Transcripts For CSPAN Brown V. Board Of Education Steve Perr

CSPAN Brown V. Board Of Education Steve Perry Remarks May 31, 2017

Dr. Steve perry. He told me to keep his introduction short. So ill do that but hes a grazz Roots Community grassroots member. Dr. Steve perry is one of the most sought after educators in america. A diverse array from the urban league, even President Donald Trump has reached out to dr. Perry to hear his insights on what matters to parents and children. His unique and powerful voice has been featured on msnbc, fox, cnn, al jazeera, tv one, b. E. T. , and nbc as well as on the Oprah Winfrey network on multiple shows. He provides a fascinating perspective but is not often found in Public Discourse and has been fighting for disadvantaged children and families for over 30 years. Please help me in welcoming dr. Steve perry. [applause] dr. Perry long time no see. Thank you so much for having me this afternoon. Thank you for staying to be part of the extension of this conversation. Dr. Payne, thank you. Sincerely thank you for what you do and what youve done. Its all too easy for us to get caught up in ourselves an not recognizing that there are people upon whose shoulders we stand. You represent the best of them. I thank you humbly for having me and the rest of us here. Also i thank you for the work to make it possible for children of color and plaque people in particular. A lot of people talk about it, but youve been about it. So thank you so much, again, for that. Id also like to thank tall sponsors who were here, the Koch Foundation for what you do. A couple maybe about a month or so, my sons wife and i went to the africanamerican museum which is just fascinating. Its just a stunning, startling compelling experience. And what made it even more compelling is that we were there bridges. My sons 11 and 14, they see her still as the kid. So they were just caught up in the fact that theyre sitting there talking with ruby bridges. So one of the cue ray tor who is was curators who was taking one day said maybe your dad will be here and they were like, no, he wont. Hes not real cri that important. And theyre right. I probably will not. But what they did talk about, when we went through the africanamerican history museum, we saw controversy. And i say that because i must be coming more visible because as i come to speak more often people ask me to not be so controversial. Im not saying anybody here asked me to do that. But let me point out that sometimes our friends are afraid of what is really the Inconvenient Truth. And i dont know what it is. And i say this so controversially except that i am aware that black people are smarter than the other group, that latinos that that people ill pour are equally intelligent. That nobody got the gene pool lottery. Everybody has access to the same capacity if given the same opportunity. And here we are having a conversation about brown vs. Board of education 63 years later. And the reason were having that conversation is because the problems that persist were then and theyre here today. In fact, there are segregated schools. I appreciate people, you know, smart people that come up with new definitions for the same thing. You can dress a pig as a prom queen but that thing still is bacon. There is segregation. We need to understand that segregation is real. Segregation is limiting someones access by virtue of the fact that they are different. And in this country what that typically means is black, latino or poor. There is segregation in the United States. And what becomes controversial much in the same way as charles houston and, i dont know, Thurgood Marshall were controversial is that they looked at this Inconvenient Truth and said but wait a minute why then should my children not have access to the same education as everybody else when theyre the same. Arent they american . See, whats so troubling to me is that in our conversations we often overlook the obvious. The obvious is that there is a system in the United States of america that is designed to insure that poor people and black people in particular but people of color in general do not gain access to the quality of life that chief Justice Warren talked about. Earlier dr. Smith talked about a book by another controversial figure, you may have heard of mihm, dr. King. About a lot of things. In the final book that dr. King wrote, he talked about education. Dr. Martin luther king said that american schools do not know what to teach or how to teach. Thats dr. King. Guess hes controversial because he pointed out something that should have been obvious to many of us. That this system is not broken. We keep referring to the Public Education system as broken. It aint broken. Its working the way it was designed in 1635 to make sure that white kids from small communities gain access to the power that was believed to be grerian o hope in an a society and agrerian calendar. Its designed to. Do maybe we dont understand the definition of broken. The same system designed on another system that we often refer to as broken, the Justice System also designed to make sure that black people in particular dont gain access to freedom. Theyre the same system. Same ugly system as one another. Same system designed to produce the same results that theyve been producing since they were designed. And the reason in this day and age they persisted is because we wont have a conversation about why were here. Its very easy to talk about gardendale, alabama. We know they fumbled they dont even try to dress it up. They said we are seceding. Are you bugging . Seceding . Exodus. No, not them. Sucsucede. G to secede. Thats pretty damn racist too. [applause] so you condition call it anything other than what it is. When one group does not want a group of children to go to school and gain access to a quality education and down south we call it racist. Oh, theyre racist. Theyre racist. Yeah, they probably are. Just about as racist as those frenemies of yours. Ah, these are the ones who drive the subaru, got the hillary Bumper Sticker on the back, headed to whole drive foods, say they want to support Public Education, but see, their Public Education aint the same as your Public Education. Mine nt support mine, if is different than yours. If i dont have access to the same thing that you do, then you and i are not supporting the same fight. When you are fighting to make sure that we focus on the teachers more than we are the children when you shifted the focus of education around to make sure that we focus on the employees not the students, then you, my friends, are walking really close to that line of racism. I know we dont want to call our friends racist because its like throwing water on a witch. But thats just what i do. See, i dont have the time to be polite to yall. Ive got a couple of schools to run with real kids in them. Im not a public speaker. I work in education. Ive got a real job where tomorrow morning well be back in bridgeport, connecticut a place where we started a school where 85 of the children could not read, write or do math on grade level. 85 . But yall say you want the parents to be more involved. Well, 1,000 applied to our school. Thats pretty involved. They voted with their feet. But my good friends the dems are against school choice. 850 of them went right back to their old school. We cant change this until we start to change how we look at the problem. If we can always pass it off on a convenient enemy, the person were used to blaming for these things and will never hold ourselves accountable. I consider my son at any school because i know the game and i can make my way through a School System and show people how to be successful even in the worst School System. And we can always find the nomly. Theres always some squool a Large Population of africanamericans with a strong history that we can focus on and talk about. We can say that we want to send our own kids to that school. But you cant disavow from the advantages that you already have today. Your understanding of the Education System allows you to beat the system. But thats not whats going on for the sister who is raising two or three kids by herself while her husband is incarcerated. Theyre fighting a different fight from you. They need schools. This is all they have. They cant augment their Academic Experience because they havent learned what augment experience are. The reason why there is still segregation because we still dont believe that black people and poor people deserve access to the same education because if we did we would do away with school districts. [applause] dont worry. Yall dont have to clap. They cant hear you. If we wanted every single children to quality education, then the state would take on the responsibilities of education. The reason we do it the way we do is because thats the way weve always done it. Back in 1965 when we educate a very small group of white people, in 2016 when theyre doing in glendale, the same way its happening in manhattan and all over this country, see the deal here is that the system is doing just fine. The Public Education system is doing just fine. The reason why its doing fine is because weve defined Public Education as the product not the process. See, the product of Public Education for many people is a school that they refer to as a Public School. A Public School building, a Public School. But, not the process of educating the public. See, when you educate the public, you do not care what method they are educated by whether its charter or traditional. Online or in person. Neighborhood or magnet. Vocational, technical or yet to be designed. The reason why we care what type it is is because we care about the product and the product is driven in large part by again our good friends in the unions. See, as long as they can garnish the wages of the teachers who work there, then its a Public Education. But if they cannot garnish the wages of a Charter School principle or a private school principle, then its not a Public Education. But doesnt the public go there . Arent the public being educated . See, it would seem because i currently run a Charter School that im a Charter School advocate. Im a good school advocate. I dont care what kind. See, because ive seen most specifically the black community segregated, cordoned off to the education of scraps that this country has had to offer. Ive seen us crawl our way through this system to try and find a break in the matrix, to try to find a way to teach children to read. Or like many of us who find ourselves teaching our own grandparents to read. My grandfather was born in 1818. 1918. He died in 1999. He was illiteral when he passed. See, you cant tell me about seg segregation. Our concern is more so about the controversy of the conversation as opposed to the violence that it pushes upon children. Why are we not running to the streets . Why are we not hurting in our very soul . Why are we not crying out when we see a child who at 7 00 years i hate school . What are we afraid of . You scared of grown people . Im scare odd kids. The reason im scared of kids is because the way you create a perfect weapon is not to put a weapon in their hands is to take education out of their future. Look around. Look around. The reason why brown vs. Board of education was decided the way it was in large part was because the Supreme Court realized that you could not fully participate in america if you could not fully be educated. Shocker. Ben franklin said that many years before. In fact, its been said over and over in every continent that in order to fully participate you need to have access to an education in the black community we talk about preaching the word. We talk about preaching the word. And what that means for many of us is connecting to god. In order to truly understand who you are, you must first understand the word. Its christianity. We connect to your humanity, you can be more humane. If you are more humane you can be more considerate of others and you can live out what it is to be human which is to put your own selfinterest aside and be able to look at the greater good. What we have now is a system driven soully be sincht interest. They seek to keep their children away from other people and keep their jobs. On the one side you have the clumsily work their way through these things. And on the other side the dems say theyre trying to maintain communities. But why dont we maintain communities when someone is sending their child off to a private school whole is wealthy and white . Their community doesnt seem to fall apart because they sent their child to andover. You watch al franklin going hard against betsy dubois. Mr. Pro Public Education. Not so pro public when it came to his own house. See, im about calling the hypocrites. If youre for it, be for it for you and everybody else you roll with. If i come to your house and youre frying up some pork and ask you what youre eating. I want what youre eating, chief. Dont serve me what you dont want in your own house. It is all too easy for us to get up those of us who have options, who have the opportunity to choose to say that we choose the neighborhood school. Yeah, you also choose to live there. You also chose so many other things. So you cant look at your choice in isolation. Many of us did not choose to live in the Public Housing project that i was born into. I did not choose to be born on my mothers 16th birthday two an eighth grade dropout. I did not choose those things. You cant compare my choice to your choice. You cant even compare my choice as a father to my choice as a child. I tell my sons all the time, man, i wouldnt have liked you if i were growing up with you. I would have stolen your bike. He said, well, i just would get a new one. And thats why i wouldnt like your ass. We have to recognize when were look at choice there has to be parity. We cant talk about choice if choice aint the same for everybody. I am provouchers. I know you want to call it different names, people not to say bad things about you. Yall can talk about me. Im headed out any damn way. Im provouchers. You know why . Because you are too. You know how i know you are, because some of you got whats called the pell grant. Thats a vucher. Let me take it a little further just in case you figure my family didnt get pell grants. Good for you. Some of you may have had some section 8 along the way, couple of you may know somebody who got some food stamps. You may not have known that because youre too little. I want to introduce to this thing, its called a block of cheese. Youre laughing because you know you cant make Grilled Cheese without burning the entire house down. See, those are all vouchers. Medicaid, medicare, all vouchers. You mean the things that benefited me . Yeah, those things right there. The way in which were going to begin to finally end this segregation is to allow the people to decide. When parents are allowed to vote with their feet, they will choose the schools that are best for them and choice is the root it is the root of how you separate segregation from decision and theyre very different. Segregation is put upon you. Motherhouse is not seg grated. Spellman is not segregated. Howard, not segregated. Hampton, not segregated. Mith, all women, not segregated. They chows to be chose to be there. The Civil Rights Movement was about choice. Rosa parks wasnt saying everybody got to sit up front. But if i want to sit up front, i want to have the opportunity to. Nobody has to want to eat at wool worth. But if i want to eat at the lunch counter, i want to be able to go there. And so we come back to this notion, segregation. The reason why we have segregation is because we want people to feel comfort national the space. We dont want people to feel the controversy. We dont want to offend people. Well, to me its offensive when a city like bridge port, connecticut which is is in fairfield county, one of the wealthiest counties in the United States of america, almost 95 of children read, write, or do math on their raid level. The school we started in ,ridgeport is not segregated although it is almost entirely lacking and latino. Black and latino. Parents made. School system. You have to understand how badly our community what out. Not one parent in the Community Even knew where the Community School was going to be. Had they accepted all the students that applied that year, we would have been the Biggest School in the city and just the first year. Know we tell the story of how africanamericans and handle latinos and poor people do not really care about education. Really . We have been running that underground railroad for a long time. Not just to get out of slavery but to get out of segregation, too. Taking students outside their district. People are forfeiting their parental rights. Something has to shake loose when a parent will forfeit parental right and give her child to someone else today so doing allay say, i am i can. The mother will lie and say her kindergartner goes somewhere else. Wait that child up at 5 30 a. M. To put them in a car to take them to an chance house to get them on a bus so the man guests student policee officers to go around and check the backpacks of children to say whether or not they live in that community. This is what we have one we continue to lie and say the supports not to say, we Public Education until you support educating the entire public. Not until you believe that every single child is as worthy as every other child. Other parent has to l

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