The Activation Point
As the new year approached, I promised myself that I was going to be better at being up-beat and spreading hope, and would work harder before making snap decisions (o.k.—judgements) about things, situations and people. Basically, before concluding that one outweighed the other, I would aggressively seek the positive as opposed to focusing on the downside.
‘Though hard as I try, the ONLY good thing I could muster up about Cathie Black being the new chancellor of public school education in NYC is that she is a working woman and mother and as such, maybe—just maybe, we can have a dialogue about concerns she might understand. Maybe, if we gave her a chance, there really was some way of getting her to take up our cause and make the necessary changes on behalf of parents and our school children.
Sadly, reality is a witch that has a way of wiggling her negative self-right into my upbeat thoughts.
Ever since the mayor announced his appointment to this important office, I’ve fought with myself not to hate on Cathie Black. I celebrated the fact that she gave two children a home and understood that, for whatever her personal reasons, she isn’t able to relate to the first hand joy or painful uncertainty of carrying a child to term and giving birth to healthy babies.
But I had trouble not being mad at her plentiful fortune providing the ability to buy her children a private education, thus securing their destinies well into the future. I tend not to be able to bond with any mom who’s never had to experience the “Working Mommy’s Whammy. ”
(Those of us who do the double duty of earning a living and raising children know the detested workings of the “Whammy” all too well).
- It appears just when you last expect it, seemingly out of nowhere.
- It wakes you in the middle of the night when your child is crying and feeling hot and you groggily determine it’s JUST a low-grade fever and send the kid back to bed praying he/she can still go to school in the morning.
- It manifests itself when your lovely child throws up all over you at seven thirty a.m., just when you’re both ready to walk out the door on the way to school and work.
- Without the benefit of help at home, only us working moms know the heartache of weighing the pros and cons of deciding that a child who isn’t feeling 100% well might still be 99% well enough to go to school because you simply HAVE to show up at work.
- The Whammy is deciding if the child can make it through the day without having the nurse call and tell you to come and pick him up an hour after you’re at your desk, feeling horribly guilty but trying to concentrate on the job nonetheless.
- The Whammy is keeping your child home where you know she belongs and risking a day’s pay or worse—losing your job all together because you’ve been warned by your ogre of a boss that the last time you called in-- was really the last TIME!
At a meeting this past Thursday with downtown Manhattan parents from the Task Force on School Overcrowding (put together by Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver and Assemblyman Daniel Squadron), Ms. Black seemed to be listening (although it was reported that she did not take notes). From photos taken of those in attendance, it showed a packed room with a majority of white parents who came to share their upset and viable concerns about the current, and projected lack of enough kindergarten and first grade school seats for their children.
Her response to those concerns and the fact that the city of NY has unequivocally failed to create adequate space to educate children was met with the following snide remark:
"Could we just have some birth control? It would really help us out a lot."
When I read that the chancellor of the largest school system in the country said this, I was appalled. I reminded myself of my promise not to make snap judgments and searched the internet to be sure the reporter hadn’t misquoted her. I found quite a few sites with videos of the meeting and thus, heard Cathie Black say it—and as bad, I heard the parents in the room actually laugh—(hopefully) no one found it funny and the laugher was just the response of outrageous shock.
Forgetting all about being positive, a series of thoughts passed through my mind about the Chancellor:
1). She’s incredibly stupid
2). She’s incredibly insensitive
3). She’s both incredibly stupid and insensitive
4). She’s cluelessly caustic
5). She’s wickedly sarcastic
6). She’s all of the above
To make matters EVEN worse, she went on to reference “Sophie’s Choice,” a movie about a woman sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp and was forced by a Nazi officer to choose life for one child, and death for the other.
No doubt about it, Cathie Black suffers from what my mom would call a “heifer with hoof-in-mouth disease.”
So much for positive thinking.
Except that I might just be the only person in NYC who actually appreciates that it took less than two weeks into her job to let all the world know that no matter how good a manager she was in publishing, her lack of education experience and inability to speak to, let alone relate in any way to public school parents is a complete disaster.
According to Mayor Mike, a host of university heads, current and previous elected officials like former Mayors Dinkins, Koch and Giuliani; former City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, Sr.; Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro; State Senators Malcolm A. Smith, Carl Kruger, Andrew Lanza, Marty Golden and Craig Johnson; and City Council Members James Vacca, Michael C. Nelson, James Gennaro, Dominic M. Recchia, Jr. and Joel Rivera, Cathie Black is “extraordinarily well qualified for her role as Chancellor of New York City Public Schools.”
If this is the kind of extraordinary leadership exhibited when surrounded by white, middle and upper income parents, I'm passed the point of worry about the disrespect shown to those of us who are in the majority as poor parents of color.
In the late 1950’s, the talk of birth control by politicians led to a 1,500 word statement signed by more than 200 Catholic cardinals, archbishops and bishops "[who] attacked popular talk of a ‘population explosion’ as "a smoke screen behind which a moral evil may be foisted on the public.'" (POLITICS: The Birth Control Issue, Time Magazine- Dec. 07, 1959)
Chancellor Black’s humor is a smoke screen. She has no personal vision for improving the educations of 1.1 million children and she has no intention of taking parental concerns seriously. She is only in place to hasten the slashing of school budgets, closure of more schools and as orchestrated by the mayor, to oversee the continued destruction of public education for the benefit of privateers.
It is simply irresponsible and unconscionable for the Chancellor, who leads the largest, most segregated, racist urban education system in the nation, to speak to parents of using birth control and "Sophie’s Choice."
What say you now about the wonderfulness of Cathie Black-- Whoppie Goldberg?
Gloria Steinum? Oprah?
For the thinking public to give this woman a pass after her offensive, unfunny comments would be both stupid and dangerous on our part. We've done that with Bloomberg in the past and it's only enboldend his domination and arrogance.
Make no mistake: Bloomberg's control of public education and Black’s governance over schools are today's "moral evils being foisted on the public."
We need to use their public flipancy as the Activation Point to organize and get rid of them both!
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