Sunday, January 01, 2006

Rural school accused of racism: Indian students get punished more than white peers, and far fewer of them graduate

Where they can get away with it, the heavyhandedness of Left-dominated teachers towards students for the most minor infractions is well known. And that heavyhandedness certainly seems evident in what the story below relates. What is rather amusing however is that this time the ACLU is invoving itself -- because some of the affected students are Amerindians. Two lots of Leftists at odds with one-another! I add a feisty comment from a reader immediately below the story:

Casey Chasing Hawk once loved school so much that he would arrive at his bus stop 30 minutes early. That all changed when Casey was pulled out of his seventh-grade class by the Winner school superintendent, turned over to the police and thrown into jail for telling a teacher he was so angry at a classmate who beat him that he wanted to kill him. He spent 63 days in a juvenile-detention facility 60 miles from home before the South Dakota Supreme Court determined that his misbehavior didn't even amount to disorderly conduct. "They claimed he was a monster, so they had to make him look like a monster," said his father, Nelson Chasing Hawk. "They did all these evaluations on him, and they found out that his only problem was what they had done to him at that school."

What happened to Casey more than four years ago is still resonating today in this tiny town near a sprawling Lakota Sioux reservation. It has landed this rural district in southern South Dakota squarely in the middle of a wider debate over how schools discipline minority children. Civil rights advocates want to make a national example of this 900-student district over the "school-to-prison pipeline" - the practice of arresting children and teens for routine school misconduct such as fighting and disobedience. It's an issue that has garnered attention in largely minority urban districts such as Chicago but is practically ignored in Indian country.

Winner district leaders argue that Indian children are treated fairly in the district's three schools and that it enforces its discipline code without bias. Yet this isn't the first time Winner schools have faced federal scrutiny. The Office for Civil Rights in the Education Department ordered the Winner district in 2000 to eradicate racial harassment and to stop disciplining Native Americans more severely than their white peers, and after four years of scrutiny the case was closed in 2004.

But the district's own statistics from 2001 to 2004 demonstrate that Indian children continue to be punished at disproportionate rates and are leaving the district in droves. In Winner Middle School, Indian children represent less than 20 percent of the pupil population but 100 percent of the pupils suspended for insubordination in the 2002-03 school year. Last year, Indian pupils made up 70 percent of all out-of-school suspensions and 79 percent of police referrals. At the grade school, about 90 Indian children are enrolled in pre-kindergarten to fourth grade - almost one-third of the school's population of 293. But at Winner High School, only about 2 percent of the graduates are Indian in a typical year.

Where do they go? Some drop out. Others go to prison. Most flee to reservation schools that are so far away from their families that they must live in dormitories during the school week. The Winner students who live in dorms 45 miles from home do so, they say, because they are convinced that Winner's schools are hostile places. Sometimes this belief is born of personal experience with a racist child or an insensitive teacher. More often, it's the perception gleaned from stories passed down from parents and cousins and siblings. "They made my brother go to jail. They said he stabbed someone with a pencil," said 11-year-old Alysia Peneaux, who lives in the tribal dormitory and attends sixth grade in Mission, S.D. She misses her family during the week, but she was afraid of trouble at Winner Middle. "I know they would be mean to me, so I didn't want to go to school there." Glen Old Lodge, a high school junior, said he left in eighth grade because he was always blamed for disagreements he had with white classmates. "They almost sent me off, too. It's mostly racism. You just get treated differently," he said.

The discipline and enrollment numbers - provided by the district under terms of the federal lawsuit - prompted the American Civil Liberties Union and Lakota Sioux tribal officials to file a complaint this year demanding that the case be reopened by the civil rights office. Bernardine Dohrn, a Northwestern University law professor and a national expert on the school-to-prison pipeline, said it's important to identify this issue in rural areas because help for these alienated students is hard to find. "At least in Chicago, the school board can say everyone has access to an alternative school," Dohrn said. "Most of the time in rural districts, there is no alternative. When kids are pushed out . it's a desperate situation. And they don't have the access to lawyers and advocates who are going to fight on their behalf."

But New York City lawyers from the ACLU decided to advocate for a few dozen families in this town. The ACLU argued in its complaint that the school district was able to get the federal case closed in 2004 by presenting "a grossly distorted" picture of race relations in the district. "It's shocking to see the statistics coming out of this district - they are off the chart in terms of egregiousness," said Catherine Kim, an ACLU lawyer handling the case. "But I also think Winner makes it clear that these issues are not confined to urban schools perceived to be dangerous. Winner is an ordinary American town but in terms of race relations, Winner is very far behind a lot of other places."

Winner School District officials acknowledged that the region suffered from a history of discrimination, but argued in its response to the ACLU complaint that it now "takes pride in its efforts to stamp out discrimination through education (and) sound policy." Superintendent Mary Fisher, a former elementary principal who took over the district after the superintendent named in the Chasing Hawk case left the Winner district, said she's upset about the lies that have been spread about her schools. She said national advocates are making a major case out of isolated complaints from disgruntled families. "We have great kids here, and very little trouble," Fisher said during a tour of the middle school this fall, when she boasted of school offerings that ranged from high-tech distance learning to a new golf team. "I'm a strong believer that you can always improve. But if you discipline kids, you're going to have parents who are upset."

A review of disciplinary reports from 2002-2004 submitted as part of the 2000 civil rights case complaint revealed that an Indian boy in middle school was suspended for two days for walking through an alley rather than using a crosswalk; an Indian girl got the same punishment for chewing gum. An eighth-grader drew a 90-day suspension for disrupting class and "insubordination" - an infraction that calls for a maximum punishment of four days suspension. Another eighth-grader drew a four-day suspension for gang-related activity - drawing a medicine wheel and writing "Native Pride" on his notebook.

The Winner district's lawyer challenged some of the conclusions presented in the ACLU complaint, particularly the assertion that school leaders ignore racial harassment of Native American students. "It is easy to play the race card when children of different racial or ethnic backgrounds have problems with each other. But very often the truth is that such difficulties arise from . human nature, not from racial prejudices," wrote district lawyer Paul Jensen in his August 2005 response to the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights. He did not dispute statistics that show Indian kids get in trouble more often than their Caucasian peers - or that the number of Indian students who leave Winner schools is high. "The lack of parental involvement and sponsorship of their kids' education, high rates of alcoholism and chemical abuse, and many other factors play a role in the unfortunate figures that are reported," Jensen wrote, adding that "teen pregnancies appear to be increasing in some of these cultural groups."

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A reader comments:

Basically, what's happening here is that Indian kids get into more trouble than other kids and drop out of high-school a lot more than other kids. School officials say that it's because of the lack of parental involvement and concern for their kids education, high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse, as well as teen pregnancy. The Indians say it's because of racism.

The boy named at the beginning of this article, Casey Chasing Hawk, apparently lost interest in school, dropped out, left home, was abusing alcohol and is now getting in trouble with the law. "He was raised in a traditional Lakota home and hoped he would be a leader in the tribal community", his parents said.

Right. Well, here we go again. The Indians can't have a decent life because of other people holding them down. I guess they've been attending NAACP meetings, because it sure sounds like the same garbage that the blacks are pulling. They try to learn, they try to be good people, they try try try, but they just can't do it. Guess who's fault it is? Well, of course, it must be white people. After all, white people are the cause of everything negative that has ever happened to Blacks, Indians, women and every other ethnic group you can think of.

Lets try to dissect the situation, mentioned in the news article above. First thing, the woman from Chicago's Northwestern University. She's a lawyer and a professor. She teaches at Northwestern, which is a top university in this country. If you're not from Chicago, you may not be aware of who she is. Let me explain. Her name is Bernardine Dohrn. Does that name ring a bell with anyone? Don't remember her name? Let me tell you about ol' Bernardine. She had another career before becoming an expert in the "school-to-prison-pipeline".

Bernardine Dohrn, was part of "The Weather Underground", an anti-government cell of social activists who declared war on the U.S. government in the 1970's, vowing to attack symbols of "American injustice". The group bombed targets across the country, evaded a massive FBI manhunt and lived to tell their tale as heroes of the extreme left-wing. A couple of more tid-bits for you: She was one of the leaders of the Weathermen. She participated in the bombings of a New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972. Referring to the Tate-LaBianca murders, committed by Charles Manson, she stated, "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim's stomach! Wild!"

Bernardine Dohrn, along with her husband Bill Ayers summed up the Weathermen's ideology as follows: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents." Ayers always took care not to dwell on his own establishment credentials (His father was chairman of the energy company Commonwealth Edison, a fact Ayers conveys only by saying, "My dad worked for Edison").

Dohrn was, in fact, complicit in a number of terrorist bombings intended to destroy key parts of America's defense and security infrastructure, and to cause mass chaos among the population at large. Dohrn and her husband, Bill Ayers were on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted List." In 1980 she and Ayers surrendered, but all charges against them were dropped due to "improper surveillance", as if that should keep a terrorist out of prison. Bill Ayers is now, alarmingly, employed as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

So Dohrn, a scumbag of the first order, is not only teaching collage kids to hate everything she can think of, but is also helping these Indians become even bigger losers then they already are. Thanks a lot Bernardine, you're a big help.

Well, I'm getting off track so lets return to the Indians. This is the fact of the matter: there is no way to help these people. None. If you were trying to think of a way, stop, there isn't one. You can't help people that won't help themselves and you can't live in a "traditional Lakota" home and then be amazed that your kids are messed up. It's the 21st century. The traditional Indian culture didn't work when it was faced with outside influences; their culture crumbled. You cannot live in a closed society and expect to advance. It doesn't work. They didn't advance enough to compete. You know what happens when a species can't compete in nature, it dies out.

The Indian way of life stayed the same over centuries because there were no outside influences. As soon as another culture showed up, their culture became immediately obsolete. It's not anyone's fault, like it or not, it just isn't. That's just the way nature made it. This world is only so big. There is only so much land on this planet. You have to face the fact that people migrate, that's what they do. That's what's in our DNA. You can't stop it.

The only reason that the Indian culture is still here, is because European Americans allowed it to remain, which was a mistake. It would have been better for the Indians if their entire culture was left in the past and they were forced to assimilate into the new culture. People of all cultures became Americans, but by allowing the Indians to have their own land, (reservations), and not assimilate, they stayed in their outdated, closed world. They can't compete as long as they try to remain Indians. They have to become part of America. That means becoming Americans of Indian decent (or however they'd like it termed), just like Americans of German decent and Americans of Italian decent, etc.

They are falling apart because they are still trying to be Indians. I don't care about the fact that they were here first. Somebody had to be here first. Congratulations, do you want a cookie and a pat on the back for being the first? You're now in last place; how did that happen? It happened because they didn't see the writing on the wall. They didn't see the writing because they were living in a closed off place and they didn't understand nature as well as they thought they did. Indians understood the small parts of nature that surrounded them, hunting, fishing, etc. They didn't get the larger part of nature, about having to change and progress. To all of the Indians out there, stop it. Become Americans. If you don't, you will die off. It will be your own fault, nobody else's.

American Indians migrated here just like everybody else. They got here, they formed tribes, just like everybody else in the world. Then they had no outside influences, so they stagnated. They stagnated in the Stone age and never went beyond it. Europeans didn't live in a closed society the way the Indians did. They had outside influences and they advanced. You have to have other influences in life, whether it be your personal life or life as a society.

Indians get more money thrown at them then you could ever imagine, but that doesn't work. That's because money never ever solves these kinds of problems. It can't. It's like trying to fix your cars broken radio by throwing money in your backseat, it won't do any good; that's not how the universe works.

So, where does all this get us? Absolutely nowhere. Nothing is going to change, the Indians will stay the same. That's because nobody is actually holding them down. No matter what Bernardine Dohrn says or what the Hippies say, there isn't anyone trying to hold them down. Nobody. Nobody cares enough about Indians to waste their time holding them down. There's nothing to gain by holding them down, that's why nobody is doing it.

But, to face that fact, you have to face the fact that it's you who are holding yourself down. The real problem is that If nobody is holding you down, then there isn't anyone to push off of you so that you can stand up. They're fighting a ghost. A ghost that they can't touch, can't see and can't ever conquer. It's there own ghost. It's the ghost of how things used to be for them. Sorry, but no matter how much you try, you can't go back because it isn't there anymore. You can only be in touch with your ancestors to a certain degree. You can't be them. The "great Indian nation", is no more. It's gone and it isn't coming back, no matter how hard you try, It's still not going to be there. You can only go forward. If they don't change and start moving forward, they will lose their entire history because they will all eventually just die off.

They will die off the minute this country gets in a serious problem and can't afford to keep them alive. All of the professors in the world, fighting for the Indian cause, won't be able to stop it. All of the tree hugging Hippies, all of the do-gooders and anybody else that wants to help; they won't be able to do a thing. They better realize, in a hurry, that there isn't anyone to point a finger at. All they're doing is just pointing it at the most convenient place. And that's White people. They point at White people and say "you are holding us down" (and of course, white people believe them half the time).

They claim white people are screwing them, but they can't figure out how they're being screwed. So they just pick out anything that goes wrong that has anything to do with a white person and go, "SEE, SEE, THIS WHITE PERSON IS HOLDING ME BACK, AAAAAHHHHH.

All of this is why Indians are idiots. They're idiots because the people who conquered them are the same people that are pretending to try and save them. These idiots are going to remain drunk, drugged up, uneducated and poor because the Hippies treat them like they are some kind of Barbie Doll. They tell the Indians how great they are, that they're such a proud people, they have a connection to the earth that others don't have, they were great warriors, etc. Problem is, they're no more proud than any other race is. They don't have any better connection to the earth or anything else, than any other culture had. They're not magic. But people want to believe that there is magic, it makes them feel better and the Indians are the magic of choice. The Indians have bought into the whole thing. Some do it because they know a good thing when they see it, "If white man want to throw heap big wampum at me, I take it, ugh". Others are so lost that they believe the hype. They don't have anything to grab onto because their own culture makes no real sense anymore, so they buy into the "fantasy Indian culture" that other people have made it into. Others just get lost in the shuffle and do drugs, get drunk, have babies that they can't afford and die in the gutter.

When you think about it, they're just kind of pathetic. They're just totally screwed up and they're never going to get better. The ones that own the casinos aren't even Indians anymore, they're businessmen. They'll play along for what it's worth, but after that, they're just rich guys, not poor destitute Indians. The poor messed up Indians are going to die after having lived a worthless life.



DESTRUCTIVE POLITICALLY CORRECT PSYCHOLOGY

A recent book edited by eminent psychologists Rogers Wright and Nicholas Cummings delivers a stunning indictment of the mental health professions. Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm documents and critiques the ascent of social activism over open-minded scientific inquiry and quality mental health care in the current mental health establishment. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about mental health care in this country.

The book casts a critical eye on much of the social activism of the psychological and psychiatric professional associations over the past thirty years. However, Drs. Wright and Cummings cannot be dismissed as disgruntled conservatives. Their deeds validate their claim to be "lifelong liberal activists." For instance, while president of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Cummings supported the development of the first task force championing the mental health needs of gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

In addition to being personally involved in social activism, the authors have been keen and pragmatic observers of the mental health professions over the past 40 years. My own contact with Nick Cummings made a lasting impact on me. I first met Dr. Cummings in 1986 when American Biodyne, the first real managed behavioral health care company in America, came to Ohio as a manager of the state employee behavioral health care program. I just started my counseling private practice in Portsmouth, Ohio, and wanted to get on board the managed care train. Biodyne did something very novel for a managed care company: all therapists in the preferred network were required to be trained by the company leaders, including the president and founder, Nick Cummings. In all my years of education, both in school and post-grad, I have never listened to a better trainer than Nick Cummings. He believed mental health therapy could be a powerful influence in a person's life but it was never to be used to gratify the therapist or to promote a political agenda. That same theme permeates this book. Drs. Cummings and Wright believe that modern psychology has been overthrown by forces of social activism and as a consequence faces irrelevance.

As one example, Cummings and Wright demonstrate how political support for gay activism has led to stifling of client self-determination. Consider this quote from the book regarding sexual identity therapy: "In the current climate, it is inevitable that conflict arises among the various subgroups in the marketplace. For example, gay groups within the APA [American Psychological Association] have repeatedly tried to persuade the association to adopt ethical standards that prohibit therapists from offering psychotherapeutic services designed to ameliorate "gayness" on the basis that such efforts are unsuccessful and harmful to the consumer. Psychologists who do not agree are termed homophobic. Such efforts are especially troubling because they abrogate the patient's right tochoose the therapistand determine therapeutic goals. They also deny the reality of data demonstrating that psychotherapy can be effective in changing sexual preferences in patients who have a desire to do so." (From the introduction, page xxx).

Sexual identity therapy is not the only political hot potato tackled by theauthors. They demonstrate how politically correct posturing can serve to obscure research findings. For instance, co-editor Wright cites research by Cummings suggesting that positive male figures in the lives of children are significantly related to a decrease in the number of children requiring medication for behavior problems. However, he laments that such research results are frequently stifled or even dismissed because they offend feminist sensibilities.

Drs. Wright and Cummings express concern over the professional consequences of psychology's misadventures into social activism. They paint a picture of psychologists being unable to support themselves as psychologists because the profession has become enamored with producing position statements about social change. Mental health care in America is adequate but barely so. Any practicing counselor knows how difficult it is to find quality services anywhere outside of the metropolitan areas of this country. Cummings and Wright predict that psychology's preoccupation with social activism threatens to make it irrelevant as a force for quality and affordable health care for all people.

So how is the current leadership of the APA reacting to the critique of Cummings and Wright? Not well. It appears the former APA luminaries are getting a cold shoulder from the current leadership. At a recent meeting of National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, Dr. Wright noted that the APA adopted a "strategic decision not to respond" to their book to avoid giving it undue attention. Furthermore, the APA initially prohibited its member-publications from even reviewing the book. Observed Dr. Wright: "So much for diversity and open-mindedness."

In my opinion, the current APA leadership will ignore these warnings at their peril. When it comes to trends in mental health care, Nick Cummings has rarely been wrong in his predictions. I don't think he is wrong this time.

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