| Pastor accuses school district of duplicity in banning Obama speech |
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| By Bob Allen | ||
| Tuesday, September 08, 2009 | ||
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ARLINGTON, Texas (ABP) -- A prominent black Southern Baptist pastor says a Texas school district should explain why it did not allow President Obama's Sept. 8 speech on education to be shown live in classrooms, but is planning later in the month to send selected fifth graders to a similar message by former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura. The Arlington Independent School District was one of several across the United States that opted out of the live broadcast of the president's speech challenging students to take personal responsibility for their own education. Facing concerns on the part of parents and teachers that the speech might be used to promote a partisan political agenda, other districts responded by allowing individual schools to decide or to allow individual children to opt out of viewing the speech at their parents' request. School officials in Arlington -- a large suburb located between Dallas and Fort Worth -- said students with appropriate parental notification could take a half-day excused absence to watch the president's address at an off-campus location like a home, church or community center. One of those sites was Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington. The 4,500-member, predominantly African-American congregation invited students from both Arlington and the neighboring Mansfield Independent School District to watch the message at the church and offered free lunches to the first 100 students requesting them. Veronica Griffith, minister of communications and special events at Cornerstone Baptist Church, said 160 students and more than 35 adults showed up for the screening.
Dwight McKissic, the church's pastor, said it should be up to parents, not school administrators, to decide whether or not students should hear the president's address. "No one should be forced to hear the message," McKissic said in a press release. "However, what parent, teacher or administrator would not want students to hear a message encouraging them to be persistent in succeeding in school and to be challenged to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning?" Later McKissic learned the Arlington Independent School District had accepted an invitation to take 28 fifth grade classes to a Sept. 21 media event sponsored by a committee preparing for the 2011 Super Bowl to be played at Arlington's new $1.15 billion Dallas Cowboys football stadium. Along with the former president and first lady, the program will feature "legendary Dallas Cowboys," along with business and community leaders from across North Texas. The event, being held to announce "the largest youth-education program in Super Bowl history," will give invited students free lunches and a T-shirt. Planners were also working to "secure a performance by a well-known recording artist to cap the festivities in high style." McKissic responded with a second press release calling it a "blatant double standard" to not permit students to hear one message while busing them to hear the other. "Why is it appropriate for students to hear from former President Bush on Sept. 21 at the Cowboy[s] Stadium, but inappropriate for the current president to address students while they remain on school campuses?" McKissic asked. "Why is President Obama's message considered to be an intrusion on the school day, a disruptive and unplanned class activity, a message 'not deemed appropriate' for students to hear or a message regarded as 'something students should not be exposed to?' Yet it is accepted as an appropriate message for students to hear from unnamed Dallas Cowboys, business and community leaders?" McKissic said students and the public "deserve and need to have these differences explained." He said the double standard reveals "obvious duplicity" in the district's decision making. McKissic is a former trustee at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He resigned from the post in 2007 over controversy about a sermon he preached in the seminary chapel voicing disagreement with a new policy at the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board disqualifying missionaries who admit to using a "private prayer language" in their devotional life. McKissic said the experience -- viewed by many as a form of speaking in tongues -- was part of his own prayer life, and that he first experienced it while attending Southwestern Seminary as a student in 1981. McKissic made news earlier this year when he called on the SBC to pass a resolution celebrating the election of America's first black president. The convention responded in June with a resolution applauding Obama's election as a sign of "our continuing progress toward racial reconciliation" while deploring many of his policies. McKissic posted audio of a sermon he preached prior to Obama's January inauguration on the Cornerstone Baptist Church website comparing questions raised about the sincerity and legitimacy of the president's faith to similar criticism directed toward Martin Luther King in the 1960s. "Whenever a black man ascends to prominence and power, the political establishment tries to demonize that person," McKissic said. He quoted the late Jerry Falwell, who in 1961 questioned "left-wing associations" of Martin Luther King. "They were accusing him of being a communist and a socialist like they accuse Barack Obama of being a communist and socialist," he said. McKissic went so far as to wonder if Obama's election might have been foretold in an obscure reference in Psalm 68:31 prophesying, "Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God." "I don't believe Barack Obama would be president if God hadn't set him up to be president," McKissic said. McKissic said many white preachers want God to judge America for abortion and gay marriage. McKissic said he feels strongly on both of those issues but believes that racism is also a sin, and God must judge America for that sin as well. "If I were God and I wanted to judge America for her racism, slavery, unjust wages -- all the inequities that have occurred in this country -- what better way to do it than go get a direct descendant of Africa?" he asked. "I'm talking about a man whose daddy comes from Africa -- a people you thought were going to be your slave, to pick your cotton. If I were God, and I wanted to punish you for racism, I would go to get an African, and put [that] man as your president." Later in the sermon, McKissic chastised black teenagers for high dropout rates that he said dishonor earlier generations like the Little Rock Nine who faced threats and intimidation to improve educational opportunities for minority students. "Folks paid a price for you to go to school and graduate," he said. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself." -30- This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
                Comments (13)
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written by ABP Reader, September 08, 2009
As I recall, Ronald Reagan adressed students all over the nation in a similar format back in the 1980s. Unlike Obama, Reagan actually talked to the kids about his own political agenda.
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written by Jesdisciple, September 08, 2009
Hey, I finally found a political article on ABP that I can sympathize with! However, allow me to offer two points of devil's advocacy:
The banning of Obama's speech may be democratically based on the school district's constituency's preferences. However, in this case I would suggest to the school board that the message be aired in one room (if technically feasible) for any student to opt into. The ban may also have been triggered by the political details of the medium rather than those of the message. Specifically, the federal delivery of information to the schools may be viewed as an encroachment on schools' authority. To the above poster: Note that the school board may disagree with Reagan on that point just as much as with Obama. Finally, I haven't heard of an opportunity to hear the message before its school airing. Thus the message content may be more political than Obama suggests. Whose racism?
written by tenor1, September 08, 2009
Why does McKissic continue to make this a racial thing? It is a philosophy, world-view thing; and Obama's agenda is to make America a socialist state, and I will resist that with every fiber of my being no matter whether he be black, white, red or green. Socialists come in all colors and ethnicities, and I don't want any of them to have unfiltered access to my children.
Let's not give Dwight McKissic air-time
written by bbagbygrose, September 08, 2009
This may be the first non-stupid thing of which Dwight McKissic has ever been a part. Need I remind you of, “To equate civil rights with gay rights is to compare my skin with their sin.” He's an jerk and a bigot, let's not give him any air-time.
Pastor
written by D L Engleman, September 10, 2009
I am amazed at the tremendous fear of this president. Not in my lifetime have people been so eager to find a boogy man in every closet and under every rug. Are our children so weak that one 18 minute speech is going to scar them for life? The president merely told the children the same thing my parents drummed into my head during my school years. Namely study hard, learn all you can, your future is what you make it. I know of no parents who tell their children, "Go to school, sit on your butt, do nothing and come out as dumb as an ox." What is wrong with the president putting an emphasis on hard work, good education, and making a positive difference in your country and your world?
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written by Jesdisciple, September 11, 2009
Disclaimer: Your feelings are not my responsibility; this is a politics, after all. I thought my un-PC opinions wouldn't become relevant, but... well, here's my neck.
D L Engleman: Obama is dangerous primarily because of his silver tongue. Most people that are wary of him, in my experience, are just reading between the lines and figuring that 2 2=4. I actually just got home from a TEA party where a lot of wary people spoke. One of the things they mentioned is (Republican-initiated) ACORN, which I knew nothing about before this week. I haven't done my own research on that, but if you want a reason for suspicion of Obama, you might start there. I suggest that you make a deliberate effort to read between the lines of, to take a popular example, his healthcare reform bill. When you do that, focus on what powers the government is claiming for itself. Do they go outside the bounds set in the constitution? Also try to figure out how (in the example) the system is sustainable. On that last point: I very highly doubt that the majority of folks on welfare are trying to get completely off it. I base this mainly on the testimony of two friends... One friend is on it and sees no point in climbing off it (his grandparents agree, from what he said). Another is trying to climb off but said his coworkers don't understand why and would like to get free money like that. The second friend admits that the free money is enticing, but he doesn't want to have that kind of existence. This is the same thing that happened in the Soviet Union, as I recall from History. Some folks kept working and others didn't. Then some of the first group gave in and joined the second group. So fewer people work as the system ages, and finally the persistent few can't support the nation anymore. WHY BUSH BUT NOT OBAMA?
written by Ameritianity, September 12, 2009
How about this: Because that is what the PARENTS want. Seems pretty simple.
To Jesdisciple, if you have not heard of ACORN until recently, please get an education at www.ameritianity.com . "Obama learned his lesson well. I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday." --Letter from L. DAVID ALINSKY, son of Neo-Marxist Saul Alinsky Hillary, Obama and the Cult of Alinsky: "True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.... "One Alinsky benefactor was Wall Street investment banker Eugene Meyer, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post. They used their newspaper to promote Alinsky....Her series, called 'The Orderly Revolution', made Alinsky famous.... "Alinsky’s crowning achievement was his recruitment of a young high school student named Hillary Rodham. She met Alinsky through a radical church group. Hillary wrote an analysis of Alinsky’s methods for her senior thesis at Wellesley College. ... "Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Alinsky’s counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power. "Barack Obama is also an Alinskyite.... Obama spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project.... Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer." [by Richard Poe, 11-27-07] See also Community Oriented Policing 2
written by Ameritianity, September 12, 2009
By STANLEY KURTZ
Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists. AP Bill Ayers. The CAC was the brainchild of Bill Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground in the 1960s. Among other feats, Mr. Ayers and his cohorts bombed the Pentagon, and he has never expressed regret for his actions. Barack Obama's first run for the Illinois State Senate was launched at a 1995 gathering at Mr. Ayers's home. The Obama campaign has struggled to downplay that association. Last April, Sen. Obama dismissed Mr. Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis." Yet documents in the CAC archives make clear that Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama were partners in the CAC. Those archives are housed in the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I've recently spent days looking through them. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago's public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation's other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy. The CAC's basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda. 3
written by Ameritianity, September 12, 2009
One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.
The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto. In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC. CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn). Mr. Obama once conducted "leadership training" seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama's early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC's in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement. 4
written by Ameritianity, September 12, 2009
CAC also funded programs designed to promote "leadership" among parents. Ostensibly this was to enable parents to advocate on behalf of their children's education. In practice, it meant funding Mr. Obama's alma mater, the Developing Communities Project, to recruit parents to its overall political agenda. CAC records show that board member Arnold Weber was concerned that parents "organized" by community groups might be viewed by school principals "as a political threat." Mr. Obama arranged meetings with the Collaborative to smooth out Mr. Weber's objections.
The Daley documents show that Mr. Ayers sat as an ex-officio member of the board Mr. Obama chaired through CAC's first year. He also served on the board's governance committee with Mr. Obama, and worked with him to craft CAC bylaws. Mr. Ayers made presentations to board meetings chaired by Mr. Obama. Mr. Ayers spoke for the Collaborative before the board. Likewise, Mr. Obama periodically spoke for the board at meetings of the Collaborative. The Obama campaign notes that Mr. Ayers attended only six board meetings, and stresses that the Collaborative lost its "operational role" at CAC after the first year. Yet the Collaborative was demoted to a strictly advisory role largely because of ethical concerns, since the projects of Collaborative members were receiving grants. CAC's own evaluators noted that project accountability was hampered by the board's reluctance to break away from grant decisions made in 1995. So even after Mr. Ayers's formal sway declined, the board largely adhered to the grant program he had put in place. Mr. Ayers's defenders claim that he has redeemed himself with public-spirited education work. That claim is hard to swallow if you understand that he views his education work as an effort to stoke resistance to an oppressive American system. He likes to stress that he learned of his first teaching job while in jail for a draft-board sit-in. For Mr. Ayers, teaching and his 1960s radicalism are two sides of the same coin. Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation. The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago. Mr. Kurtz is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. NOT ALL BLACK PASTORS ARE FOOLED BY OBAMA
written by Ameritianity, September 12, 2009 Well said, Pastor McKissic!
written by jbird, September 15, 2009
Acorn and Ayers are red herrings. Listen to what the President says!
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