Transcripts For CSPAN2 BookTV In Syracuse NY 20151122 : vima

CSPAN2 BookTV In Syracuse NY November 22, 2015

Her own activist strategy. She always said to other activist we must acknowledge today. Later we visit the special collection as Syracuse University to learn about the antislavery movement. First, we speak with author, marsha weisman, about her book prelude to prisonment student perspectives on school suspension. Well, school to prison pipeline is a catchy term that looks at the increasing numbers of students who are suspended from school for disciplinary misbehavior. And it captures both students two are suspended and sent to whats called an alternative school in most districts. Some states allow students to be expelled from school for up to a. Meaning they get no Educational Services whatsoever, and also encompasses the increasing use of police and arrests. So, students are we have seen over the past decade or more, that more and more young people are arrested in schools for behaviors that normally had been, or in the past, had been addressed by school staff, School Principals and guidance counselors. So, at the end of the day, School Prison pipeline is a term that in my view, really encompasses the robbing of young people of their right to an education. So its a human rights issue. Were here to learn if were not able to learn, like spelling, if your suspended, a lot of teachers wont geoff you the homework you need from the stuff you missed. Were constantly getting pushed back and fall interesting the prison pipe will be and becoming a statistic, and that not where we want to be. No in a good not in a good way. Suspended and expelled and pushed out and we dont get to actually learn. Its a civil rights issue because disproportionately more africanamerican young men are suspended from school. As well as other students of color, africanamericans, girls, latino boys and girls. And so in my view that makes it very much a civil rights issue. Wrote the book to elevate the voices of young people who are in what is called the school to prison pipeline in the last decade, theres been a lot of attention to this problem. A lot of research. And data collection, but missing from the conversation have been the voices of students who are directly affected by being pushed out of school. I really wanted to give them a chance to be heard about something that is so profoundly affecting their lives, and i came to see that these were young people who were very, very harmed by being pushed out of school, by the process. They were also really distraught about losing their opportunity to an education. And so it occurred to me that i needed to hear more about that. I needed to really hear their stories about what happened, why did you get suspended . And once you were suspended, what happened after what is called the hearing, the decisionmaking process that finds guilt or innocence, if you will, and then what the sentence is, what happens if youre found guilty. And so i reached out to young people who we knew, who are in our program, and i asked if they would be willing to be interviewed. First i was struck by the sense of, on the one hand, responsibility that the young people had for their behavior. They did acknowledge misbehaving. But they also thought that the full story wasnt being heard, and for the most part there was a lot of detail that went into what they did, and they really felt that they were never given an opportunity to tell their perspective on what happened and why. But they were willing to say, i shouldnt have done that. I know that. I know better than that. My mama taught me to behave better than that. So the story i would tell was a young man who was on the school bus with his younger brother. His younger brother was being bullied in school. And one day he brought a knife, and the older brother realized he had a knife on him. And as they were getting off the school bus, took the knife away from his younger brother and intended to turn it in because he knew the policy. He supported the policy. And he didnt want his brother to use a knife and get into more trouble and harm someone else. But as they were getting off of the school bus and he was taking the knife, they both got pulled off of the bus, and they were both the end of the story for them were they were both suspended for a year, and this young man he must have been about 15 years old and he was a big kid, right . And as hes telling me the story, his eyes filled up with tears, and he said, i support the policy. I took that knife away from my brother because he didnt need to have a knife in school. But they went listen to me. They wouldnt hear me. I know and then he said i know they had to do something because my hand touched the knife. So i understand they had to look into it. But they didnt hear why, and they didnt believe me. And they said i was a bad kid, and that hurted me so bad. And when you look at this kid, its usually people think, oh, my god, tough guy, and the conversation with him just was heartbreaking. You could see how harmful thatterter experience was. It erodes his faith in justice. He wasnt opposed to accountability, but what happened to him he didnt think was fair or just. He thought adults would be better equipped could hear the nuances of the story, and so much of this echoed my experience working in the criminal Justice System, and that was somewhat horrifying because were talking about education. Right . So as the kids talked about being suspended, thats analogous to an arrest. As they talked about and even in 0 those cases where they werent actually race arrested, they talked about the case against them. It echoed anymore the Justice System who are overcharged. They may have done something inappropriate, something wrong, but the charges are often escalated. They the experience of the hearing was very much like a trial. And one young person said to me during the interview, they really dont want to hear you say anything. They just want you to plead guilty and take your punishment. And so it was sort of like the railroad that has come to be known as our criminal Justice System. The sentence going to a school with even more security measures than a regular school, which itself these days have a lot of security in them. Being wandded, going through metal detectors, not being allowed to wear caughts of sweat shirts, being taken into the bathroom and being patted down. The girls felt very violated in the patdowns in particular. And then the return to Mainstream School sounds a lot like the older folks we work with when theyre talking about reentering from prison, being forever stigmatized for the mistake they made. Massive incarceration became a tool and the criminal Justice System became a tool, not only for social control but we began to embrace it as a mechanism for further stereotype people, to politicize an issue, divide our country, to fearmonger, and to win political office, if you will. And once that that begins to seep into every part of our culture. And thats what happened, i think, with schools. As more and more people in communities of color were stereotyped as criminals, it becomes pretty easy, if you will, or a slippery slope to start looking at the children in those ways. You dont undo 20 years of history just by snapping your fingers, and cultures are very hard to change. So at the end of the day, i think that integral to the policy changes that are being put in place, that advocacy, particularly on the part of young people and parents, is an essential part of the solution because unless we keep looking and keep challenging and you can have a good discipliner in code that never really gets implemented. And holding so holding districts feet to the fire to do what they are saying they want to do. It can disappear in a flash of a minute, and so i think that advocacy and Student Voice and parents voice remains a critical part of the solution, but were not at the same place we were ten years ago. And i think thats promising and hopeful. What were seeing now in this country is almost a last gasp and i think its going to be a long gasp, but nonetheless, the last gasp of the effort to preserve White Privilege and keep people of color as secondclass citizens. I think that the genie is out of the bottle and theres just too many people, and particularly in the work that we do. There are now organizations, phenomenal organizations led by formerly incarcerated people. Theyre not going away. The parents and students who make up in schools are not going away, and in fact were gathering more teens, and so i do believe that its going to be a protracted struggle, but i am really confident that this is going to come out on the right side at the end of the day. Youre watching booktv on cspan2. This weekend were visiting syracuse, new york to talk with local authors and tour the citys literary sites with the help of our local cable partner, time warner cable. Next, Syracuse University professor her Herbert Ruffin talks about the racial history of californias Silicon Valley. Means that this book is has been positioned within not only africanamerican west hoyt but also within great migrations, black urban history. And unlike other black urban histories or great migration histories between 1915 to 1970 when they usually when that period has ended, africanamericans in Silicon Valley were not necessarily invited to come into the Silicon Valley, if you know what i mean, or santa clara valley, by industrial recruiters or something along that line during the two great wars in 1915 or 1940, to work on ships, especially in the west, to work on ships to build ships, and work in factories, government factories, federal government factory us. They war not part of that process so their process is one in which you have africanamericans for the most part, if they are coming in, family either lives inside the region. The place is very cultural. Africanamerican at that time dont want to go back into agriculture. You have a situation as well where you have africanamericans who have been going into places like san francisco, richmond, california, los angeles, and the like, and once the war is over, thats when you have this very interesting intraregional migration taking place. People start to figure out, wait a minute, this may not be for me inside these larger metropolitan areas. Let me see if there are other places for me to try to find my dream. In terms of the First World War this is the general thing about blacks in the west. Blacks in the west generally speaking in terms of the urban development, in terms of the population, that rise of population, generally its probably 25 years behind what takes place inside the urban north, the urban northeast, harlem, south side, chicago. That doesnt happened in places out west and when i say west i mean places west of the 98th meridian, states from texas, up to the dakotas, and going out west, oklahoma and kansas and places like that, where instead of it being comfortably couched within this whole idea of conquest and westward migration from a place like syracuse. Take this as an example. And once upon a time going from buffalo to syracuse would have been considered the west. Now wire taking a physical divide in the United States and going out west and trying to tell that story. And it also opens up a type of conquest. It takes into consideration, say, for example, people within spanish america. Native americans a little bit better. And we go on down the line. A lot of it traces back to this period, the americanization period, and san jose is not the only place that is going through what i am describing where they have not really been jim crowed. Its not founded on slavery. You have slavery everywhere. The slavery is not the dominant institution. So, if i will illustrate is in in a david way in california, white slavery would evaporate a lot quicker than it would in other parts of the states, largely because in many parts of california you would perhaps have three three free in one room and three unfree in another room and that just made freedom that much more immediate. It had to be done away with. The fugitive slave law had to be done away with it was just a very urgent issue, and thats one of the first things these people who are part of the california Color Convention what they were battling with, and then a lot of things you would see during the Civil Rights Movement 100 years later theyre actually engaged in at this time period. Incredible stuff. And then they were successful just like the Civil Rights Movement. They would be successful by the 1890s. But now were talking about identity and basically what the black identity is, if you have everybody clustered, you have no center for or its hard to really identify exactly what is a black community. This is where my methodology of dealing with Community Institutions comes into play. You start looking at the institutions and basically political organizations, mutual aid society, perhaps if you have economic guild or businesses, you look into that. And theres always some form of political expression involved. Theres always a structure always a struggle that is involved. Youre never going to do away with whatever form of discrimination. Its always going to exist. These people understood it. Its just an issue of, do you recognize it . And how are you going to go about battling it once you recognize it . Some people get very comfortable and then things slip back into what they were. So this is the story im telling now, a story, uninvited, but sought to make themselves invited. So when we talk about the west, were talking about various groups, but it goes back to 1500s. Doesnt start at 1600 like most people think in an eastwest tame. Northsouth way. It goes back to the early 1500s. When you take into consideration the spanish america. Africanamericans in 19th 19th century during the gold rush, 1850s. Early 1860s, they came from places like philadelphia and new york. They also came from kentucky, with their masters, and texas and places like that. Missouri. Now, with the ones who came from the north, who are quoteunquote free blacks, they were in connection with the ame church, and what would happen as they would start doing what theyre doing in san francisco, it would scatter throughout various areas. By the time you had the emancipation proclamation, 1863, what this would do for many people who are connected with the california Color Convention as well as they had their own papers. Instead of necessarily going up to canada, because there was an underground railroad of the west coast as well taking place. Now all of a sudden theyre just cubed of like, way. Instead of going up there, why dont we look and see what we have around here. So they began to start to look around and find populations like san jose. San jose three years before the emancipation proclamation so you have somebody like a reverend Peter William casey, who comes into play, and the type of impact he and they have is immeasurable. They the reason why you have most of this stuff written out in the california constitution by the 1890s. Anything you can think of in africanamerican history in the santa clara valley, they had these type of organizations. So when i talk about community formation, look at the institutions, what theyre building, look at also the political organizations as well. So theres an africanamerican league that exists, alert on the naacp exists. You have like a core that exists, all of this stuff that instead of it just thinking about these people in an isolated fashion, isolating their communities, they have connected into something that is national, international. Know what im saying . What they are battling is something that is not statewide would be statewide but also so much larger and out in san jose, in the 1870s, was for fair education. They sparked the fair Education Movement as well as voting. Fair voting. San jose was probably the first place to have fair voting take place after the 15th amendment being passed, and then once you have it lefter on, almost a whole century later, keep in mind that civil rights the first civil rights bill was actually passed 1866, but this is just to tell you just how tenuous this whole battle is over freedom, and not giving allowing people to have their freedom. It took a whole 100 years to even be in this state where we are now where were 50 years after the civil rights bills have been passed and people have recognized. 1968, people tend to overlook the importance civil rights legislation that was passed in the time period. For me that when it kind of ended, the whole civil rights period ends. In that bill, you have not only enforcement clause but you also have now clauses that point towards fair housing. Why is this important . Because in a place like san jose, or inside the santa clara valley, which would become the Silicon Valley after 1971, were talking about growth, the growth had doubled. From 730 people to 1700 people by 1950. From up to 1960, youre talking about 4100 people. By 1970, were talking about 18,090 people. Most of those people came in the 1960s, after 1968, the housing thing. Whether White Communities were ready for it or not, the bottom line was that black people knew they could move in, if they had the means to move in. You know what im saying . 1968. Thats when you begin to start to find the massive spike tapes where their movement out of san jose would be increasingly in a place like east part of san jose, which is also where you find a lot of mexicans. Now its like, well, wherever you think you can afford to move. The case today, you know, although i would have to say that in a place like the veil son Silicon Valley it has become increasingly much too expense tonight expensive to live in. That been the case for 20 years. Whether youre talking about the collective or individually, families these people are forever struggling to try to get beyond just the survival, survival mode. Theyre trying to thrive. During book ofs visit to syracuse new york we talked with jeff hemsley about going viral. An interesting thing happen when something goes viral. We dont talk about the contact. We talk about the fact it within viral. Were aware of the fact that lots of people shared and it lots of people think it was important. I was runny a study not too long a

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