(Frances Rice) – With not one scintilla of shame, President Barack Obama continuously blocks all efforts to provide school choice opportunity scholarships for poor black children that would help them get out of failed inner-city schools. Obama’s total lack of concern about the plight of the poor is stunning, but not surprising in light of his socialist ideology and slavish loyalty to teachers’ unions who put their own selfish economic interest above the basic educational needs of poor blacks.
Ignoring the tears and pleas of black students, Obama terminated the school choice program in the District of Columbia in his 2011 budget, sending impoverished children back into the failed DC public school system where they are not even being taught to read, write and do simple math. This lack of basic skills needed for employment and prosperity provides the toxic fuel for the deplorable conditions in black inner-city communities. In those urban cesspools there is staggering school truancy and black-on-black crime, ranging from rape, car-jacking, drug-trafficking, theft and murder. Seventy-percent of black babies are born out of wedlock, the school drop-out rate is over fifty-percent and the unemployment rate is an incredible seventeen-percent.
The documented crisis in black communities stirs no emotional reaction in Obama. Undoubtedly, the disgraceful situation in black neighborhoods is the direct result of the disastrous socialist policies of Democrats who have been running those communities for the past 60 years. Even more contemptible is the fact that Obama and his fellow Democrats have built their power base on the backs of poor blacks and readily engage in the despicable practice of race-baiting and victim mongering to win elections.
While Obama is busily catering to teachers’ unions for his own partisan political gain, black parents are frantically trying to elevate the worth of their children’s education. Sadly, a low-income mother in Ohio, Kelley Williams-Bolar who got her daughters into a quality school outside of her district of residence, was prosecuted, convicted and sentenced severely because she did not comply with the strict letter of the law. This desperate act by a loving mother, which resulted in her being deemed a criminal, demonstrates clearly that black parents do, indeed, want their children to be well-educated.
The untenable public school status quo has resulted in parents binding together in groups around the country in a quest to obtain educational reform and parental choice. One such organization is the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), and that group can be found on the Internet at: www.baeo.org. The National Black Republican Association supports this effort and urges all concerned citizens to join the cause and help ensure a better, brighter future for all of America’s children, especially the disadvantaged.
(Frances Rice is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Chairman of the National Black Republican Association. She may be contacted at: www.NBRA.info)
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