A STIRRING CULTURAL REVOLUTION

Is this for real, or simply another line of digital dope offered up in the form of political wishful thinking? As much as we might pine for the ushering in of that new post-racial worldview that Obama promised but can hardly deliver even if he tried, which he obviously isn't when it counts the most—on the fly—the dividend bearing reality remains that "until you see the reds of their eyes" racial politics is big business and too formidable a stick of ill repute to simply fade away.

However, words will be words, and often fetch a handsome price on the information markets these days. So the knaves with their knives on all sides of the compost pile continue to line up in service to their killing fields of choice.

Former associate of the Oakland, CA of the revolutionary Black Panther Party, and now conservative agitator—David Horowitz—on the aftermath of the recent Henry Louis Gates spectacle, writes:

NOW, FOR WHITE PEOPLE the term "racist" is really tantamount to being called a "ni---er" if you're black, except that blacks are free to call whites racists while whites can't even write the word n-i-g-g-e-r without risking repercussions. Watching this show—watching this cop be not only unapologetic but demanding that Gates apologize to Crowley and his mother (for the trash-talk Yo Mama), it occurred to me that a great turn is indeed taking place as a result of the election of Obama.

First we had the spectacle of Sotomayor—a race-preference leftist—backing off entirely from race preferences, and now we have policemen who normally would just be under fire, saying enough—we're not going to take it anymore. Saying: For years we've bent over backwards to apologize for racial injustices, some of which occurred and some of which did not, we've taken so many hours of courses and training to be sensitive to minorities, and we're not going to be called racists anymore when we're not. You are a professor making five or ten times what I make. You are in state whose governor is black; you're in a city whose mayor is black. You're pretending you're a powerless victim and at the same time phoning my chief and calling me a racist, telling me I don't know who I'm messing with because your friend who is black is the president of the United States. F--- you! And that's something of a cultural revolution.

Read it all.

While we can agree with the Horowitz analysis of the racial game as it is historically played, it is far too early to presume that this president has actually achieved racial consensus and has flatlined the old racist beast by inadvertently appealing to those very same tactics in solving this social dilemma that has supposedly led to the often cited racial polarity in the first place, beer garden or no beer garden.

BEN CHAVIS AND THE NEW PATERNALISM

PATERNALISM IS THE RESTRICTION of freedom for the good of the person restricted. AIPCS acts in loco parentis because [Ben] Chavis, who is cool toward parental involvement, wants an enveloping school culture that combats the culture of poverty and the streets.

He and other practitioners of the new paternalism—once upon a time, schooling was understood as democracy's permissible, indeed obligatory, paternalism—are proving that cultural pessimists are mistaken: We know how to close the achievement gap that often separates minorities from whites before kindergarten and widens through high school. A growing cohort of people possess the pedagogic skills to make "no excuses" schools flourish.

Unfortunately, powerful factions fiercely oppose the flourishing. Among them are education schools with their romantic progressivism—teachers should be mere "enablers" of group learning; self-esteem is a prerequisite for accomplishment, not a consequence thereof. Other opponents are the teachers unions and their handmaiden, the Democratic Party. Today's liberals favor paternalism—you cannot eat trans fats; you must buy health insurance—for everyone except children. Odd.

Read it all in the most recent George F. Will column. Don't look now but I think there is light in this here tunnel. While it is clear that Chavis is controversial in many ways, neither his tactics nor his reputation seemed to stymie his success. In another surprise move, Chavez left the school in 2007.