Why hasn't the oft reported "Black/Brown Alliance" motivated the Black parents in the Dallas School system to stay put as the number of Hispanic students increase? Didn't our "Civil Rights Leaders" tell us that this relationship of "Perpetual Strugglers" would translate into a stronger position as we united against conservatism?
Often the best defense of my own views is to look past what the Black Establishment is saying (or those who feign "Civil Rights violations) and consider a larger picture. My views are best defended by observing actual "Black Progressives" who are DOING just as I am doing - Focusing upon my Black family's own best interests first. When the aggregate snapshot is taken then the "Black Community" standing will become clear.
The key difference between me and those that I call "Black Flight Progressives" is that I have the audacity to state my views clearly. My ideological views and my actions being far more consistent than theirs.
To be in a partnership with another group (be they Hispanic or Snarling Fox White Liberals) yet pretend that they don't have their own atomic agenda that at some point is divergent from your own, yet you lose your own consciousness as you promote this shared agenda is patently foolish.
I am not calling for racism against any group. I am merely demanding that the same people who tell us that we "don't live in a color blind society" to stop cherry picking and pretending that collaboration under the name of "national social justice" is going to cause these others to drop their own selfish interests.
Develop your own strength and then come to the table as a negotiator rather than a protester demanding to be acknowledged.
Dallas Morning News Story
Every morning Vivian King drives her granddaughter past her neighborhood Dallas ISD school on the five-mile route to her charter school.
Both are "recognized" public schools, but King believes the A.W. Brown-Fellowship Leadership Academy offers her granddaughter, 6-year-old Vivica Griffin, a better education.
"We didn't want her to go to the schools around here," King said.
King's decision makes her part of a historic shift in Dallas ISD: The number of black children attending DISD schools has reached its lowest point since 1965.
The movement mirrors, on a smaller scale, massive white flight from the district in the 1970s.
Black students formed a majority in Dallas schools through the 1980s and '90s. Over the last 10 years, though, the number of black children has fallen by nearly 20,000, or about a third. Meanwhile, Hispanic children have filled their seats as the district's overall enrollment remains fairly flat at about 157,000.
Today, about 41,000 black students attend DISD schools. They make up 26 percent of the district compared with 106,000 Hispanic children, or 68 percent. White students are 5 percent of the district.
The trend seen in Dallas schools is part of a larger national move away from inner cities for many black families, but the plunge is steeper in Dallas ISD than other urban districts in Texas and is among the biggest declines nationally.
Interviews with dozens of parents reveal that the exodus is not fueled by a single reason, but by myriad forces including issues of race, class, perceptions of problems within DISD, an explosion of charter schools and the quest for the American dream in the suburbs.
Adelfa Callejo, a Latina civil rights activist, said it's like history repeating itself.
"They're doing exactly what the whites are doing, abandoning the school district," Callejo said. "That will leave us with a lack of black leadership. You need leaders of all races to make it happen."
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