In our current era of “slash and burn” editorial journalism, it seems profits and ratings trump reason. Far too many editorial journalists have forgotten or outright ignore journalistic integrity, gumshoe investigative reporting and the promises media has made its citizens.
Politics is an institutionalized practice of concession and mediation. In a complex society like ours, no one can enter the political arena and expect to win. One can only mitigate degrees of losing, as constituents press legislators, and legislators press each other.
The State of Arizona and its ongoing legal battle surrounding equal education opportunities and English Language Learner education is a perfect example. The citizens of Arizona needed commentary they could trust to help them navigate a difficult, decades-long legal issue, but that isn’t what they got.
Editorial journalist Doug MacEachern of The Arizona Republic newspaper started a fire with his Sept. 19 column “Tucson schools create race-based system of discipline.”
Since its publication, the column has appeared in the conservative and liberal blogosphere. Even on Facebook, the column garnered a following of readers who claim in public forums the disciplinary issues raised in the Tucson Unified School District’s plan are part of a liberal “social engineering” racial agenda. Citing the Transformative Education summer seminar, an annual institute hosted by what MacEachern termed “TUSD’s amply funded Mexican/American raza-studies program,” MacEachern foists upon his readers the rhetorical strategy of sarcasm and ridicule, a racially charged appeal to pathos. He claims the institute’s seminar was fun because there was “so much racial bitterness to obsess over.”
MacEachern is a white middle-aged man working for a conservative-leaning newspaper. It’s difficult to ignore this facet of his ethos, decorum and use of language when his writing seems to pander to those who choose to exercise First Amendment rights through autonomous online hate speech or the proliferation of racial stereotypes.
MacEachern failed to present TUSD’s policy as what it is: an attempt to comply with a federal court ruling and the Equal Education Opportunity Act of 1974, Congress’ response to President Richard Nixon’s call in 1972 that education be available to every student equally, even the poor and minorities.
In short, apart from sounding off like a guy who’d love to spoon with Glenn Beck and fork around with CNN’s Lou Dobbs, he jabs a sharp knife into the heart of journalistic integrity.
MacEachern fails to illuminate the larger issue of equal opportunity education, a battle that has brought Arizona a considerable amount of federal attention, including a slip brief from the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2009.
Legal wrangling began in 1992, with Flores v. Arizona, a suit filed on behalf of students learning in Nogales, Ariz., who claimed they weren’t receiving equitable education in accordance with federal law. The case escalated in 2000 when a 9th Circuit Federal Appellate judge ruled that the state had not complied with the Equal Education Opportunities Act of 1974 and had failed to provide adequate resources for ELL students.
In 2005, Arizona was again ruled short of compliance, and millions of federal dollars promised to the state for infrastructural projects were at risk if the state did not prove it had made considerable progress in its effort to satisfy judgment.
That’s when all hell broke loose for Arizona, when policy wonks and editorial journalists turned the issue, compliance with federal education law and a federal court judgment, into a slash-and-burn battle about race and immigration.
In 2009, Thomas Horne, superintendent of Arizona Public Schools, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court with counsel from Pepperdine Dean of Law Kenneth Starr, who most remember from the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and investigation.
Seeking Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(5) relief on behalf of his clients, Starr argued there was significant justification for judgment release. In a 5-4 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court remanded the case to the lower court, citing judicial error in assessment of evidence, including issues the plaintiff had not brought for consideration.
According to dissenting Justice Stephen Breyer, who was joined in opinion by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the High Court majority established a troublesome legal precedence, one that ignores “horn book” procedures and a large body of judicial review precedence established long before the Supreme Court’s creation.
In closing his dissenting opinion, Justice Breyer pointed to a larger, sociopolitical issue.
“I fear the Court’s decision will increase the difficulty of overcoming barriers that threaten to divide us,” Breyer wrote.
The ruling, like all U.S. Supreme Court rulings, can now be a factor in determining judicial procedure. And that’s why those outside of Arizona should pay attention.
Complicating the Arizona compliance issue, too, is the passing of No Child Left Behind, signed into law by former President George W. Bush in 2002. The State is in a complicated intersection of state rights and federal interference. The conservative state leadership majority is trying to do right by its constituents in these difficult economic times, while balancing education policies from two separate Republican presidencies.
Nixon’s call for equitable education and George W. Bush’s reform that requires states to be accountable to federal standards complicate judicial interpretation. The federal influence and assertion of federal rule is bending everyone, conservatives and those in Tucson MacEachern dubbed as “a happy band of unrepentant political leftists,” to the point of breaking.
The bottom line is this: Arizona wants the feds out of its business, and the State, despite partisan conflict, wants to do right by its children.
The 2009 Supreme Court remand means evidence of progress and change will at some point come under review again. Arizona Public Schools had better make sure every aspect of its institutional approach to the EEOA of 1974 and the federal rulings prove the state deserves relief, and more importantly, state independence from federal interference.
Instead of informing his reading public of the nuances and difficulties, MacEachern asserted TUSD created a “two-tiered form of student discipline. One for black and Hispanic students; one for everyone else.”
MacEachern’s polemical and racially biased language incited considerable outrage manifested in openly racial and threatening posts on The Arizona Republic Web site, including one from “AngryPatriot” claiming, “The easier and more efficient way is to just hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats.”
Another post declared that black and Hispanic high school students in Arizona didn’t have anything to worry about since most “don’t make it that far.”
However, careful reading of the public plan while keeping the larger context of the EEOA of 1974, Flores v. Arizona, and the recent U.S. Supreme Court remand in mind, it’s clear that TUSD is working to ensure the district has done its part to satisfy federal judgment by providing researched evidence the court demanded. TUSD disciplinary data from 2008 suggests there is a substantial discrepancy between white and nonwhite suspensions. That alone, when considering the legalities the state faces, is worthy of careful examination and policy reform.
Because Title VI of the EEOA requires that “no person in the United States shall on the ground of race, color or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” even disciplinary practices on the district level must be considered and reviewed to ensure statewide compliance.
What MacEachern termed “genuine apartheid” in Tucson is a far more complicated weave of state versus federal rights, sociopolitical and socioeconomic struggle for equity under Constitutional and federal law and the promises society makes to its children. The TUSD plan is not about a “race-obsession board of governors … taking racial bean-counting to preposterous extremes,” as MacEachern claims.
It’s about people who care about their state, their children and their political views, citizens who deserved so much more than what MacEachern offered.
Erica F. Rogers is a fourth-year doctoral English major. Reach her at ericarogers@dailynebraskan.com.
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* If Senator Nelson votes to move the Democrats’ health care bill forward, he is voting to raise Nebraskans’ health care costs, taxes, and premiums, all while cutting Medicare for the 270,435 beneficiaries in the state.
* The taxpayers of Nebraska can see through these parliamentary procedure games. They don’t want a flip flopper.
* Nebraskans want someone to keep the government from coming between them and their doctor.