Nana Duffuor writes a thought-provoking piece-"What's in it for women of color?" [Sept. 4]-on how minority women are heard through our current political system. We know that minority women face more daily struggles due to historic inequality, and because of the past and the obstacles of the present, it is harder for them to clinch their American dream. Duffuor does not hide that fact that she believes that Sen. Barack Obama would do a much better job of handling this crisis, and it is at this point that she fails to clarify what exactly that means.
Obama wants to extend the services of a large and bloated bureaucracy to help fund education. His major sound bite is his rant against No Child Left Behind, wherein he would abolish most standardized tests and instead try to force "promising programs" through the old system. This would be like putting your dream diary through a paper shredder. Reliance on the current system would hurt no demographic more than the lower-income families.
The public school systems, especially in larger inner city school systems such as those in Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis are failing, and have been failing for years. According to the Associated Press, the Detroit public school system is $600 million dollars in debt, the average sixth grade classroom size is 60 students and the bureaucracy is out of control.
Daniel Howes of The Detroit News wrote on Dec. 19th, 2007 that "the financial mismanagement is stunning in its ineptitude, corruption and possible criminality." We cannot continue to rely on corrupt bureaucracies that have proven time and time again to fail, no matter how many tax dollars we throw at them and how many new chances and audits they get, and we certainly do not have the funds or the time to allow Obama to discover this for himself. Sen. John McCain's plan, on the other hand, would help put these underprivileged kids into different and better schools: be it private, charter or any public school of their choice.
McCain would allocate federal funds to help lower-income families afford these schools. This approach has already been touted, with help from private donors, as a success in Detroit and neighboring systems and has received widespread bi-partisan support. McCain is breaking the cycle of poverty and inequality. Obama would rather continue it, albeit with good intentions, and the cost of his failure will be ours.
Dania Toth
Trinity '12
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