Bizarre and disturbing tale of African American mother of 2 daughters jailed for sending them to White suburban school.
We know there are problems with public school education in America. Very serious problems. So serious, in fact, that Education Secretary Arne Duncan has worked tirelessly to improve our schools and, thus, opportunities for all young people. I do believe Secretary Duncan to be very sincere in his deeds. For educational opportunity is, and should be, one of the great civil and human rights concerns, worldwide, for the 21st century. And America must lead the way, as President Obama said so eloquently in his State of the Union address this week.
So that is why it is a very sad and embarrassing moment in our nation, on the heels of Mr. Obama’s words and Mr. Duncan’s efforts, that we have the bizarre and disturbing case of Ms. Kelley Williams Bolar.
She is a 40-year-old African American woman, single mother of two daughters, and a teacher’s aide, presently in the middle of a 10-day jail sentence in the Akron, Ohio area, her hometown.
As Ms. Williams-Bolar says in this exclusive jailhouse TV interview, she was simply trying to give her daughters access to an education without fear for their safety:
http://www.newsnet5.com/...
The issue, in other words, is that Ms. Williams-Bolar lives in a very violent and dangerous urban community, in Akron. One so violent and dangerous that her home had been broken into, and she had been forced to file at least 12 different police reports due to crime in the area.
For those reasons Ms. Williams-Bolar made a decision so many Black and Latino parents, especially, have been forced to make since the Civil Rights era: continue to send their children to schools in their ‘hoods, schools that are not only often academically inferior but also breeding grounds for the most anti-social behavior due to poverty, joblessness, and severe social maladies. Or remove their children from those schools, and instead put them in institutions more likely to invest in the wellness and safety of the students.
I get it because my single African American mother, when I was youngster coming of age in the 1970s and early 1980s, had to make the same hard decisions. Yes, we had things like "open enrollment" and "busing," but the harsh reality is that most of our poor or working-class American children, as I was, are basically trapped in ghetto environments. Only those parents, as my mother was, who are vigilant in educational opportunities for their children are able to get their children into the best and most secure schools.
I can hear the charter school movement folks this very moment chiming in: "See, that’s why we need school choice, why we need more charter schools." Yes, but as someone who is both a product of impoverished, limited conditions and the American public school system, I am clear the last thing we need to be doing is debating what types of schools are best. Fact is parents like Ms. Williams-Bolar would not go to the lengths they do if we were properly funding and supporting public schools in the poorer communities as was the case when I was growing up. I did receive a quality education and did make it to college because the resources were there.
Furthermore, there is no one remedy for our educational crisis. Parents like Ms. Williiams-Bolar need multiple options. That is the reason why someone like Ms. Williams-Bolar would opt to use her dad’s suburban address in order to get her daughters out of harm’s way. By the way, her dad, a senior citizen in his 60s, also faced criminal charges but luckily there was a mistrial.
But I am sure this Ohio mother could not imagine using her father’s address would not only land her in jail for 10 days, but that she could also potentially lose her career as an educator (she is just credits shy of her teaching certificate) because she will now be a convicted felon. Unless the decision is completely overturned. The court’s argument is that sending her children to the wrong school was valued at $30,500.
What I find particularly appalling about this case is that I seriously doubt that if Ms. Williams-Bolar were not Black this would be happening. Her daughters had already been enrolled in the majority White Copley-Fairlawn school district for two years. But this suburban school district hired a private investigator to track the mother and daughters down. And Ms. Williams-Bolar, besides the days in jail, also received 80 hours of community service and three years of probation.
When I exchanged facebook messages with Michelle Alexander, brilliant scholar and author of the book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindedness," never could I have imagined Ms. Alexander’s argument would include a single Black mom just trying to do the right thing for her children. All of this in the age of Obama and so-called post-racial America—
But we as a nation do indeed retreat to the days of Jim Crow, when Black parents had to accept separate and unequal treatment for their children. Or when overzealous local leaders would go out of their way to penalize any Black parent attempting to get their child into a majority White school. Or a school that came fully loaded and prepared to offer a quality education.
As a matter of fact, this is what my mother did for me by sending me to a couple of schools, during my educational journey, which were clearly nowhere near where we resided. In my senior year of high school a guidance counselor and I got into an argument, he looked up my record and saw where I lived, and instantly had me shipped to my district high school, arguably one of the worst in the state of New Jersey. But my mother was not criminalized, was not dragged into court and prosecuted like a common crook as Ms. Williams-Bolar was. I just had to go to a different high school.
So there needs to be justice for Ms. Williams-Bolar. Americans of good conscience need to speak out against this gross misuse of the criminal justice system by Judge Patricia Cosgrove and the prosecuting attorneys. You can start by signing this petition
http://www.change.org/...
And by encouraging others to do the same.
Using our voices in this and other ways is our collective way of saying we don’t want the America of 1951 or 1961, that we want it to be 2011, and truly a nation of opportunity and fairness for all, regardless of race, creed, or color.
And that no one should be sent to jail for simply wanting the best for their children.
Kevin Powell is a public speaker, activist, and author or editor of 10 books, including Open Letters to America (Soft Skull). He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and can be emailed at kevin@kevinpowell.net.