WyBlog

Meet the new year, same as the old year

There are a myriad of issues facing the Garden State in 2008. Jon Corzine is about to ram his school funding plan through the lame duck legislature. He wants to sell off the New Jersey Turnpike and he'll be using his State of the State speech on January 8^th to tell us why it's such a swell idea. Frank Lautenberg is running for reelection to the US Senate at the age of 84 and several House of Representatives seats are also up for grabs. Our Presidential primary was moved to Super Tuesday (February 5^th) but none of the candidates seem to be in any hurry to court our state's voters.

Against this backdrop, what does the NJ legislature consider to be a top priority this year? Issuing an apology for slavery. You can't make this stuff up.

Who exactly would be suitable to accept this apology? "Black residents"? Many of whom came here long after 1865 from places like Jamaica and the Dominican Republic? What relevence does an apology for the evils of slavery have to them? Perhaps there are some descendants of former slaves living here. Would this apology give them better jobs or more food on their tables or greater opportunities for their children?

This is all about the politics of perpetual victimhood. A formal apology for slavery grants the professional grievance-mongers another excuse to point at when explaining the lack of achievement in the black community. Assemblyman Payne should be apologizing, not for the historical vestiges of slavery (which incidentally many New Jerseyans of the 1800's worked to overcome), but for his continued allegience to the teachers unions and their selfish stranglehold on the inner city education systems. Thirty plus years of letting the NJEA and their denizens dictate education policy has not produced any meaningful improvement in the schools having large minority populations.

The failure to provide an entire generation of black children with a decent education is a crime. Billions of dollars were poured into the Abbott school districts. The bureaucrats profited. The teachers got big raises and gold plated pension benefits. The NJEA became one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Trenton. But the kids? They're still behind, and the only "solution" on the table is to ship billions more dollars into the same districts to fatten the coffers of the teachers union.

Assemblyman Payne needs to divorce himself from the NJEA's campaign warchests and work to create an education system that is answerable to the students and their parents; one that meets their needs rather than feeding the bureaucratic and union behemoths. That would do far more to "comfort black residents" than any symbolic apology ever will.

UPDATE 03 Jan 2008 09:31:
Welcome Star Ledger Readers! (Kelly - thanks for the link from Jersey Blogs).

Please stick around, you can get the full WyBlog effect by clicking on the Main link below.

Posted at 16:33 by Chris Wysocki   [/rants]   Comments | Archived | Perm Link |   |   Tweet