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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I can't imagine why my opinion would matter to
you.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Sue Hovey</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=kjajmix1@msn.com href="mailto:kjajmix1@msn.com">keely emerinemix</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=no.weatherman@gmail.com
href="mailto:no.weatherman@gmail.com">No Weatherman</A> ; <A
title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, October 14, 2008 12:45
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vision2020] Wright
101</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>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.<BR><BR>Keely<BR><A
href="http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/">http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/</A><BR><BR><BR>>
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:48:51 -0800<BR>> From: <A
href="mailto:no.weatherman@gmail.com">no.weatherman@gmail.com</A><BR>> To:
vision2020@moscow.com<BR>> Subject: [Vision2020] Wright 101<BR>>
<BR>> At least two contributors to this forum were at one time
active<BR>> members of the MSD, whether on the board or in the
faculty.<BR>> <BR>> I'm curious to get their opinion, or anyone else's,
of CAC investing<BR>> $150,000,000 into the education system of Chicago and
not improving it<BR>> one bit.<BR>> <BR>> Wright 101<BR>> Obama
funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Rev. Wright's
anti-Americanism<BR>> By Stanley Kurtz<BR>> <BR>> It looks like
Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not<BR>> only did Barack
Obama savor Wright's sermons, Obama gave legitimacy —<BR>> and a whole lot
of money — to education programs built around the same<BR>> extremist
anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And<BR>> guess what?
Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly<BR>>
anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting<BR>>
a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with<BR>>
a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the<BR>>
education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.<BR>>
<BR>> John McCain, take note. Obama's tie to Wright is no longer a
purely<BR>> personal question (if it ever was one) about one man's choice
of his<BR>> pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who
shared<BR>> Wright's anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of
public<BR>> policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this
campaign.<BR>> <BR>> African Village<BR>> In the winter of 1996, the
Coalition for Improved Education in<BR>> [Chicago's] South Shore (CIESS)
announced that it had received a<BR>> $200,000 grant from the Chicago
Annenberg Challenge. That made CIESS<BR>> an "external partner," i.e. a
community organization linked to a<BR>> network of schools within the
Chicago public system. This network,<BR>> named the "South Shore African
Village Collaborative" was thoroughly<BR>> "Afrocentric" in orientation.
CIESS's job was to use a combination of<BR>> teacher-training, curriculum
advice, and community involvement to<BR>> improve academic performance in
the schools it worked with. CIESS<BR>> would continue to receive large
Annenberg grants throughout the 1990s.<BR>> <BR>> The South Shore
African Village Collaborative (SSAVC) was very much a<BR>> part of the
Afrocentric "rites of passage movement," a fringe<BR>> education crusade of
the 1990s. SSAVC schools featured<BR>> "African-Centered" curricula built
around "rites of passage"<BR>> ceremonies inspired by the puberty rites
found in many African<BR>> societies. In and of themselves, these
ceremonies were harmless. Yet<BR>> the philosophy that accompanied them was
not. On the contrary, it was<BR>> a carbon-copy of Jeremiah Wright's
worldview.<BR>> <BR>> Rites of Passage<BR>> To learn what the rites
of passage movement was all about, we can turn<BR>> to a sympathetic 1992
study published in the Journal of Negro<BR>> Education by Nsenga
Warfield-Coppock. In that article,<BR>> Warfield-Coppock bemoans the fact
that public education in the United<BR>> States is shaped by "capitalism,
competitiveness, racism, sexism and<BR>> oppression." According to
Warfield-Coppock, these American values<BR>> "have confused African
American people and oriented them toward<BR>> American definitions of
achievement and success and away from<BR>> traditional African values."
American socialization has "proven to be<BR>> dysfuntional and genocidal to
the African American community,"<BR>> Warfield-Coppock tells us. The answer
is the adolescent rites of<BR>> passage movement, designed "to provide
African American youth with the<BR>> cultural information and values they
would need to counter the<BR>> potentially detrimental effects of a
Eurocentrically oriented<BR>> society."<BR>> <BR>> The adolescent
rites of passage movement that flowered in the 1990s<BR>> grew out of the
"cultural nationalist" or "Pan-African" thinking<BR>> popular in radical
black circles of the 1960s and 1970s. The attempt<BR>> to create a
virtually separate and intensely anti-American black<BR>> social world
began to take hold in the mid-1980s in small private<BR>> schools, which
carefully guarded the contents of their controversial<BR>> curricula.
Gradually, through external partners like CIESS, the<BR>> movement spread
to a few public schools. Supporters view these<BR>> programs as "a social
and cultural 'inoculation' process that<BR>> facilitates healthy,
African-centered development among African<BR>> American youth and protects
them against the ravages of a racist,<BR>> sexist, capitalist, and
oppressive society."<BR>> <BR>> We know that SSAVC was part of this
movement, not only because their<BR>> Annenberg proposals were filled with
Afrocentric themes and references<BR>> to "rites of passage," but also
because SSAVC's faculty set up its<BR>> African-centered curriculum in
consultation with some of the most<BR>> prominent leaders of the "rites of
passage movement." For example, a<BR>> CIESS teacher conference sponsored a
presentation on African-centered<BR>> curricula by Jacob Carruthers, a
particularly controversial<BR>> Afrocentrist.<BR>> <BR>> Jacob
Carruthers<BR>> Like other leaders of the rites of passage movement,
Carruthers<BR>> teaches that the true birthplace of world civilization was
ancient<BR>> "Kemet" (Egypt), from which Kemetic philosophy supposedly
spread to<BR>> Africa as a whole. Carruthers and his colleagues believe
that the<BR>> values of Kemetic civilization are far superior to the
isolating and<BR>> oppressive, ancient Greek-based values of European and
American<BR>> civilization. Although academic Egyptologists and
anthropologists<BR>> strongly reject these historical claims, Carruthers
dismisses critics<BR>> as part of a white supremacist conspiracy to hide
the truth of African<BR>> superiority.<BR>> <BR>> Carruthers's key
writings are collected in his book, Intellectual<BR>> Warfare. Reading it
is a wild, anti-American ride. In his book, we<BR>> learn that Carruthers
and his like-minded colleagues have formed an<BR>> organization called the
Association for the Study of Classical African<BR>> Civilizations (ASCAC),
which takes as its mission the need to<BR>> "dismantle the European
intellectual campaign to commit historicide<BR>> against African peoples."
Carruthers includes "African-Americans"<BR>> within a group he would define
as simply "African." When forced to<BR>> describe a black person as
"American," Carruthers uses quotation<BR>> marks, thus indicating that no
black person can be American in any<BR>> authentic sense. According to
Carruthers, "The submission to Western<BR>> civilization and its most
outstanding offspring, American<BR>> civilization, is, in reality,
surrender to white supremacy."<BR>> <BR>> Carruthers's goal is to use
African-centered education to recreate a<BR>> separatist universe within
America, a kind of state-within-a-state.<BR>> The rites of passage movement
is central to the plan. Carruthers sees<BR>> enemies on every part of the
political spectrum, from conservatives,<BR>> to liberals, to academic
leftists, all of whom reject advocates of<BR>> Kemetic civilization, like
himself, as dangerous and academically<BR>> irresponsible extremists.
Carruthers sees all these groups as deluded<BR>> captives of white
supremacist Eurocentric culture. Therefore the only<BR>> safe place for
Africans living in the United States (i.e. American<BR>> blacks) is outside
the mental boundaries of our ineradicably racist<BR>> Eurocentric
civilization. As Carruthers puts it: ". . . some of us<BR>> have chosen to
reject the culture of our oppressors and recover our<BR>> disrupted
ancestral culture." The rites of passage movement is a way<BR>> to teach
young Africans in the United States how to reject America and<BR>> recover
their authentic African heritage.<BR>> <BR>> America as Rape<BR>>
Carruthers admits that Africans living in America have already been<BR>>
shaped by Western culture, yet compares this Americanization process<BR>>
to rape: "We may not be able to get our virginity back after the rape,<BR>>
but we do not have to marry the rapist. . . ." In other words,<BR>>
American blacks (i.e. Africans) may have been forcibly exposed to<BR>>
American culture, but that doesn't mean they need to accept it. The<BR>>
better option, says Carruthers, is to separate out and relearn the<BR>>
wisdom of Africa's original Kemetic culture, embodied in the teachings<BR>>
of the ancient wise man, Ptahhotep (an historical figure traditionally<BR>>
identified as the author of a Fifth Dynasty wisdom book). Anything<BR>>
less than re-Africanization threatens the mental, and even physical,<BR>>
genocide of Africans living in an ineradicably white supremacist<BR>>
United States.<BR>> <BR>> Carruthers is a defender of Leonard Jeffries,
professor in the<BR>> department of black studies at City College in
Harlem, infamous for<BR>> his black supremacist and anti-Semitic views.
Jeffries sees whites as<BR>> oppressive and violent "ice people," in
contrast to peaceful and<BR>> mutually supportive black "sun people." The
divergence says Jeffries,<BR>> is attributable to differing levels of
melanin in the skin. Jeffries<BR>> also blames Jews for financing the slave
trade. Carruthers defends<BR>> Jeffries and excoriates the prestigious
black academics Carruthers<BR>> views as traitorous for denouncing their
African brother, Jeffries.<BR>> Carruthers's vision of the superior and
peaceful Kemetic philosophy of<BR>> Ptahhotep triumphing over
Greco-Euro-American-white culture obviously<BR>> parallels Jeffries'
opposition between ice people and sun people.<BR>> <BR>> More of
Carruthers's education philosophy can be found in his<BR>> newsletter, The
Kemetic Voice. In 1997, for example, at the same time<BR>> Carruthers was
advising SSAVC on how to set up an African-centered<BR>> curriculum, he
praised the decision of New Orleans' School Board to<BR>> remove the name
of George Washington from an elementary school.<BR>> Apparently, some
officials in New Orleans had decided that nobody who<BR>> held slaves
should have a school named after him. Carruthers touted<BR>> the
name-change as proof that his African-centered perspective was<BR>> finally
having an effect on public policy. At the demise of George<BR>> Washington
School, Carruthers crowed: "These events remind us of how<BR>> vast the
gulf is that separates the Defenders of Western Civilization<BR>> from the
Champions of African Civilization."<BR>> <BR>> According to Chicago
Annenberg Challenge records, Carruthers's<BR>> training session on
African-centered curricula for SSAVC teachers was<BR>> a huge hit: "As a
consciousness raising session, it received rave<BR>> reviews, and has
prepared the way for the curriculum readiness survey.<BR>> . . ." These
teacher-training workshops were directly funded by the<BR>> Chicago
Annenberg Challenge. Another sure sign of the ideological cast<BR>> of
SSAVC's curriculum can be found in Annenberg documents noting that<BR>>
SSAVC students are taught the wisdom of Ptahhotep. Carruthers's<BR>>
concerns about "menticide" and "genocide" at the hand of America's<BR>>
white supremacist system seem to be echoed in an SSAVC document that<BR>>
says: "Our children need to understand the historical context of our<BR>>
struggles for liberation from those forces that seek to destroy us."<BR>>
<BR>> When Jeremiah Wright turned toward African-centered thinking in
the<BR>> late 1980s and early 1990s (the period when, attracted by
Wright's<BR>> African themes, Barack Obama first became a church member),
many<BR>> prominent thinkers from Carruthers's Association for the Study
of<BR>> Classical African Civilizations were invited to speak at
Trinity<BR>> United Church of Christ, Carruthers himself included. We hear
echoes<BR>> of Carruthers's work in Wright's distinction between "right
brained"<BR>> Africans and "left brained" Europeans, in Wright's fears of
U.S.<BR>> government-sponsored genocide against American blacks, and in
Wright's<BR>> embittered attacks on America's indelibly white-supremacist
history.<BR>> In Wright's Trumpet Newsmagazine, as in Carruthers's own
writings,<BR>> blacks are often referred to as "Africans living in the
diaspora"<BR>> rather than as Americans.<BR>> <BR>> Asa
Hilliard<BR>> Chicago Annenberg Challenge records also indicate that SSAVC
educators<BR>> invited Asa Hilliard, a pioneer of African-centered
curricula and a<BR>> close colleague of Carruthers, to offer a keynote
address at yet<BR>> another Annenberg-funded teacher training session.
Hilliard's ties to<BR>> Wright run still deeper than Carruthers's. A close
Wright mentor and<BR>> friend, Hilliard died in 2007 while on a trip to
Kemet (Egypt) with<BR>> Wright and members of Wright's congregation.
Hillard was scheduled to<BR>> deliver several lectures to the congregants,
and to speak at a meeting<BR>> of the Association for the Study of
Classical African Civilization,<BR>> which he co-founded with Carruthers
and other "African-centered"<BR>> scholars. On that last trip, Hilliard
accepted an appointment to the<BR>> board of Wright's new elementary
school, Kwame Nkrumah Academy.<BR>> Speaking of the need for such a school,
Wright had earlier said, "We<BR>> need to educate our children to the
reality of white supremacy." (For<BR>> more on Wright's Afrocentric school,
see "Jeremiah Wright's<BR>> 'Trumpet.'")<BR>> <BR>> Wright delivered
the eulogy at Hilliard's memorial service, with<BR>> prominent members of
ASCAC in the audience. To commemorate Hilliard, a<BR>> special, two-cover
double issue of Wright's Trumpet Newsmagazine was<BR>> published, with a
picture of Hilliard on one side, and a picture of<BR>> Louis Farrakhan on
the other (in celebration of a 2007 award Farrakhan<BR>> received from
Wright). In short, the ties between Wright and Hilliard<BR>> could hardly
have been closer. Clearly, then, Wright's own educational<BR>> philosophy
was mirrored at the Annenberg-funded SSAVC, which sought<BR>> out
Hilliard's and Carruthers's counsel to construct its curriculum.<BR>>
<BR>> Perhaps inadvertently, Wright's eulogy for Hilliard actually<BR>>
established the fringe nature of his favorite African-centered<BR>>
scholars. In his tribute, Wright stressed how intensely "white<BR>>
Egyptologists recoiled at the very notion of everything Asa taught."<BR>>
As Wright himself made plain, it seems virtually impossible to find<BR>>
respectable scholars of any political stripe who approve of the<BR>>
extremist anti-American version of Afrocentrism promoted by Hilliard<BR>>
and Carruthers.<BR>> <BR>> Ayers's Pals<BR>> An important exception
to the rule is Bill Ayers himself, who not only<BR>> worked with Obama to
fund groups like this at the Chicago Annenberg<BR>> Challenge, but who is
still "palling around" with the same folks.<BR>> Discretely waiting until
after the election, Bill Ayers and his wife,<BR>> and fellow former
terrorist, Bernardine Dohrn plan to release a book<BR>> in 2009 entitled
Race Course Against White Supremacy. The book will be<BR>> published by
Third World Press, a press set up by Carruthers and other<BR>> members of
the ASCAC. Representatives of that press were prominently<BR>> present for
Wright's eulogy at Asa Hilliard's memorial service. Less<BR>> than a decade
ago, therefore, when it came to education issues, Barack<BR>> Obama, Bill
Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright were pretty much on the same<BR>> page.<BR>>
<BR>> Obama's Knowledge<BR>> Given the precedent of his earlier
responses on Ayers and Wright,<BR>> Obama might be inclined to deny
personal knowledge of the educational<BR>> philosophy he was so generously
funding. Such a denial would not be<BR>> convincing. For one thing, we have
evidence that in 1995, the same<BR>> year Obama assumed control of the
Chicago Annenberg Challenge, he<BR>> publicly rejected "the unrealistic
politics of integrationist<BR>> assimilation," a stance that clearly
resonates with both Wright and<BR>> Carruthers. (See "No
Liberation.")<BR>> <BR>> And as noted, Wright had invited Carruthers,
Hilliard, and like-minded<BR>> thinkers to address his Trinity congregants.
Wright likes to tick off<BR>> his connections to these prominent
Afrocentrists in sermons, and Obama<BR>> would surely have heard of them.
Reading over SSAVC's Annenberg<BR>> proposals, Obama could hardly be
ignorant of what they were about. And<BR>> if by some chance Obama
overlooked Hilliard's or Carruthers's names,<BR>> SSAVC's proposals are
filled with references to "rites of passage" and<BR>> "Ptahhotep," dead
giveaways for the anti-American and separatist<BR>> ideological concoction
favored by SSAVC.<BR>> <BR>> We know that Obama did read the proposals.
Annenberg documents show<BR>> him commenting on proposal quality. And
especially after 1995, when<BR>> concerns over self-dealing and conflicts
of interest forced the<BR>> Ayers-headed "Collaborative" to distance itself
from monetary issues,<BR>> all funding decisions fell to Obama and the
board. Significantly,<BR>> there was dissent within the board. One business
leader and<BR>> experienced grant-smith characterized the quality of most
Annenberg<BR>> proposals as "awful." (See "The Chicago Annenberg Challenge:
The First<BR>> Three Years," p. 19.) Yet Obama and his very small and
divided board<BR>> kept the money flowing to ideologically extremist groups
like the<BR>> South Shore African Village Collaborative, instead of
organizations<BR>> focused on traditional educational achievement.<BR>>
<BR>> As if the content of SSAVC documents wasn't warning enough,
their<BR>> proposals consistently misspelled "rites of passage" as "rights
of<BR>> passage," hardly an encouraging sign from a group meant to
improve<BR>> children's reading skills. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge's
own<BR>> evaluators acknowledged that Annenberg-aided schools showed
no<BR>> improvement in achievement scores. Evaluators attributed that
failure,<BR>> in part, to the fact that many of Annenberg's "external
partners" had<BR>> little educational expertise. A group that puts its
efforts into<BR>> Kwanzaa celebrations and half-baked history certainly
fits that bill,<BR>> and goes a long way toward explaining how Ayers and
Obama managed to<BR>> waste upwards of $150 million without improving
student achievement.<BR>> <BR>> However he may seek to deny it, all
evidence points to the fact that,<BR>> from his position as board chair of
the Chicago Annenberg Challenge,<BR>> Barack Obama knowingly and
persistently funded an educational project<BR>> that shared the extremist
and anti-American philosophy of Jeremiah<BR>> Wright. The Wright affair was
no fluke. It's time for McCain to say<BR>> so.<BR>> — Stanley Kurtz is a
senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.<BR>>
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YTQ0YjhlOGVhYjQ0OWRhZjI2MmM4NTQ4NGM5Mjg0MzU=<BR>>
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