NAACP not impressed with congress
Congress recently received it’s annual grade from the NAACP. This year: F.
The NAACP gave the first session of the 107th Congress it’s rating citing that many education issues have been overlooked.
Although the education bill passed by Congress in December was praised it had many shortcomings, Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington office told reporters in January.
Legislation is still needed to provide poor districts with funding for school construction and modernization, Shelton said.
Everardo Martinez, USU director of Multicultural Student Services, believes that Congress has been overlooking such issues because of a focus on the Enron scandal and national security since the terrorist attacks. Martinez said that while these are important issues he feels Congress pays too much attention to them because of media and public opinion that affects re-election.
“The issues of education, the issues of health, the issues of job and economic development that affect so many are not being addressed in equal amounts of time,” Martinez said.
Martinez said that 17 out of the 40 school districts in Utah last year were deemed out of compliance with providing equal access to education for all students because teachers were unable to fully teach immigrant children or non-English speaking students.
The NAACP is complaining that Congress is leaving out low-income, urban, predominantly minority schools leaving them with the oldest text books, highest student-teacher ratios and old technology, Martinez said.
“Many children are not being provided with real educational access. They don’t have the same access to the American dream,” Martinez said.
According to an Associated Press article students at historically black and other minority institutions are far behind in technology and technological training. Sen. Max Cleland, a democrat from Georgia, is seeking $250 million to bridge the gap.
“The digital divide threatens to deny minority students, our professors and our institutions the competitive skills they need to overcome the remaining vestiges imposed by race and economic segregation in America,” William Gray III, president and chief executive officer of the United Negro College fund said in the AP article.
President Bush has increased the budget for historically black colleges for the fiscal 2003 by $9 million and $3 million for historically Hispanic schools. Bush has also promised a 30 percent increase for the schools by 2005.
The NAACP’s report card also addressed the issue of protecting the civil liberties of all Americans including Arab-American and American Muslims and condemned ethnic and racial profiling.
Martinez believes incidents such as the Arab man, who was refused flights out of Salt Lake City, is taking national security too far and taking away civil liberties.
“The federal government has the responsibility of passing federal laws that protect everyone, and they’re not doing that,” Martinez said.
These issues are especially important in Utah, Martinez said, because Utah’s multicultural population is just 14 percent.
Senators were also graded seprately by the NAACP, with 40 out of 100 receiving A’s for voting in agreement with the NAACP and 52 receiving F’s.