks to act in a manner contrary to their best interests.

When these views came to light Planned Parenthood canceled their founder distancing themselves from Sanger, although her mission of aborting black babies remains unchanged. She would be delighted to know that blacks abort at a rate four times that of whites and black abortions were a third of total abortions last year in the US. In New York City, the headquarters of Planned Parenthood, more black babies were aborted last year than were born alive. Sanger would be pleased to know that absent abortion the black population would be 40 percent larger than it is today – most of them democrat voters. It should come as no surprise that Planned Parenthood is the number one killer of blacks in America.

So is Planned Parenthood predatory? You decide.

Knoxville Focus

November 15, 2021

I’ve been to South Africa three times to bow hunt. The first time I landed in Johannesburg I did not feel like I was returning to my homeland (since my homeland is Gray, GA). When I land in Knoxville I say to myself “home,” back to my things, to my house, to my dogs, back to where I belong. Not so in Africa. No one looks remotely like me. The only people who thought I was a native were a couple from Charlotte who asked me for directions (speaking very slowly) at the Johannesburg airport. No one came running up to me speaking Xhosa and welcoming me home as a fellow tribesman. My African tribes are much farther north. They were among the at least 100 tribal groups taken to America where they were broken up, sold and dispersed with loss of language and cultural identity. 

When you arrive in Johannesburg, there is a sign that says “11 Languages One Country.” Yet although there are 11 official languages, more than 35 indigenous languages are spoken in the country. In the airport you could see different tribes. Although the color was fairly uniform, there were very distinct differences in the features from noses and lips to differences in cheekbones and brows. When I landed in Polokwane where most of the blacks are Lesotho, the official language is Southern Sesotho. By the time I left, I could distinguish a southern Lesotho from a northern Lesotho (whose language is Sepedi).

At home it is rare to see two black people that could be identified as being from the same tribe unless they are from the same family. Clarence Thomas, Vanessa Williams, Beyonce, Nicki Minaj and Thomas Sowell do not look remotely alike. Even if you go to one city – like Knoxville – its hard to see any tribal similarity. In America, the blacks came from all over central and west Africa from literally hundreds of tribes. They were then split up, sold and then mixed with whites from all over Europe and Native Americans. The result is me. I have 10 distinct DNA strains and am only fifty percent West African.  My mother’s DNA was 32 percent British and less than 40% West African. I don’t know my father’s but I suspect it was predominately West African. Dad and his family were dark skinned. Mom and her family were fair skinned (her father could pass for white). Initially, Dad’s family did not embrace my mother because she was too white while mother’s thought my Dad was too black.

Thus, I have resisted calling myself an African-American. To me that’s denies all of my other ancestors. Don’t misunderstand, I am fiercely proud of my African ancestors. I am Cameroon, Mali and Togo. But I am also Scotch Irish, British, European, Russian, Scandinavian and Native American. I am tempted when asked on a form for my race to check all the boxes. At ESPN, one of the most woke and least tolerant networks, they suspended a sports anchor who said among other things that she was proud of her mix-race heritage and identified as both black and Italian leading her to check both the boxes of “white” and “black”. 

Some radical leftists have tried without success to pin on whites the term “European-Americans.” These are the same people who want to segregate us with hyphens: African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian Americans, Native American-Americans, and European-but-not of-Hispanic descent-Americans. Enough already. The racial/ethnic hodgepodge of American blacks like me make us uniquely American. Rather than African-American I am more correctly a Mongrel-American. However, that term will not likely gain much traction. So what am I? I am an American-American.

The Education Industrial Complex

Knoxville Focus (knoxfocus.com)

November 22, 2021

There is an old saying that all politics is local. That certainly was corroborated in the Virginia gubernatorial election. Despite the Biden Administration being a total disaster and supposedly unpopular in Virginia, the democrat candidate still had campaign appearances with Biden and Kamala Harris (who is even less popular). The inflection point in the election came when the democrat said in a televised debate that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” That comment, along with the controversy over access to girl’s bathrooms and locker rooms by boys who profess gender confusion, swung the election in favor of Youngkin, the republican. As I have written earlier, my solution to the bathroom controversy is to remove the male/female symbols from the bathroom doors and put up pictures of genitalia instead saying “if your privates look like this, then enter here.” 

Of course, the usual apologists in the media made stupid comments like “my parents shouldn’t tell my math teacher whether to teach the central limit theorem.” This assumes that the teacher knows what the central limit theorem was. No, the point was that parents should know if their children are being indoctrinated rather than taught. A great example is a liberal friend who objected to her school board adding LBGT books to the elementary school curriculum. She said at the school board meeting that she supported many LBGT issues including gay marriage but that such issues were for discussion in the home and not at school. When the board decided otherwise, she took her children out of public schools.

Schools should be tasked with teaching reading, writing and arithmetic and little else – although it would be nice if they also taught about our system of government. Yet schools are failing at these basic tasks and are not motivated to do better. If a child comes from a nuclear family with both parents college educated, then what transpires in the schools is almost irrelevant. One of my favorite professors said “I have never ruined a good student.” However, children from single parent households where the parent is not college educated face an uphill struggle. In a more rational world, the performance of our community’s children at Sarah Moore Greene and Green Magnet here in Knoxville would be cause of termination of the superintendent and system administrators. Those schools have dedicated teachers who are hamstrung by curricula and teaching method imposed on them by the Education Industrial Complex that have little to do with learning and retention. The abysmal scores go unpunished. I guess the consolation is that those scores look like Ivy League compared to those in Memphis.

Youngkin in Virginia has an aggressive education agenda. In it he states that all children are to be able to read by the third grade. Lots of luck with that one. What he doesn’t realize is that the Education Industrial Complex has no interest in teaching kids. The textbook companies, the textbook authors, the colleges of education, the teachers’ unions and the accreditation agencies all have agendas, none of which contain quality education for children. The annual convention program for the teachers’ unions reads like a socialist playbook with not a session on effective teaching. Several years ago, I was approached by a foundation to lobby for a program that emphasized reading for grades K-3.  If children cannot read by the third grade, then many are condemned to high drop out rates, incarceration and a subsistence dependent upon the government. The foundation was willing to fund a reading curriculum in our poorest performing schools. The school superintendent told me that he could not put the curriculum into the schools because it would not be approved by the state’s accreditation agencies because it “contained too much reading.” 

Given that the teachers’ unions contribute 95% of their political contributions to democrats, It is no surprise that the democrats are not interested (as a party) in educating our children and oppose virtually every educational alternative. The republicans have endorsed vouchers, charter schools and have advocated merit pay for teachers (all strongly opposed by the unions), smaller classrooms and increased funding. None of the above will work. They are all doomed to fail so long as the Education Industrial Complex is in place dictating teaching method and curriculum.

So if you are interesting in educating our children (all of our children) the only solution is to blow up the entire Education Industrial Complex. Lastly, this not solely about minority children. All of our children suffer as evidenced by the following chart. The question is why do we tolerate this abysmal performance?following chart. The question is why do we tolerate this abysmal performance?

following chart. The question is why do we tolerate this abysmal performace?