A meeting of the San Diego Board of Education
by Ernie McCray
The war between Israelis and Palestinians is affecting Arab and Jewish students in our schools, requiring educators to tend to the learning and emotional needs of both groups of young people.
But many Arab students claim that they aren’t getting the amount of attention that their Jewish counterparts are receiving.
These students took part in a focus group as part of a study conducted by a doctoral student who is from the local Arab American community.
Students say they’re feeling alone, unheard, extremely uncomfortable with the way the armed conflict in Gaza is discussed on their campuses. According to them, the conversations are mainly centered on what’s happening to Israelis, and their counter arguments to what they consider to be misinformation, are mostly denounced.
Many of them feel as though they’re a default “enemy,” being constantly bullied by racist jokes about what they wear or the truths they hold to, leaving them without hope that their people will ever be represented in the curriculum in positive ways.
They’re concerned about constantly having their religious beliefs challenged and the events of 9-11 thrown in their face and having to choose “White” as their race on standardized tests.
They’re often humiliated by class presentations about Palestine in the world news that focus mostly on the United States government’s point-of-view.
What alarms me the most about their plight at school is that it’s being met with silence, an eerie foreboding quietness. And, if that’s not alarming enough, there are leaders in their community who have been, in effect, silenced.
I’m referring to people who work on their behalf on committees like those who advise the San Diego Unified School District regarding programs that provide services for English Learners which many students from the Middle East are.
Such people can help them as they deal with the extreme emotional pain they’re feeling because of their view that the United States is doing very little to help the people of Gaza.
They need shoulders to rest their heads upon seeing Ramadan, a sacred month for Muslims, frowned upon and seeing how any group that dares to support them is looked upon as an anti-Semitic organization, not to mention they are Semites too.
They need compassion as they hear news of someone known to them who has died or is dying or starving or becoming displaced due to what was once their neighborhood being reduced to rubble.
They need assurances that things can be better when they hear of thousands upon thousands of children like them succumbing to malnutrition and dehydration or being killed or maimed.
Oh, if the school district could pause for a moment and think what it must be like to walk in these grief-stricken students’ shoes and help them heal.
But that mission can’t be undertaken without input from leaders in their community.
I’ve expressed my concerns not only to the district’s top administrators but to the members of the Board of Education also, and to city leaders along with the San Diego County Human Relations Commission, the Chief of Staff of San Diego County Schools, State Senator Toni Atkins, and my California State Assembly member, Tasha Boerner.
I’ve received two of those polite “Thank you for your concern and insights” kind of replies.
Now, of course, it’s not about me but I’m still listening for sounds of hope as the silence is killing me because I just want the best for the children caught up in this situation.
They’re in desperate need of a school system that embraces them and makes them feel safe, as it’s way past time for San Diego Unified to break its depressing silence and create an atmosphere wherein it’s clear that all our citizens are valued and respected as human beings.
In the process the district must make amends with the leaders in the Muslim and Arab community who have been shunned.
With much needed input from the community the district should come up with ideas that can best meet the needs of their children. Ideas that can lead to the coming together of Jewish and Arab students – as both groups have been affected by a silence that loudly hints that very little is being done to help either group of students overcome what the armed conflict in Gaza has wrought in their lives.
Such action would model for the community-at-large how to solve problems related to human relations.
With the help of all of us in the city who care.
Editordude: An edited version of this article appeared in the Op-Ed section of today’s SD Union-Tribune.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
This is an ongoing and urgent need. There are resources in the SDUSD for bringing together the community, educators, an students there to address the conflicts. This can be done in extracurricular programs that exist as well as across the curriculum, for all grade levels. Use the current resources and provide more to transform this conflict as well as provide equal learning opportunities in the schools.
Ernie you are a beautiful person and I enjoy all of your eloquently written contributions to the OB Rag, Thank you. “The problem” is the problem, we have become so opinionated that everyone will not hesitate, for even a moment, to tell you what “your problem is.”
We need to make “the solution” “the new problem”. In other words lets start out by discussing “the solution” first and then work back to the root causes of our problem instead. Because we always get mired in “the problem” replete with group-think, preconceived notions, and/or prejudices and corporate crafted narratives that many times are constructed by ideological think tanks to be not only convenient but profitable. So we never seem to get to the part where we find meaningful actionable solutions. Instead the media relishes in conflict as it is the source of bountiful clickbait and viewership profiteering everywhere.
I for one am proud as hell to see these human rights protests on campuses across this country and now the world.
34,ooo civilians are dead in just over 6 months of bombing in Palestine. In contrast about 32,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in over two years of an actual war with the Russian military.
The narrative that implies that if you express any empathy for humanity that this automatically makes you antisemitic and pro Hamas by default is doing the good people of Jewish faith a tremendous disservice.
Three polls show that over 70% of Israelis want Netenyahu removed from power and consider him a tyrant.
Just like the US failed with this “war on terrorism” so goes the IDF. This should have always been a police action if the outcome were indeed to root out Hamas from Palestine. By now has become obvious that this is not the actual intention of Netenyahu. Bibi wants their blood and their land.
It’s amazing how the corporate media will champion the causes of the discriminated when it suits their needs, but carves out such an obvious exception when the discriminated are of Palestinian or Haitian descent.
I do realize there is no Palestine, and we are talking about Gaza primarily. I wish to illustrate a point that if there is a war ongoing, by definition that would be a military conflict between two countries. Usually, when the conflict is confined within it’s own borders it’s referred to as a civil war if I am not mistaken.
Aren’t more than 70% of Jewish Israeli’s going unrepresented and being oppressed by a vengeful authoritarian engaging in military action they themselves as a nation no longer deem reasonable ?
Lest we remember this is the same Netenyahu that castrated judicial oversight of the executive branch just months after declaring another contentious election victory.
This is the same Netenyahu that has spent his entire political career accelerating construction projects of massive high density developments in the West Bank. Conveniently referred to innocuously as settlements, as if they are some small Fiddler on the Roof style family farm cottages. Instead it has been the strong arm take-over of massive swaths of real estate on land that was set aside for Palestinians. These egregious actions have coincidentally fueled more animosity and hate, making for a fully replenishing source of recruits for Hamas no matter what your take on the conflict is.
I am pro humanity, I am pro Israel, and I am pro innocent civilians of any ethnicity or religious affiliation.
I am anti-tyrant.
Doubt we can refer to 70% of the majority of Israelis wanton removal of Netenyahu from power and their empathetic response to ongoing human rights abuses as antisemitism.
Something to think about:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/columbia-university-says-banned-khymani-james-protester-said-zionists-rcna149642
Personally, this kid needs to be kicked out of school and is not worthy of a future.
Nobody, especially myself is defending hate speech, of any kind.
The abuse of free speech can only be tempered by more free speech not censorship. It is after all free speech; not speech you only agree with.
CNN has run interviews with right wing Israeli extremists looking to occupy the coastal region of Gaza.
Does that mean the entire populous of Israel wants to claim land in Gaza and relocate all Palestinians? Not according to most polls.
Also I should point out that NBC, CNBC and MSNBC are all very much a part of the military industrial complex replete with multi million dollar ad campaigns from defense contractors like Lockeed Martin, & Boeing.
And I should like to add that the Comcast owned and operated networks of NBC/Universal employ a revolving door of military, intelligence and defense contractors as on air contributors, to regularly fabricate and manipulate news narratives.
I 100% support free speech, but free speech doesn’t mean no consequences.
Agreed. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr once said.”Your freedom to swing your fist, ends where my nose begins.” The same principal applies to free speech.
Yeah, consequences for thee not for me because UNLESS you are doing what the MIC want you to do, you get beaten and arrested. Or doing what AIPAC pays for which is a blatantly foreign country lobbying group. Isn’t there something about being registered as such in order to operate in this country? They sure give out enough bribes to our politicians, don’t they?
And it certainly seems like these ‘elite’ universities are complicit with terrorists operating on their campus grounds:
“reveals imported use of an illegal weapon, the carrying out of a hate crime, and the destruction of over a dozen students’ property” by those “identified as former Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers” whom are students at Columbia. Who, by the way, have yet to be EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL AND EJECTED FROM THIS COUNTRY for acts of terrorism against US citizens.
Pro-Palestine Columbia Students Attacked with (a US banned) Israeli Chemical, University Administration Fails to Act
https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1655130
Question: WHERE did they acquire this chemical weapon they used? From whom?
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Then there is this:
Colleges and Universities Collaborate With The State To Silence Pro-Palestine Protests
https://blackagendareport.com/colleges-and-universities-collaborate-state-silence-pro-palestine-protests
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McCarthism rears its ugly head again in this country. Oh wait, it has never really gone away, has it? McCarthy begat Nixon who begat Reagan who begat HW & Wbush who begat Trump.
But there is one thing we have learned in the last 70 years, the ‘radical left protesters’ have pretty much been dead on the entire time. They were correct about McCarthyism, correct about Viet Nam, correct about desegregation, correct about cannabis, correct about Nixon, correct about Reagan, correct about corporations, correct about Wbush war crimes in Iraq, and so much more over the last 70 years. But, like now, they are always beaten and brutalized, arrested, smeared by the mainstream corporate press and vilified by those who profit from it. And quite often killed by government agents of all kinds, shot by the national guard, infiltrated by the government goons, and often assassinated by ‘lone gunmen.’
Pretty obvious that the police attacks and cop-started riots I witnessed as a teen haven’t changed a bit.
I have found that the hardest thing a conservative can possibly do is admit that the hippies and lefties were correct.
So now I wonder which campus will be the new Kent State?
sealintheSelkirks
Seal, you can post all the links you want to back you your POV, but the fact is Khymani James used some very inflammatory language and deserves whatever consequences happen to him, despite the unacceptable genocide Israel is committing. If he really believes his cause is righteous, he himself should be willing to pay whatever price is handed to him.
BTW, when I say free speech comes with consequences, I also include Jewish students who openly express “death to all Palestinians”. It goes both ways so it’s not a matter of “consequences for thee not for me” that you seem to be implying. I’ve had to break off some real-life friendships with long time close Jewish friends who’ve not only expressed such views but actually committed violence themselves.
We are discussing free speech in the context of what can only be described as our civilization’s oldest religious ideological conflict. Pretty incendiary subject to begin with.
But now that our constitutional right to free speech and lawful assembly are getting bastardized it has become a very American issue.
The framers made the right of free speech our first amendment right for a very deliberate reason. Without free speech there is no other right can exist in the constitution, there can simply be no democracy.
Seal is bringing up historical events reflecting incredible relevance with our free speech debate today. As I interpret it his point is that historically, lawful peaceful assembly and peaceful engagement in expression of our first amendment rights cease to remain peaceful once the cops in riot gear get called in. Historically, as Seal reminds us that situations such as this have escalated to the point where nervous, inexperienced, national guardsman open fired on protesters at Kent State and killed 11 people.
I think we can all agree that we must learn from history, and that we are not necessarily destined to repeat it.
Chris, I am sorry about your buddies man. Healthy friendships should always endure differences of opinion, no matter what. If you were to try to mend and repair those friendships though, ironically it would require the right to speak freely with one another.
guardsmen i meant. Sorry
Thanks. It’s not so much differences in opinion (I agree with some of their points). It’s more a matter of their willingness to inflect violence. They legitimately have had to contend with antisemitism but at the same time seem to be looking for a reason to get in altercations.
Sigh. It’s the times we live in.
Chris, inflammatory is a mild way of putting what I’ve been reading that’s coming from all sides. Incendiary is probably a slightly more accurate term I think. Or maybe Napalm hot would be a better description?
As are many of the…ummm…comments from US politicians, Israeli politicians, Hamas mouthpieces, etc etc. The list goes on and on with increasing violence breeding violence until we burn the world down.
This just happened but since it wasn’t on a US college campus by student protesters, who cares, right?
Israeli Finance Minister Denounced for Calling for ‘Total Annihilation’ of Gaza
https://www.commondreams.org/news/smotrich-gaza-annihilation
Why is this guy not in an Israeli jail for this? The least they could do is beat him and drag him in zipties a little bit…like our cops are doing!
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I really hope Albert Einstein was wrong in his prediction about the future of this civilization, ya know? It’s looking more and more like he was at least partially correct (since he didn’t know about Global Warming then).
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Chris, I feel your pain as I’ve had to break off some longtime beach friendships, too, in MB & OB when Reagan was installed. People I grew up surfing with, going to parties, chasing hot girls.
Then again twenty years later while living in NorCal when Wbush was getting ready to murder a million Iraqis that never attacked the US when I was involved in the street protests where I lived.
And then nearly twenty years later AGAIN in 2015 up here when Trump did his pre-dictator dance into the White House and this nearly 70% MAGA voter county turned even more hostile to people with critical thinking skills and a knowledge of History. Big sigh. It always hurts to cut off/be cut off from people you’ve been social with for years. Who suddenly threaten one with violence for…thinking and speaking out loud. So much for the 1st Amendment.
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Yes Mateo, thank you for that thoughtful review of my words. I am trying to bring up historical relevance that the younger generations reading this might not know about. History in this country is so censored it is nearly unrecognizable at times. Two questions:
WHY isn’t the 1934 Republican Wall St. Banker Fascist coup NEVER been taught in any schools the last 90 years? If it had been, maybe we wouldn’t have ended up with a near-total corporate control of our country and political system, and we wouldn’t have a Fascist pig for a Republican presidential candidate.
Our children (including us) are being/have been educated in a vacuum…
And why is the ‘Republican Great Depression’ of the 1930s not referenced that way any longer as it was for decades?
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Honestly, there really are very few ‘radical left protesters’ left in the US at this point. All these young people we see in the police riots that are happening have grown up being trained to a Neoliberal Reagan-run world where mainstream Democrats are pretty much what Republicans were, and the Republicans have gone totally Fascist under the Trumpenfurher. I am surprisingly amazed.
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But don’t worry, the cops have things well in hand with their chemical gassing of peaceful protesters, so-called ‘rubber’ bullets that really aren’t, violent physical attacks and mass arrests, and all that IDF-training so many police departments seem to have sent their members to in the last couple of decades that have been reported on extensively. Along with all that combat training in Iraq and other countries, we have an entirely new crop of…people who have the wrong trained reflexes and psychological profiles for civilian police work that really should find other jobs. But they will do what they are told and that’s all that matters, eh?
But soon there won’t have to be any cops attacking peaceful protesters excersizing their Constitutional Rights. Not with this:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/26/robot-flamethrower-dog-thermonator
Just SEND IN THE DOG!!
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And San Diego has a wonderful choice coming up to install either an ex-Marine lifer (he ain’t a Marine Brig General Smedley Bulter I assume) and ex-cop as a mayor (how’s that working out for NYC?) who won’t admit to being a Trump MAGA or not (ie: a supporter of Fascism). Or SD gets to keep the bleeping corrupt corporate-owned one that has been doing such a crappy job…except for those that bribe…oops…donate campaign contributions to him. He’s doing well with that, eh?
And why can we call them bribes? Lipstick on a pig is still a pig, yes?
Not much of a choice for my hometown, is it?
sealintheSelkirks
Toad Gloria (dem) is the chieftain in SD… any better?.. go figure.
Seal, I feel your pain and I believe your skepticism to be well warranted.
I have known some good cops in my life, PD and CHP’s.
I have known some good Marines, many compelled to enlist following 911.
Turner is a flatfoot, with a rank and file history, not brass and definitely not Jerry Sanders.
Turner is a declared Independent.
Turner has shown up for every single sponsored debate. Gloria has cowered from all of them.
I spoke with Turner at the first debate that Gloria ducked, and the guy’s intentions seem rather genuine.
Political lapdog and wannabe thug Gil Cabrerra went after Turner, trying to protect the Gloria hole, so the guy seems to be definitely rockin the boat.
Our corporate news networks have relegated Turner to obscurity already, which leads me to believe he is either a political virgin, or a regular guy confident that he can make a difference.
However, in all honesty, at this point as a San Diegan, I would most likely endorse Satan, before I voted for Todd Gloria. For I am fairly certain Hell’s resident deity would probably show the good people of San Diego more compassion and empathy than the soulless profiteer that is our tyrant Mayor, Todd Gloria.
Mateo: my younger brother was a Marine, did boot camp at Pendleton, and came out of the service an absolutely peaceful dude very much against war and violence. Doesn’t own a gun type of pacifist. He’s been an old style hippie ever since the early 80s when he got out, and still works for the Hog Farm Commune concerts (look up Wavy Gravy/Black Oak Ranch outside of Laytonville). He’s also been a DJ at KMUD in Mendo county for years.
So yes, I know at least one Marine that turned into really good people! I respect the Veterans for Peace groups. I actually like how my little brother has turned out.
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As for cops in general, I’d have to say that Serpico was one that I would have respected I think but honestly, other than him, I can’t think of any others and, in my personal experience, only a few I’ve had contact with weren’t obviously twisted in the head in some way or another. It seemed like most were bullies by nature, authoritarian mindsets, and a vast majority were rightwinger GOP back then. And cops today are mainly Trump supporters. Probably why there’s a 35% spousal abuse rate among them (both genders by the way), a huge divorce rate compared to the general public percentages, and why so many were at the Capitol on Jan 6th…
Current story:
One of my former students married an ex-military and now ex-cop that I hear about from her older brother (also an ex-student), and it has been nothing but bad news for years. He has a niece & nephew under 12 that are completely frightened by their dad. They freeze up, the boy is acting out angry and abusive to his little sister, all the signs of an abusive family unit in other words are present. The husband turned her into a MAGATS, too, and now her two older brothers had the ties cut with her because of what how much her personality has changed. It is really sad and awful what I keep hearing. Her picture is up on the wall of my dojo with other students from years past, and she is nothing like she used to be.
Really big sigh of sadness. He isolated her from family and old friends. That pattern…isn’t healthy, and there isn’t anything others can do until it breaks. I hope she and the kids survive it. The kids already need therapy.
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With the advent of cell phone video, the reality of there being far too many cops that are just psychos caught on camera have become too numerous to list. Too many cop auditor websites like We The People University (run by an ex-cop/ex-deputy sheriff) to not realize it isn’t just a few bad apples, it’s the culture.
This one that popped up today that speaks volumes of the criminal mindset of too many cops:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5e-XQMsMt0
One thing that needs to happen is ending the crap of ‘qualified immunity’ that was invented in the 1960s. The first thing that needs to change with cops! Make them RESPONSIBLE for their actions at a minimum if not more so than normal people would be a good first step.
Another big sigh. We truly do live in a police state. It fits the criteria and has for a very long time. I hope that this mayoral candidate you like is one of the good ones.
sealintheSelkirks