State of the Black Union: California & Prisons

OK, so Tavis is mad that Obama is hiring other black folks that went to Harvard and saying that he's being classist! Hey Tavis, Cornel West went to Ivy League schools so are you gonna stop being homies with him?

Lani Guinier, the only black professor at Harvard Law School is here and just said that the black agenda is the American agenda! Says we have to reframe what the black agenda/American agenda is. It's about redefining merit itself. We have to believe that each of us have merit.

Says it's not about high scores on the SAT or about getting A+'s at Harvard Law School, because you can still come out and not be a good lawyer despite all that.

Recommends a book by Scott Page called "The Difference". He's saying is that "diversity in problem solving groups trumps individual ability."

The normal American preference is to hire the people who get the highest score. If John gets 7 questions right and Steve gets 6 right and Jane gets 5 right, the way it works is that John and Steve get hired. But what if Jane got correct the questions that Steve and John got wrong? SO John and Jane should be hired! Interesting!

Our suffering is a clue to the larger problem. You can't talk about black people without mass incarceration and you can't talk about mass incarceration without talking about drugs. Notes that the money to pay for prisons is taken from education.

Since 1995, California has spent more money building prisons than building schools. We have to change the idea that the place for young black people is not college, but is instead prison.

The SAT is a wealth test, not a test of your talent. The SAT correlates with parent income more than 1st year college grades. She wonders why don't people talk about this?

Says we've moved into an arena of modern scientific racism and how now tests and metrics make racism invisible. These tests, whatever you think about them are violating the first principle that talent is equally distributed among groups. Says many of us have good strategic guessing abilities, but we shouldn't be the only ones getting ahead.

-- I feel her on that but I also think that if you're getting a good education, you should be able to pass the test. The key is getting people that education!

Our last panelist is Karen Bass, speaker of the California State Assembly. Tavis wants to know how we should interpret Lani Guinier's comments about California? Bass says there are always the votes for prisons but not for education. We cut $8 billion from education in the California budget. The only way to not do this was to raise taxes but Republicans wouldn't do that. Three Republicans voted for tax raises, and now right-wing radio is calling for them to be recalled.

Talks about how prisons become the new economic development for some communities. When three strikes went into effect, the State of Califonia had to build 14 more prisons, and communities lobbied to have them because they're seen as steady jobs since there will always be criminals.

In the State of California, there are 56 occupations you can never have if you're a felon. I'm wondering what those are and she gives the example that in state prison, we teach them to be barbers, but you can't get a barbering license, she she had to pass a law allowing people to get temporary licenses. Feels like this is critical when they're talking about green jobs.

Oh, California...