[Vision2020] Wright 101
Sue Hovey
suehovey at moscow.com
Tue Oct 14 14:13:19 PDT 2008
I can't imagine why my opinion would matter to you.
Sue Hovey
----- Original Message -----
From: keely emerinemix
To: No Weatherman ; vision2020 at moscow.com
Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2008 12:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Wright 101
As one of the regular contributors to this forum who was on the MSD Board of Trustees, guess what? I still have nothing to say to you. Perhaps I've been unclear. You're a bigoted, lying coward. I have enough decent people in my life with whom I'm pleased to engage.
Keely
http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/
> Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:48:51 -0800
> From: no.weatherman at gmail.com
> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] Wright 101
>
> At least two contributors to this forum were at one time active
> members of the MSD, whether on the board or in the faculty.
>
> I'm curious to get their opinion, or anyone else's, of CAC investing
> $150,000,000 into the education system of Chicago and not improving it
> one bit.
>
> Wright 101
> Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Rev. Wright's anti-Americanism
> By Stanley Kurtz
>
> It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not
> only did Barack Obama savor Wright's sermons, Obama gave legitimacy —
> and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same
> extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And
> guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly
> anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting
> a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with
> a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the
> education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.
>
> John McCain, take note. Obama's tie to Wright is no longer a purely
> personal question (if it ever was one) about one man's choice of his
> pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared
> Wright's anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public
> policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.
>
> African Village
> In the winter of 1996, the Coalition for Improved Education in
> [Chicago's] South Shore (CIESS) announced that it had received a
> $200,000 grant from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That made CIESS
> an "external partner," i.e. a community organization linked to a
> network of schools within the Chicago public system. This network,
> named the "South Shore African Village Collaborative" was thoroughly
> "Afrocentric" in orientation. CIESS's job was to use a combination of
> teacher-training, curriculum advice, and community involvement to
> improve academic performance in the schools it worked with. CIESS
> would continue to receive large Annenberg grants throughout the 1990s.
>
> The South Shore African Village Collaborative (SSAVC) was very much a
> part of the Afrocentric "rites of passage movement," a fringe
> education crusade of the 1990s. SSAVC schools featured
> "African-Centered" curricula built around "rites of passage"
> ceremonies inspired by the puberty rites found in many African
> societies. In and of themselves, these ceremonies were harmless. Yet
> the philosophy that accompanied them was not. On the contrary, it was
> a carbon-copy of Jeremiah Wright's worldview.
>
> Rites of Passage
> To learn what the rites of passage movement was all about, we can turn
> to a sympathetic 1992 study published in the Journal of Negro
> Education by Nsenga Warfield-Coppock. In that article,
> Warfield-Coppock bemoans the fact that public education in the United
> States is shaped by "capitalism, competitiveness, racism, sexism and
> oppression." According to Warfield-Coppock, these American values
> "have confused African American people and oriented them toward
> American definitions of achievement and success and away from
> traditional African values." American socialization has "proven to be
> dysfuntional and genocidal to the African American community,"
> Warfield-Coppock tells us. The answer is the adolescent rites of
> passage movement, designed "to provide African American youth with the
> cultural information and values they would need to counter the
> potentially detrimental effects of a Eurocentrically oriented
> society."
>
> The adolescent rites of passage movement that flowered in the 1990s
> grew out of the "cultural nationalist" or "Pan-African" thinking
> popular in radical black circles of the 1960s and 1970s. The attempt
> to create a virtually separate and intensely anti-American black
> social world began to take hold in the mid-1980s in small private
> schools, which carefully guarded the contents of their controversial
> curricula. Gradually, through external partners like CIESS, the
> movement spread to a few public schools. Supporters view these
> programs as "a social and cultural 'inoculation' process that
> facilitates healthy, African-centered development among African
> American youth and protects them against the ravages of a racist,
> sexist, capitalist, and oppressive society."
>
> We know that SSAVC was part of this movement, not only because their
> Annenberg proposals were filled with Afrocentric themes and references
> to "rites of passage," but also because SSAVC's faculty set up its
> African-centered curriculum in consultation with some of the most
> prominent leaders of the "rites of passage movement." For example, a
> CIESS teacher conference sponsored a presentation on African-centered
> curricula by Jacob Carruthers, a particularly controversial
> Afrocentrist.
>
> Jacob Carruthers
> Like other leaders of the rites of passage movement, Carruthers
> teaches that the true birthplace of world civilization was ancient
> "Kemet" (Egypt), from which Kemetic philosophy supposedly spread to
> Africa as a whole. Carruthers and his colleagues believe that the
> values of Kemetic civilization are far superior to the isolating and
> oppressive, ancient Greek-based values of European and American
> civilization. Although academic Egyptologists and anthropologists
> strongly reject these historical claims, Carruthers dismisses critics
> as part of a white supremacist conspiracy to hide the truth of African
> superiority.
>
> Carruthers's key writings are collected in his book, Intellectual
> Warfare. Reading it is a wild, anti-American ride. In his book, we
> learn that Carruthers and his like-minded colleagues have formed an
> organization called the Association for the Study of Classical African
> Civilizations (ASCAC), which takes as its mission the need to
> "dismantle the European intellectual campaign to commit historicide
> against African peoples." Carruthers includes "African-Americans"
> within a group he would define as simply "African." When forced to
> describe a black person as "American," Carruthers uses quotation
> marks, thus indicating that no black person can be American in any
> authentic sense. According to Carruthers, "The submission to Western
> civilization and its most outstanding offspring, American
> civilization, is, in reality, surrender to white supremacy."
>
> Carruthers's goal is to use African-centered education to recreate a
> separatist universe within America, a kind of state-within-a-state.
> The rites of passage movement is central to the plan. Carruthers sees
> enemies on every part of the political spectrum, from conservatives,
> to liberals, to academic leftists, all of whom reject advocates of
> Kemetic civilization, like himself, as dangerous and academically
> irresponsible extremists. Carruthers sees all these groups as deluded
> captives of white supremacist Eurocentric culture. Therefore the only
> safe place for Africans living in the United States (i.e. American
> blacks) is outside the mental boundaries of our ineradicably racist
> Eurocentric civilization. As Carruthers puts it: ". . . some of us
> have chosen to reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our
> disrupted ancestral culture." The rites of passage movement is a way
> to teach young Africans in the United States how to reject America and
> recover their authentic African heritage.
>
> America as Rape
> Carruthers admits that Africans living in America have already been
> shaped by Western culture, yet compares this Americanization process
> to rape: "We may not be able to get our virginity back after the rape,
> but we do not have to marry the rapist. . . ." In other words,
> American blacks (i.e. Africans) may have been forcibly exposed to
> American culture, but that doesn't mean they need to accept it. The
> better option, says Carruthers, is to separate out and relearn the
> wisdom of Africa's original Kemetic culture, embodied in the teachings
> of the ancient wise man, Ptahhotep (an historical figure traditionally
> identified as the author of a Fifth Dynasty wisdom book). Anything
> less than re-Africanization threatens the mental, and even physical,
> genocide of Africans living in an ineradicably white supremacist
> United States.
>
> Carruthers is a defender of Leonard Jeffries, professor in the
> department of black studies at City College in Harlem, infamous for
> his black supremacist and anti-Semitic views. Jeffries sees whites as
> oppressive and violent "ice people," in contrast to peaceful and
> mutually supportive black "sun people." The divergence says Jeffries,
> is attributable to differing levels of melanin in the skin. Jeffries
> also blames Jews for financing the slave trade. Carruthers defends
> Jeffries and excoriates the prestigious black academics Carruthers
> views as traitorous for denouncing their African brother, Jeffries.
> Carruthers's vision of the superior and peaceful Kemetic philosophy of
> Ptahhotep triumphing over Greco-Euro-American-white culture obviously
> parallels Jeffries' opposition between ice people and sun people.
>
> More of Carruthers's education philosophy can be found in his
> newsletter, The Kemetic Voice. In 1997, for example, at the same time
> Carruthers was advising SSAVC on how to set up an African-centered
> curriculum, he praised the decision of New Orleans' School Board to
> remove the name of George Washington from an elementary school.
> Apparently, some officials in New Orleans had decided that nobody who
> held slaves should have a school named after him. Carruthers touted
> the name-change as proof that his African-centered perspective was
> finally having an effect on public policy. At the demise of George
> Washington School, Carruthers crowed: "These events remind us of how
> vast the gulf is that separates the Defenders of Western Civilization
> from the Champions of African Civilization."
>
> According to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records, Carruthers's
> training session on African-centered curricula for SSAVC teachers was
> a huge hit: "As a consciousness raising session, it received rave
> reviews, and has prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey.
> . . ." These teacher-training workshops were directly funded by the
> Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Another sure sign of the ideological cast
> of SSAVC's curriculum can be found in Annenberg documents noting that
> SSAVC students are taught the wisdom of Ptahhotep. Carruthers's
> concerns about "menticide" and "genocide" at the hand of America's
> white supremacist system seem to be echoed in an SSAVC document that
> says: "Our children need to understand the historical context of our
> struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us."
>
> When Jeremiah Wright turned toward African-centered thinking in the
> late 1980s and early 1990s (the period when, attracted by Wright's
> African themes, Barack Obama first became a church member), many
> prominent thinkers from Carruthers's Association for the Study of
> Classical African Civilizations were invited to speak at Trinity
> United Church of Christ, Carruthers himself included. We hear echoes
> of Carruthers's work in Wright's distinction between "right brained"
> Africans and "left brained" Europeans, in Wright's fears of U.S.
> government-sponsored genocide against American blacks, and in Wright's
> embittered attacks on America's indelibly white-supremacist history.
> In Wright's Trumpet Newsmagazine, as in Carruthers's own writings,
> blacks are often referred to as "Africans living in the diaspora"
> rather than as Americans.
>
> Asa Hilliard
> Chicago Annenberg Challenge records also indicate that SSAVC educators
> invited Asa Hilliard, a pioneer of African-centered curricula and a
> close colleague of Carruthers, to offer a keynote address at yet
> another Annenberg-funded teacher training session. Hilliard's ties to
> Wright run still deeper than Carruthers's. A close Wright mentor and
> friend, Hilliard died in 2007 while on a trip to Kemet (Egypt) with
> Wright and members of Wright's congregation. Hillard was scheduled to
> deliver several lectures to the congregants, and to speak at a meeting
> of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization,
> which he co-founded with Carruthers and other "African-centered"
> scholars. On that last trip, Hilliard accepted an appointment to the
> board of Wright's new elementary school, Kwame Nkrumah Academy.
> Speaking of the need for such a school, Wright had earlier said, "We
> need to educate our children to the reality of white supremacy." (For
> more on Wright's Afrocentric school, see "Jeremiah Wright's
> 'Trumpet.'")
>
> Wright delivered the eulogy at Hilliard's memorial service, with
> prominent members of ASCAC in the audience. To commemorate Hilliard, a
> special, two-cover double issue of Wright's Trumpet Newsmagazine was
> published, with a picture of Hilliard on one side, and a picture of
> Louis Farrakhan on the other (in celebration of a 2007 award Farrakhan
> received from Wright). In short, the ties between Wright and Hilliard
> could hardly have been closer. Clearly, then, Wright's own educational
> philosophy was mirrored at the Annenberg-funded SSAVC, which sought
> out Hilliard's and Carruthers's counsel to construct its curriculum.
>
> Perhaps inadvertently, Wright's eulogy for Hilliard actually
> established the fringe nature of his favorite African-centered
> scholars. In his tribute, Wright stressed how intensely "white
> Egyptologists recoiled at the very notion of everything Asa taught."
> As Wright himself made plain, it seems virtually impossible to find
> respectable scholars of any political stripe who approve of the
> extremist anti-American version of Afrocentrism promoted by Hilliard
> and Carruthers.
>
> Ayers's Pals
> An important exception to the rule is Bill Ayers himself, who not only
> worked with Obama to fund groups like this at the Chicago Annenberg
> Challenge, but who is still "palling around" with the same folks.
> Discretely waiting until after the election, Bill Ayers and his wife,
> and fellow former terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn plan to release a book
> in 2009 entitled Race Course Against White Supremacy. The book will be
> published by Third World Press, a press set up by Carruthers and other
> members of the ASCAC. Representatives of that press were prominently
> present for Wright's eulogy at Asa Hilliard's memorial service. Less
> than a decade ago, therefore, when it came to education issues, Barack
> Obama, Bill Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright were pretty much on the same
> page.
>
> Obama's Knowledge
> Given the precedent of his earlier responses on Ayers and Wright,
> Obama might be inclined to deny personal knowledge of the educational
> philosophy he was so generously funding. Such a denial would not be
> convincing. For one thing, we have evidence that in 1995, the same
> year Obama assumed control of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he
> publicly rejected "the unrealistic politics of integrationist
> assimilation," a stance that clearly resonates with both Wright and
> Carruthers. (See "No Liberation.")
>
> And as noted, Wright had invited Carruthers, Hilliard, and like-minded
> thinkers to address his Trinity congregants. Wright likes to tick off
> his connections to these prominent Afrocentrists in sermons, and Obama
> would surely have heard of them. Reading over SSAVC's Annenberg
> proposals, Obama could hardly be ignorant of what they were about. And
> if by some chance Obama overlooked Hilliard's or Carruthers's names,
> SSAVC's proposals are filled with references to "rites of passage" and
> "Ptahhotep," dead giveaways for the anti-American and separatist
> ideological concoction favored by SSAVC.
>
> We know that Obama did read the proposals. Annenberg documents show
> him commenting on proposal quality. And especially after 1995, when
> concerns over self-dealing and conflicts of interest forced the
> Ayers-headed "Collaborative" to distance itself from monetary issues,
> all funding decisions fell to Obama and the board. Significantly,
> there was dissent within the board. One business leader and
> experienced grant-smith characterized the quality of most Annenberg
> proposals as "awful." (See "The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: The First
> Three Years," p. 19.) Yet Obama and his very small and divided board
> kept the money flowing to ideologically extremist groups like the
> South Shore African Village Collaborative, instead of organizations
> focused on traditional educational achievement.
>
> As if the content of SSAVC documents wasn't warning enough, their
> proposals consistently misspelled "rites of passage" as "rights of
> passage," hardly an encouraging sign from a group meant to improve
> children's reading skills. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge's own
> evaluators acknowledged that Annenberg-aided schools showed no
> improvement in achievement scores. Evaluators attributed that failure,
> in part, to the fact that many of Annenberg's "external partners" had
> little educational expertise. A group that puts its efforts into
> Kwanzaa celebrations and half-baked history certainly fits that bill,
> and goes a long way toward explaining how Ayers and Obama managed to
> waste upwards of $150 million without improving student achievement.
>
> However he may seek to deny it, all evidence points to the fact that,
> from his position as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge,
> Barack Obama knowingly and persistently funded an educational project
> that shared the extremist and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah
> Wright. The Wright affair was no fluke. It's time for McCain to say
> so.
> — Stanley Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
> http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YTQ0YjhlOGVhYjQ0OWRhZjI2MmM4NTQ4NGM5Mjg0MzU=
>
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