The "big lie" of university admissions --- and it's hurting the life chances of black and brown students.
Here's John McWhorter, on Substack:
No more SAT at the University of California? Classic racist antiracism, and it's not going to end well.https://t.co/S5AxQRCV7f
— John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) July 25, 2021
Kamala Harris, Berkeley and busing >>> "Even in a city that had become a worldwide symbol of 1960s counterculture revolt, systemic racial prejudice in education and housing remained deeply entrenched." https://t.co/3sBXbF6yHe Excellent @LATSeema @melmason @finneganLAT— Shelby Grad (@shelbygrad) July 1, 2019
.@KamalaHarris: “I support busing. Listen, the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated, today than when I was in [school]...need to put every effort, including busing, into play to de-segregate the schools...fed govt has a role & a responsibility to step up." pic.twitter.com/a7ujueP0Bu— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) June 30, 2019
The school bus ride was less than three miles from one side of Berkeley to the other, but from 1969 to 1973 it transported Carole Porter to an entirely different world.
Like her neighbor and friend Kamala Harris, Porter was one of thousands of black children bused into predominantly white neighborhoods to learn. It was part of Berkeley’s bold experiment in desegregation.
But even in a city that had become a worldwide symbol of 1960s counterculture revolt, systemic racial prejudice in education and housing remained deeply entrenched.
“That’s a really hard thing to reconcile,” said Porter, 55. “Berkeley was an oxymoron. It was a contradiction in many ways.”
Harris’ three years of busing from her family’s mainly black working-class neighborhood to a prosperous white enclave in the hills overlooking San Francisco Bay was at once universal and uniquely Berkeley.
As in many American cities, the discriminatory housing policy known as redlining kept blacks from moving into white neighborhoods in Berkeley and busing fueled some white flight to the suburbs.
But unlike other sizable cities, Berkeley undertook its busing program voluntarily and required both white and black families to travel into unfamiliar neighborhoods. Rapid demographic and political changes shielded the community from the most extreme pushback, including violence, that hobbled busing efforts nationwide.
More than 50 years after Berkeley launched its busing program, Harris, one of its most famous participants, thrust it back into the spotlight in last week’s Democratic presidential debate.
As California’s first black senator chastised her rival Joe Biden for his fight against forced busing in the ’70s, she leaned on her personal history in Berkeley, portraying herself as a beneficiary of the charged battle for educational equality.
“There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” Harris said. “And that little girl was me.”
Contrary to its enduring reputation as a progressive mecca, the Berkeley of Harris’ childhood was more politically muddled. The conservative John Birch Society operated two bookstores in the area. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that Democrats cracked a Republican stronghold on the city council. Black residents were restricted to living to the southern and western flats, while whites resided in the northern hills.
Thelette A. Bennett, 71, a retired vice principal of Berkeley High School, grew up in the same neighborhood as Harris.
Bennett’s father, a black World War II Navy veteran, was an airplane mechanic at a local naval air station in 1945, when redlining blocked him and his wife from buying a house in a white neighborhood. Even in the black neighborhood where they settled, she said, they needed to get a white real estate agent to buy a home and transfer it to them.
“There were only certain areas where they could buy a home,” Bennett said. “We lived where they allowed us to live.”
But a large influx of African Americans during and after World War II and whites affiliated with UC Berkeley were pulling the local politics to the left, paving the way for desegregation. Black leaders raised concerns about segregation in the city starting in the late 1950s.
In response, the school board studied the matter, concluding that all but three of the district’s 17 elementary schools and two of the three junior high schools were segregated. (Berkeley High, the city’s only high school, was integrated by default.) In 1964, the school board voted to desegregate its junior high schools.
Residents’ reactions were not as extreme as the segregation battles elsewhere in the country, such as the South, but “it wasn’t as far from that as you might assume,” said Natalie Orenstein, a reporter for local news site Berkeleyside. “There were definitely really angry parents and hours-long school meetings.”
Desegregation opponents launched recall campaigns of multiple school board members over the junior high busing program, but lost by a wide margin.
I was assaulted at U.C. Berkeley because I'm conservative. Free speech is under attack. #HaydenWilliams #Berkeley #RadicalLeft 😣 https://t.co/WeQQXNkntv— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) March 7, 2019
Irony: Zachary Greenberg’s lawyer demanding the presumption of innocence “a right,” after her thug client was recorded on camera repeatedly punching a guy in the face over free speech, the victim’s right. Throw the book at him. https://t.co/b9bFZ0g4rg
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) March 6, 2019
When the actor Jussie Smollett charged that two men shouting this is “MAGA country” had attacked him, also yelling racist and homophobic taunts, my fellow liberals were quick to blame the rise in such incidents on President Trump and his supporters who want to “Make American Great Again.”More.
Smollett was indicted by an Illinois grand jury on Feb. 20 for apparently faking the whole episode, but the larger trend is real: Hate crimes have spiked during the Trump era. And surely the president’s own bigoted rhetoric — Mexicans are rapists, Africans live in s—hole countries and so on — has something to do with that.
So why aren’t we also denouncing the culture of intolerance on America’s university campuses, where dissenting voices have faced physical attacks? And doesn’t our silence on that score make us partially responsible for the violence, just as Trump is complicit in hate crimes?
Consider the assault on a conservative activist last month at UC Berkeley, where he was displaying posters declaring “This is MAGA country” — which is what Smollett said his attackers shouted — and “Hate crime hoaxes hurt real victims.”
Two men accosted the conservative activist with expletives. One denounced him for “encouraging violence.” As if on cue, the second man then punched the activist in the face.
Noting that the incident took place on Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, epicenter of the university’s Free Speech Movement in 1964, school officials were quick to denounce it. “We strongly condemn violence and harassment of any sort, for any reason,” they said in a statement. “Our commitment to freedom of expression and belief is unwavering.” Friday, they announced an arrest...
Tax-Exempt Terrorism: Cash From Soros Sponsors Communist ‘Antifa’ Group https://t.co/zM5i7F4BTz
— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) April 18, 2018
cc @vadum @KirbyMcCain @AmPowerBlog @benshapiro pic.twitter.com/ZdPOg9t2Sc
The Antifa protests are helping Donald Trump: https://t.co/44i5eZG9hF pic.twitter.com/g2nxfrFRoN
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) August 29, 2017
Pelosi puts out statement condemning Antifa violence in Berkeley. pic.twitter.com/0RlU6RlWmX
— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) August 30, 2017
This hat is the most 2017 thing I have yet seen. #Berkeley pic.twitter.com/OVembg6Bma
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) April 27, 2017
I’m on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, where conservative speakers are being systematically censored by violent protests designed to prevent them from speaking. I am on Sproul plaza in the centre of the campus, where free speech was supposedly enshrined back in the sixties but where it is now appallingly being suppressed.More.
This is the campus where conservative views are called fascism and shouted down. As you can see from these posters on this campus noticeboard.
This is where Jewish students in particular are being intimidated by threatening pro-Palestinian demonstrators. I was originally asked to speak at Berkeley Hillel, the Jewish student centre here. But remarkably, even that was considered too dangerous for me.
So I spoke instead to Jewish students at another, more discreet centre. These students had to be personally coaxed to attend my meeting – because Jewish students at Berkeley are now too frightened for their own safety to attend pro-Israel presentations. That is the truly shocking state of affairs in this prestigious seat of learning today...
‘My students are fearful:’ Berkeley teachers rally for May Day https://t.co/TMwNmvVeAJ
— Berkeleyside (@berkeleyside) May 1, 2017
"How a Group That Defended Affirmative Action Evolved Into an Anti-Trump Force" https://t.co/q79J9axBUi #TrumpMustGo #StopDeportations pic.twitter.com/40ZjQYMKsF
— BAMN (@followbamn) April 25, 2017
#Berkeley: Free Speech and the Nationalist-Globalist Clash: https://t.co/AgDXJbT0GZ
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) April 29, 2017
Normally, I wouldn’t call someone a Filthy Antifa Whore (FAW). However, since Moldylocks, who was shown getting punched out at this weekend’s Berkeley protests by some dude everyone claims is a fascist/racist/neo-nazi/somethingorother, is a nasty, unwashed, slovenly sow, and since she did, in fact,Keep reading (via Blazing Cat Fur).demonstrateriot, throw bottles, and assault people at a rally for a President whom she apparently does not like, and since there are photos of said skank on the Internet baring her unshaven, unwashed, beaver and sprocket, that probably reek of week-old garbage and decaying pork, wide for the world – and presumably her parents – to see, I think FAW is appropriate.
No, I’m not giving you a link, pervs. When I ran across it while doing an image search on the protests the other day, I’m pretty sure I developed a severe case of post-traumatic stress, and I may or may not have gone blind for an unspecified period of time, while desperately stumbling around my house trying to find enough brain bleach to erase that image from my mind forever. Suffice it to say that cum-gurgling sausage junkie gives the term “bearded clam” an entire new meaning.
Her mommy and daddy must be so proud!
