Skin Tone Markers

I'm a white guy. I've expressed that before (for a certain value of guy). And while I come from an area that's poorer than shit, and I myself am poorer than shit, that doesn't mitigate the privilege society awards to me for being the color that I am.

I've come along way in acknowledging that privilege, but I probably still have miles to go before I sleep. Today, I was reminded of just how far I've come, and just how blind some people are to the concept of privilege (and how insidious racism actually is capable of being). I was reading this narrative, and there was a little part of it that struck me:

Decades ago, in graduate school, a professor and I chatted as we prepared for a holiday party in the English department. I made decorations, digging around in a box that was loaded with miscellaneous art supplies – colored pencils, dried out markers, and broken old crayons 

“Nice crayon,” my professor said as I colored a poster.
“What?”
“What color is it?”
I turned the crayon around in my hand and read: “Flesh.”
“Got a problem with that?”
I was stumped. “With what?”
“Miss Grant, I think you’ve had just about enough gender studies courses,” he said. “How about giving a little more thought to race?”

I am an amateur artist. I used to have a lot more artistic talent than I do today; I've squandered it, but drawing is still something that I occasionally do for fun. I was drawing before I was writing; I stopped drawing sometime in early college, which was about the time that I started to pick up in my writing. I traded one talent for another, you might say. Today, a lot of my art is done in Daz Studio, and with 3d rendering. 3d rendering, with some help from photoshop, has its advantages. At the same time, though, I'm restricted in what I can and can't do (because I can't design my own models, and the selection of primitives, or basic shapes, isn't very broad) in a way that I'm not when I draw.

I still have a pile of primsacolor markers. I actually have several boxes of them; I still use them. I love primsacolor; they're my favorite type of marker, because they make smooth strokes and I can "layer" progressively darker colors, to create the illusion of shadow and depth in a picture. If you've followed that link, you probably see the prismacolor markers are expensive; one marker sells for 3 dollars. I probably have over 200 dollars worth of markers that I've collected over 5 or 6 yeas of art work, including Christmas gifts. Eventually, it just got too expensive. That's another reason I don't have many hobbies other than writing anymore: writing is free. Everything else costs money I don't have, and time I can't waste.

Reading the narrative above reminded me of a time when I was relatively young - I want to say this happened about 6 or 7 years ago, maybe even 8. I was sitting in my mom's room, and I was organizing the markers according to color type (so, these were greens, these were oranges, these were reds, etc). I had them all nicely organized, and I was going through the various color groups with my mom. I even had a group I called "skin tones." Unfortunately, that "skin tones" group was a rather restricted group - just like the "flesh" crayon in the narrative above, my "skin tones" were all various shades of pale. Blondwood (not peach; prismacolor peach is a lighter shade of this very vivid pink and only works if you're coloring the skin on a pig), Tan, Creme, Brick Beige; the one thing they all had in common is that they were all pale (with, as the case with some, yellow underscoring them). Browns had their own category, which I called "earth tones". 

I did not even register that. I just didn't. I erased an entire group of people and replaced them with dirt.

I recognize it today. I no longer separate my markers like that. I don't have a "skin tone" category, since I can use just about any marker ranging from creme to my dark browns* to represent skin tones (if I did break it up properly, that category would be about 75% of my maker total). I don't even break them up; they're all lumped in two boxes sitting in the corner of my room, but when I did after that, they were done strictly by color: blues, oranges, yellows (which included blondwood, creme, and brick beige), browns, blacks, whites, grays, reds (which included the umbers) and so on and so forth.

It took my mom pointing it out to me that how I was dividing the markers back then was racist. And the irony of that is my mom is not an egalitarian; she will admit she is a racist individual who does not like Black people**. It's never been very prominent, and I've only seen it on display once or twice. So I'm still not entirely sure, reflecting back on that story, how it turned out the way it did, and why, of all people, she was the one to point that out.

But yes, this is what people mean when they say you have privilege. It was nothing malicious on my part. It was not me intending to erase an entire population, completely and utterly, and prioritize "Earth colors" over them (which is stupid in retrospect; "earth colors" are everything from brown to blue, with green, orange, yellow, and everything else thrown in the mix). It wasn't me intentionally expressing some unconscious dislike for individuals with dark skin (which include more than just Africans; this includes Dravidians, some Pacific Islanders, Australian Natives, and some Southeast Asian populations, among others).

It was ignorance. That's all it was. And it doesn't excuse it at all; but it's like any mistake. You pick up and you learn from it. And that's what I did, and that's what I'm still doing.

* Dark brown is as dark as I can get when I'm using markers. If I wanted to create a darker skin tone (I know they exist) then I would do something like "Dark brown, dark umber, black", but I'd never use black as a solid, base color for a picture (because I rely on going from "light to dark" to create the illusion of depth, and there's not many colors darker than black. Also because I ink my pictures using black ink, which complicates it just a touch).

** My mom, and a few people that I know, makes a distinction between "good" black people and "bad" black people. It's a distinction that, growing up, I never understood. I point it out every time it gets brought up: If they're lazy good for nothings, why not just call them lazy good for nothings, since that's what we call whites who are like that (and don't get me started on passing judgement on people like that; until you understand their circumstances, you cannot morally make these judgement calls about people), instead of calling them niggers? And guess what? They don't have an answer, and it's because they don't know why, other than it being blind habit.

Maybe I'm the reverse. Rather than blaming the poor black people for the collapse of my neighborhood, and the collapse of my city, I'm more apt to blame the rich white people, since they're the ones with the money, the power, and the capability to come in and help us fix it - but they actively chose not to, and instead, continue to exploit poor people, black, white, Asian, Native, and any other group. Somehow, I feel the reverse is less acceptable socially, even though it's definitely the more moral of the two. And it's definitely not, like I heard some brain-dead libertarian tell me, "economic discrimination" because they have more money. Nobody chose to be black. You chose to be rich. You have all of the responsibility that comes along with it; the first thing Spiderman teaches is us that with great power comes great responsibility; money is power in this society. You don't want that responsibility? Give up the power, and the money with it. Stop being rich. It's a lot easier to stop being rich than it is to stop being black.

No Ann, You Still Don't Get it

Ann Romney suffered from MS.

I didn't know that. I feel sorry for her for having to go through that; it's something nobody should have to go through.

It's not going to make me like her or her husband anymore, because I feel both of them are aristocratic assholes who think they're better than everyone else because they've got money, but I am sorry that she had to go through that.

However, this is a message to Mrs. Romney:

Yes, you battled MS. No, that does not make you like us at all.

Ann Romney fired back Wednesday at critics who have accused husband Mitt Romney of being out of touch with average Americans, saying her own bout with multiple sclerosis taught the family what it means to suffer and lose hope.

"When people say that we've led a charmed life and we don't relate to people that are having trouble, I want to remind you that I've been in a very dark place, and I know what it is like to have no hope," Mrs. Romney said at a rally for women supporting her husband, the Republican presidential candidate, at the University of Findlay in Ohio. "So believe me when I tell you these words: We are there for you because we know what it feels like.

No.

No.

No

This does not you know what it's like to be hopeless or suffer. Yes, the disease is painful (not that I'd know) but you know what? You had the money go and get it treated. You had an insurance company that would cover it. You had insurance, period.
This does nothing to me, other than convince me that you do live a charmed life. Yes, it's a shame you had to go through that; nobody should. But you had the money to get it treated. You had the money to get it fixed, and you had the insurance to help you. Furthermore, you could do it without losing time from work. If I ever got hit with something like that lady, I'd be fucked. There would be no way out for me. My life would be totaled for the next decade while I tired to cover the cost for the medication. I thankfully do not have MS. I hope never to get MS, and nobody should have to suffer through it. But suffering through it, Ann Romney, does not make you special. It does not automatically make you "one of us" because suddenly you know what it's like to "lose hope and suffer".

You have no idea what that's really like.

Take your silver spoon and go enjoy your cake, Ann. Stop trying to pretend that just because you had a terrible disease you suddenly understand what it's like to be poor and get the same disease, not be able to work, have several children at home, and be working temporary (or worse, have been working at a company that your husband ran... into the dirt). A nasty sinus infection cost me $31.00 in lost money at work. It cost me $100.00 in medication. I live on less than $15,000 a year. The only reason I can afford that is because I'm still stuck at home.

No.

You do not know what it's like. You have lived a charmed life, and you are a very self-centered woman to think that having a disease, when you have the money and the wealthy to treat it, is enough to make you "just like" the poor person who can't even scrap together enough money to pay for OTC cold medication when what they've really got is walking pneumonia. You have a lot of chutzpah to sit there an say that you know what it's like to lose hope, when you've never felt your heart sink in the doctor's office because someone told you that you need to see a specialist, and there's no way you can afford it. When you need to be back at work the very next day, because you don't get paid leave, even if you are a walking bacteria and virus colony. Money is more important than health to us, Ann, because you and your kind made it that way. You slowly strip us of our dignity, remove the healthcare and the safety nets there to help keep us safe, and then have the gall to say you know what it's like to "suffer" and "lose hope."

No lady, you don't. So stop pretending you do.

Politicized Facts, Politicized Language

I've got another rambling post today; somewhere in here is an idea, I'm almost sure of it. Maybe a couple ideas that might be related tangentially, if I'm lucky. I'm out of it today, for some reason, but I figure it better I post it here and drop it  all on my FB wall. More people can see my rambling here.

Toxic Memes and Poor People

I'm at home tonight with sinusitis, so I'm writing this while in pain. It doesn't make me a very happy individual at all, but compared to the pain this damn sinus infection has inflicted upon me before, what I'm feeling now is nothing.

It hurt worse earlier. So bad I had to admit myself into an emergency clinic and now I have to wall my wallet away inside of my tin can so it doesn't strangle me for it. There's a reason I've waited to treat it - I just recently paid for breaks, so I'm hurting financially enough as it is. I was just hoping that if I ignored it, it'd go away. It's been chronic for the last month or so, since the end of the last heatwave. Part of the problem, I'm sure, is the fact that my neighbor is an asshole. this guy hasn't mowed his lawn all summer (being in jail hasn't helped, but I have a right to be mad at the general situation because it's an eye sore and the city should, but won't, do anything about it) but the weeds - gawddamn. They're bigger than I am. And they've spent most of the summer flowering; kicking my allergies way into overdrive. Even my cat has been suffering from allergies this summer. So I'm sure that's what causing it; that and the fact that work they have something in the filters that just makes it utterly unbearable. I stayed at work as long as I could today - I had to clock out early so I could carry myself off to an emergency clinic because it hurt so bad I wanted to cry. I have quite sensitive teeth; any kind of pressure on that nerve makes it unbearable for me. My teeth were literally throbbing today. I could feel them; I can still feel them now. It felt like someone was trying pry my face apart. Motrin didn't even take the edge off. I kept my patience until I realized that I just couldn't do this anymore. It hurt to talk; someone drove a nail through my jaw and lit that nerve that runs along the chin on fire. That's when I left work early, losing 2 hours of pay. I'm on antibiotics now, so hopefully I'll see some improvement before I go back on Tuesday. I have a weekend off to get better, at least.

Anyway, this post stems from something I've seen too many times.

America is a culture of soundbites.

It's a culture that compresses complex ideologies and multifaceted problems into a few words that, at most, give only a cursory and biased glace at the problem itself. This is what happens when you have a culture of soundbites. As a result, people begin to think in soundbites and begin to expect immediate solutions to present themselves almost as easily as the soundbites are tossed out by our ignoble leaders.

This isn't the first one of these that I've seen, but it is the most recent. And I've commented on almost every one that I've seen, including several arguments with people who thought they supported this stuff. I can't say how many minds I've changed; I doubt the people who support measures and rhetoric like this want their mind changed (as Fred Clark calls it, the "Good Jackie/Bad Jackie test". To my understanding, it works like this: if you tell someone some wild and fanciful story they're repeating is a lie/wrong, how do they react? If they react with "oh, I didn't know that", then you're looking at Good Jackie. If they get mad because you're telling them the truth and they storm off, then you're looking at a Bad Jackie. Most importantly, I reserve the right to be wrong about this. I hurt, y'all. This is not fun).

So, America is a culture of easy and simple soundbites for complex and complicated problems. Here's a very simple solution approach to a problem so complex it has bedeviled people since society first began.

Being Poor

Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

Being poor is wincing when people tell you that you're voting against (their) best interest when you vote democrat, because you're "poor and uneducated". And they tell you this while they stand in front of a range rover at a political campaign stop, to donate large sums of money to the politician who thinks he's one of us because he only has two car elevators instead of three.

Being poor is not going out because you don't have the money for gas, and spending another day alone.

Being poor is stress put on your mind until it breaks, and then people blaming you for not being strong enough to carry the world, with them sitting around and doing nothing about it.

Being poor is understanding that your vote is split: either you vote for the corporatists who will occasionally pretend to care about you and do moral things when convenient or you vote for the ones that hate you and blame you for everything that's wrong with society. 

Being poor is understanding that the middle class will join you soon enough if they keep voting like they are. The only mobility in the United States is down, not up.

Being poor is understanding why negative stereotypes about the rich are not only acceptable but perfectly normal, and why it has nothing to do with envy and everything to do with hate for the lazy fuckers because they expect you to carry them everywhere and then applaud themselves for walking to the damn door after you finally carry them to the stairs.

Being poor is knowing the "self-made man" myth is bullshit.

Being poor and educated about history is when you look back at all of this, and all of the contents of the post linked, and realize that yes, maybe Robespierre and V.I. Lenin did have some good ideas.

Because Being Poor wasn't Humiliating Enough

The United States must have some kind of envy towards poor people. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but there's just something about being poor that means you become the envy of the middle class. Everyone goes out of their way to talk about multitude of different ways that they want to make your life miserable, and this fellow from The Daily Caller is no exception.

I'm not all that familiar with the Daily Caller, but because they let a publication like this on their webpage, I'm going to assume that they have a mild right-wing bias. Lately, it seems like we're seeing a furious attempt to reinstate the power of masculine authority - putting the father in the Fatherland, as it were. Attacks on POCs, attacks on trans and gays, attacks on women's rights, xenophobia, a strong nationalistic bend with a worship of men who were nothing like the people being worshiped, the merging of corporate interests and "heroic capitalism" with the "grassroots" movement... why, if I didn't know any better, I'd suggest that these folks were fascist. But they're not, clearly, because they say they're not. And that's all that matters, because you'll be damned before you can convince them that they're wrong about the historical truth about the positions that they hold.

I digress. This guy from the Daily Caller is a piece of work. He believes that poor people who have to survive on government assistance - who don't have it hard enough as is - should be punished even more. They should have a scarlet "P" stamped on their forehead. It's their fault for being Black Latino poor (don't you dare tell me that's what I'm thinking when I say "poor", you racist liberal). The Right has turned out a parade of monstrous, sociopathic clowns over the last 10 or so years - so much so that the Joker would feel right at home, if he hadn't made it clear that he was an "American villain" when he refused to join forces with the Red Skull. Brion McClanahan is little different, with the exception of the fact that he'd readily jump at a deal to work with the Red Skull.

A Different Drug Problem

Sometimes, I see things posted on Facebook that seem like they're just there to poke at me. Today is one of those days. While looking through my FB news feed, I saw a picture that one of my family members posted. I clicked on it and read through it, and facepalmed. The wonderful thing about social media is that information can spread quickly through it, and you can learn a lot. The downfall of social media is that misinformation can spread quickly through, and you get taught wrong.

This is a case of the later.

Not Your Father's 99%

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a legitimate, grass roots organization. You can tell because of the high level of initial disorganization. This blog supports the Occupy Wall Street movement, not just because it's author is one of the 99%, but because solidarity is a necessity in this world, when the predatory upper class is constantly looking for a means to hold down the lower class.

Marxist theory is probably the best way to explain how this works. See, in the Marxist view of history, there are three classes: the poor, the middle, and the wealthy. Contrary to popular belief, the wealthy are not the bourgeois. That's a title reserved for the middle class - that is, the shop owners, the employers, etc. According to Marxism, history is nothing but one long struggle between the ruling classes (the bourgeois, who answer to the wealthy) and the proletariat, or the poor people who are exploited by both the bourgeois and the wealthy, repeatedly. Different individuals have taken this in different directions, although I find that Lenin was amazingly accurate in his predictions of what would happen when commodities find themselves controlled by one group of people, or when banks become private enterprises (read his essay, On Imperialism, for a more thorough view.)

I'm not going to spend to much time on Lenin or Marx. I wanted to bring them up because the current OWS movement highlights the ongoing division of the rich verses the poor that's been happening ever since humans developed an economy for their society (and even before that; the god/desses only spoke to certain people, and faith is a currency all it's own, more potent than any paper bill or gold coin minted in history). This is the same vein as the Bonus Army or the Wobblies; it hasn't become the Peasant Revolution of the 1380s yet, and with any luck, it won't morph into a full blown French Revolution (despite what I've heard people say, I don't think it'll go that far. I doubt that we'll see a Lenin-style October Revolution. But if it does, dibs on manning the guillotine. I'd rather be behind it than under it.)

Instead, I found one of those typical responses that pissed me off, so I'm going to look at that. I just wanted to make it very plan and very clear that, as a student of Marx and Lenin, I understand how class warfare works, how it's shaped the history of humanity, and how I'm not scared to admit that I've read either man (dismissals of my arguments on their faces because of who I'm influenced by will be laughed at and pitched aside with the other ad hominem garbage. The most vocal critics of Marx and Lenin don't know a thing about either man or what they said to begin with, and usually resort to making things up anyway.)

So, let's take a look at this thing that's gotten under my skin.

Let Me Take A Look In My Crystal Ball...

Ah, yes. The future. That wonderful time that I'm sure will be pleasant. Eventually. However, it seems to me that there is a very vocal segment of the American population that doesn't want a future. And these people have gotten into power, and they're making policies in a not-so-veiled and not-really-well-though-out attempt to stop it. So, following the whole economic crisis we had this past weekend, I've been prompted to take a step back and look at the direction we're heading. Keep in mind, some of this stuff I've been predicting now since the early part of the century (2004/6 at least.) I predicted the rise of something similar to the Tea Party. I know it has no bearing now, because I have no proof, but let met make a similar set of predictions/promises based on what's happening now. Let me look into my crystal ball at the future, and show you what I see. And trust me. It's not pleasant.

At the Interesection of Substance Abuse Blvd., Depression Ave., and Skid Row

This is one of my favorite songs. Listen to this song, and read the post, and think about how the two relate. The ways in which they do can be surprising.

Anyway, the post.

I've often wondered what the impact of being mentally ill has on your place in society. I'm depressed; or, rather, I'm treated but depressed, and I have ADHD. In my particular case, possessing ADHD is the reason why I'm depressed; they were fortunate enough to figure that out, even though I was an adult at the time, and treat the ADHD. Treat the ADHD, free from the depression and the anxieties that go along with it - the social phobia, being scared of dealing with people because you're afraid you'll drag them down and they won't be able to have fun, constantly worrying about whether every little thing you do is going to make you look selfish when really all you want is to just be happy, like everyone else.

There's no doubt it has a huge impact on your economic prospects. If you're depressed, you can't work as hard as you need too. If you've got ADHD, you can kiss staying organized good bye. You lose things, you miss important parts of directions even thought you were damn sure you were listening, and you're at a higher risk of being in an auto accident by sheer virtue of being the way you are (I can vouch. I got in a car accident because of my inability to pay attention. I was terrified of driving for a long time after that). If you can't keep up with these things, what's that mean for your job? It means you get fired, if they even bother hiring you to begin with. If you tell someone you're mentally ill, you become something like a pariah, providing they even believe you and don't think it's you just making an excuse.

Oh, I've gotten that. It's an excuse. You need more discipline. You need to focus harder. Push harder, try this and that. About the only thing I didn't try was narcotics, and even that's only half true - one form of self-medication for me was soda. Specifically, the caffeine in it. When you have ADHD, you're wired backwards. Your brain chemistry is nine kinds of messed up, and in my case, drinking caffeinated things wound me down, it didn't speed me up. I understand it's like that for a lot of individuals with ADHD. Even though I'm being treated, I'm still a bit of caffeine fiend, but it doesn't have any result for me, so it's like drinking water (I don't speed up, I don't slow down. The balls are inert; Shenlong checked out a long time ago).

This actually brings me the next intersection, and the intersection I wanted to discuss for a while. This street is called "substance abuse." Like I said - I tired everything with my ADHD/Depression/Anxiety - except substance abuse (and again, if you want to qualify caffeine as a substance, I readily admit I abuse it, so that's not true, either). Mentally ill people are very prone to substance abuse. If you don't have legitimate medication to help (and even then, that won't work for some people), using alcohol to numb those feelings of depression, or ADHD, or Bipolar, or whatever, is very, very tempting. Using heavier narcotics has different effects on your brain chemistry - obviously your brain chemistry is already screwed over, so what's it hurt? In a lot of ways, these drugs stimulate neurotransmitters that aren't fully working, so for some people, I can actually make them feel normal.

Edjukated Idiots

"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches" 

I've always hated this quote. I've always hated it and I'll tell you why: it takes one of the most important professions in our society and it denigrates it. It makes it appear as if people who have no skills go into teaching, when that's not true. The people without skill don't find their way into pedagogy; they find their way into demagoguery and politics. You need proof? Look at the current state of our country. And individuals who are not so much skill-less as they are the anti-skill, tend to be FOX news viewers.

America's education system is a mess today. And it's a mess because America is a mess. I could link to countless graphs and pictures, but it doesn't do any good. Everyone knows that we have problems in our system. And everyone knows, as the Right is quick to point out, that we're throwing money at the problem and - gasp - the problem isn't going away. Why not?

If you're on the Right, it's those who can't. Those who teach - it's obviously their fault. Someone has to be at fault, right? It's the government, it's the unions, it's the teachers. Dismantle the system! Arm the students, send out vouchers, but for the love of God, get rid of this education system that I have to pay for with my tax money!

If you're on the left, you're lucky if you've figured it out. The one thing that the left seems to be missing these days is a clue. But, the good thing about being on the left is that you're willing to listen to alternative ideas - you're not so obsessed with your tax dollars that you'll shut out any other ideas.

So, why could our system be failing? I'm only speaking from personal experience here, so take it for what you will. I see kids come to school hungry, I see them come to school with a lot of other problems on their shoulders - home life, strife, hunger, worried about whether or not they'll succeed, worried about whether or not they'll be bullied today because the system is so incredibly efficient at protecting these students and dealing with bullies (who, mind you, are victims in their own home. No, I won't let you take a black and white view of the world. It's not that simple). And when they come to school, we expect them to set down and learn. Put aside your hungry, put aside the strife, put aside your fears, sit down with this book, and let me teach you the way we've been teaching since the 1950s, as if you were a White middle class student.

Uh, hello? Is this thing turned on? Do you not see a problem with the above?

Good teachers will vary their teaching style. I know I do; I have a whole book of listen plans with different lessons, each one designed to cater to a different learning style and a different intelligence (MI theory ftw!) But it's not the teachers that are doing this. It's the tests that are doing that. You know - the tests that we keep fretting over, because somehow all of our kids, when averaged, can't compare to the best of theirs when averaged. These tests, that are mandated by the state, which is mandated by the feds, through which all school funding is tied, are aimed at a single, shrinking demographic: White middle class students. And while good teachers find a way to work it in, guess what it boils down to? it boils down to teaching to the test. Because if you don't, you may very well find your school next on the chopping block.

This leads me to my major point here: all of these tests are aimed at White, middle-class students. How many White, middle-class students do you know? I knew a lot of White students, but not many of them were middle class. And while I could spend entire novels on the test scores and the racism inherent in the system, I want to look at the classism at play here. In our collapsing economy, we're loosing our middle class. In loosing our middle class, more and more people become poor - which means there are fewer and fewer people who could understand some of the situations in these tests. Which means there are more and more kids coming to school, worried about their parent's finances and whether or not they'll have a home to return too.

With this in mind, I posit a different cause for the shabby state of our school system:

It's the poverty, stupid.

Think about it. A collapsing middle class means a collapsing tax base. Our schools are tied to the tax base. A collapsing economy means more students coming to school without their needs being meet, meaning we have less time to teach what we need to because we're trying help them get their basic needs. A vanishing middle class means that the tests, which are geared towards the middle class, are going to be met with a smaller base that actually understands them. And even more telling - we're working our teachers more than any other nation on the planet, paying them less than most other nations, and we're throwing money at the problem and it's not going away. Maybe that should tell you something - maybe that should tell you that it's not a problem but a symptom. And as any good doctor will tell you, treating the symptoms does not help the problem. Our collapsing education system is a symptom of our only real problem in this nation - the rampant poverty and growing income inequality. 

So, what do you think privatizing the system will do to it? Whenever something is privatized, it automatically favors those that can afford it - which would be the wealthy. Voucher system or not, the problem will not go away. Those schools that get the students who need the most help will still do the shittiest on their tests, and still be crappy schools, and still get the worst teachers. You're treating the symptom. Treating the fever does not make the flu go away. And if you don't treat the flu, it can kill you.

Poverty is like the flu. And it's killing us, slowly, undermining our nation by turning it into a nation of rich and poor. A nation of super-aristocratic elites and a nation of bottom-scrapping proles. Education is a key to a better life; it's how you advance. If you take that way, then you take away any upward mobility.

But hey, that's okay. Stick your heads in the sand. Ignore the only problem that America has today, and continue treating all of the related symptoms. And to you edjukated idiots out there that think you know the answer and it's privatization, ask yourself: what do you think an Enron-scandal in education would look like?