February 24, 2010

Cincinnati NAACP

Media Release

.

Cincinnati School Board Member Melanie Bates pushes liberalism and White privilege in today's paper.  Those statements from the Cincinnati enquirer are listed below:

.

"I guess it's easy to pick on the poor kids, and we have to represent them," Bates said..."Should we stop education because we're not good at it in certain schools?"  Bates said.  "Let's not redesign them, let's just close the schools and let the kids sit at home until we've fixed it?  Does that make sense?  Well this is the capital equivalent of that."

.

The African American Community needs economic opportunities and jobs to feed African children not a free meal.  The Cincinnati NAACP now understands why Board Member Bates pushes a public policy of exclusion of African Americans.  If African Americans had not refused to ride the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, African Americans today would still be sitting at the back of the bus.  African Americans understood that short term sacrifices were more important because of the long term gains for civil rights.  "Melanie Bates does not know what is best for African American people.  Four thousand of the 34,000 children that attend Cincinnati Public Schools are homeless.  This means children and parents are sleeping in cars or in homeless shelters everyday.  Bates offers African Americans a free breakfast and a free lunch while the Cincinnati NAACP offers its people economic oppoertunity," Christopher Smitherman President of the Cincinnati NAACP says.  The Cincinnati NAACP has made it clear that African Americans must work or no one will work.

.

Bates asserts in today's article that a new school building will offer a better education.  Since Bates has served on the school board the overall academic achievement of K-6th graders has declined.  Children are graduating from Cincinnati Public Schools unable to read, write, and do basic math.  Maybe the Cincinnati NAACP should consider alternative educational school opportunities for African American students?  The Cincinnati Public School system is broken and a new facility will not solve the problem.  School Board Member Bates had five years to lift Cincinnati Public School children out of poverty but failed.  Bates asserts in the paper today that she cares about "poor kids".  "Actions speak louder than words.  I wonder how Bates and her colleagues will ask the African American Community for support for the next school levy?  Will she say we delivered on our promises to include African Americans in building schools?   Will she say we have improved the overall education of our children?  Or will they just ask us to support the school levy with our public votes for nothing?" says Smitherman.