GET READY FOR ANOTHER ETHNIC STUDIES BATTLE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2020, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
      “GET READY FOR ANOTHER ETHNIC STUDIES BATTLE”

          None of the myriad documents prepared by state agencies last year came close to generating the conflict and heated emotions of a proposed new ethnic studies curriculum for public schools put forward by the state Board of Education and California’s Department of Education.

          Expect a new battle on this subject soon.

          The end result of last year’s kerfluffle was that the plan went back to the drawing board. A draft of a purported new plan will be released later this spring, barring coronavirus-related delays, with public input to follow and the aim of getting approval by the state board next fall for use during the 2021-22 school year.

          Good luck with that schedule. The way it seems to be shaping up indicates the new ethnic studies program will strongly resemble the old one, which drew fire for ignoring the contributions and problems of many ethnic groups, including Jewish Americans, Armenian Americans and some other significant groups.

          This happened in part because the rejected draft divided all Californians into four basic ethnic identities: African-Americans, whites, Hispanic Americans and Asians/Pacific Islanders (as if – for one example – it makes any sense to toss Chinese Americans and Samoan Americans into the same pot).

          The rejected curriculum was essentially a litany of complaints. Perhaps that was because academics who subscribe to a field of studies known as “critical ethnic studies” dominated the volunteer committee that helped shape it.

          Several websites describe the guiding question explored by the Critical Ethnic Studies Association as this: “How do the histories of colonialism and conquest, racial chattel slavery and white supremacist patriarchies…affect, inspire and unsettle scholarship in the present?”

          That pretty much means ethnic studies thinking is dominated by negatives, with little use for the positive contributions of the 80-plus ethnic groups that live side-by-side in California.

          But critical ethnic studies has essentially been the background for shaping both the failed ethnic studies draft and the upcoming new effort.

          Said Theresa Montano, an ethnic studies professor at Cal State Northridge, “Racism has played a critical role in America and California. There’s a dominant white culture and then the others.” Might the cause of that last be the fact this nation was founded principally by Europeans?

          No informed American denies that slavery played a major role in the nation’s history. So did the cheap labor of Chinese and other immigrants, including the Irish, Jews and Hispanics. There’s also no arguing that Native Americans suffered enormously.

          All this belongs in public school curricula. But so do the positive contributions of European colonists and other immigrants who together made this the most successful nation planet Earth ever saw, both economically and, often, in living out democratic ideals.

          But anyone who expects the new draft to focus on the positive much more than the previous, rejected version probably should guess again.

          In an update early this year, state Schools Supt. Tony Thurmond said “Our recommendations will acknowledge and honor the four foundational groups” at the core of critical ethnic studies. That will lump Jews, Armenians, Irish, and all other Caucasian hyphenated Americans together with whites in general. It likely means anti-Semitism and the Armenian genocide, for two examples, would be downplayed next to racism and the interning of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

          Each of these subjects deserves separate, substantial study. But it can’t happen when there are “four foundational groups” and everyone else goes into some kind of sub-group. It’s like the major leagues vs. the minors, or like network television vs. something streamed on YouTube.

          Essentially, the Critical Ethnic Studies Assn. advocates focusing on communities of color and not giving much attention to others, no matter how central their role in American history and no matter how severe a persecution they may have suffered.

          So there will likely be no notation, for example, that Portuguese-Americans were central to building the state’s strongest-in-the-world agriculture industry.

          Sure, the new draft will eliminate most of the little-used words that dotted the first version, like cisheteropatriarchy (a male-dominated system) or hxrstory (pronounced the same as herstory and supposedly more inclusive than “history”). But the general thrust likely won’t differ much from last year’s effort, which means this one likely won’t fly, either.

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

A CAMPAIGN FILLED WITH UNREALISTIC PROMISES

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 2018 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
        “A CAMPAIGN FILLED WITH UNREALISTIC PROMISES”

          It’s early in the election season, barely past the filing deadline, more than two months before the June primary election and more than six months before November, when voters will elect the next governor of California.

          But it’s already clear that fundamental pledges made by the leading candidates in all the early public polls have been essentially unrealistic.

          The two most ambitious promises made so far both came from Democrats who have now backed off one and are clinging to hope that they can somehow make the other work.

          Those promises: A single-payer Medicare-style health plan for all Californians mimicking the federal Medicare coverage available to everyone over 65. And a pledge to add 3.5 million housing units in all parts of the state by 2025, or about half a million living spaces per year for the next seven years.

          Even Democrats and health care advocates pushing hardest for single-payer – a key plank in the state Democratic Party’s platform – have come to see it as unrealistic just now. So they’re backing a package of bills in the Legislature that aims to expand health insurance coverage beyond what the federal Affordable Care Act – Obamacare – has already done.

          Meanwhile, there has never been one year – even during the era of California’s headiest growth – when 500,000 housing units were built in this state, let alone seven consecutive years. It’s not even certain there would be enough available wood, concrete and other building materials.

          It’s not so much that the candidates are backing away from ideas they’ve supported; rather, reality has set in and they’re realizing they must be more incremental.

          Take the current leader in all polls, Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco best known for his order allowing America’s first same-sex marriages. Newsom lists San Francisco’s universal health plan as one of his top achievements, and still wants statewide single-payer.

          But when more than 50 labor unions, ethnic and health-oriented groups in mid-March endorsed a package of bills expanding the state’s Obamacare plan, Covered California, to include undocumented immigrants while also lowering premiums via subsidies drawn from other state funds, Newsom was quick to endorse.

          He called the new, scaled-back plan “a step in the right direction, with the potential to move closer to our ultimate goal…single-payer.”

          Of course, the new realism bears out criticisms by other candidates like former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Treasurer John Chiang, who pointed out – among other items – that Medicare premiums now paid by Californians which would be essential to funding a state single-payer plan are extremely unlikely to be available to state government so long as Donald Trump remains president.

          The candidates have not yet backed off their extremely optimistic housing goals.

          Said a Newsom aide, “Gavin is committed to creating the incentives to do 3.5 million units. Conditions demand it. We can’t just sit by in our massive housing crisis, which is not only over homelessness, but also affordability.”

          Republicans have also made unrealistic efforts, most notably San Diego businessman John Cox, who tied his candidacy to an initiative expanding the state Legislature to 12,000 members. That measure never got off the ground because it had almost no popular support.

          The campaign has also brought out some decidedly Trumpian comments from Democrats, as when Villaraigosa said he was “ascendant” at a time when he still trailed Newsom in every survey. Chiang, running third among Democrats in public polls, made even more Trump-like statements on social media.

          “@realDonaldTrump & DC @GOP have made it their mission to put affordable healthcare out of reach for American families,” he tweeted. “CA should move toward #SinglePayer & I’m the only one who can balance a budget to get it done.”

          In a Feb. 14 tweet, he also pronounced himself the “Most Accomplished Man in California.”

          Both tweets aroused memories of Trump telling the 2016 Republican National Convention that only he could “make American great again.”

          All of which makes this a very challenging primary election season for California voters, who must sift through myriad claims and promises and then decide who can actually run the nation’s largest state government in a way that combines idealism and realism to solve tough problems.

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

INTIMIDATION FACTOR COULD CAUSE A HARRIS CORONATION

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2015, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “INTIMIDATION FACTOR COULD CAUSE A HARRIS CORONATION”

          It’s now a certainty that Kamala Harris will have an opponent on the November 2016 ballot. But much less certain is whether that opponent will be any more threatening that Elizabeth Emken, an autism activist who placed second in California’s 2012 Senate primary election, was to incumbent Dianne Feinstein.

          For one by one, potentially formidable opponents to the election of Harris, now the state attorney general and previously district attorney of San Francisco, have fallen by the wayside since early January.

          Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer took himself out early. So did state Treasurer John Chiang, followed by former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and current Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor who opted instead to run for governor in 2018. Then former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took herself out, possibly because she would have had to face questions about her role in deceptions that led to the war in Iraq. Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin also nixed a run.

          Any one of those four fellow Democrats and two Republicans could have posed a threat for Harris’ bid to replace the retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer. Harris doesn’t look particularly intimidating, but she got to work very quickly on the Senate race, declaring for the job almost immediately after Boxer announced her impending retirement.

    Before anyone else had done much of anything, she staged high-profile fund-raisers in Bel Air, Long Beach, San Francisco and Washington D.C. At the same time, she quickly got endorsements from dozens of prominent Democrats. Harris, who handily won reelection as attorney general last fall before starting this run, also was helped when her investigators raided the home of the disgraced Michael Peevey, former head of the state Public Utilities Commission.

          Investigating Peevey, who drew praise from Gov. Jerry Brown and other major Democrats even as his alleged corruption became more and more evident, has made Harris seem politically independent and a tough backer of consumer interests.

          Put all this together and she’s a pretty intimidating candidate.

          Yes, there’s still the possibility of someone else substantial getting in against Harris, whose name was recognized by only 40 percent of likely voters in one late-winter poll. But so far, the only declared opponent is Republican Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of San Diego County.

          Several Democratic congressional veterans, realizing that gerrymandering in other states has made it very difficult for their party to regain control of the House of Representatives, also might risk making this run.

          While Harris’ early entrance, bully pulpit as attorney general and her early endorsements strengthen her, she lacks the huge war chest used so often by senatorial candidates like Feinstein, Alan Cranston and Pete Wilson to scare off significant opposition. Newsom, who quickly raised $800,000 this winter to run for governor atop the $3 million left in his campaign kitty after last year’s run for reelection, will plainly try to employ financial intimidation against all but billionaires when his campaign gets serious two years from now.

          But Harris didn’t have that kind of money before she began raising new funds and has not made a formal financial report. She had just $1.3 million in her campaign account when her reelection run ended last fall, and it’s unclear how much of that is transferable to a federal campaign.

    By contrast, Burbank Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff had $2.1 million in his war chest at last report, and all of it could be used for a Senate run if he opts for that over reelection. Schiff has also said he thinks it’s time a credible Southern California candidate challenged the state’s San Francisco-based Democratic power elite, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Newsom, Harris, party chairman John Burton and Gov. Jerry Brown, with his base across the Bay in nearby Oakland.

    Villaraigosa, with strong appeal among Latino voters,  had appeared poised to be that kind of candidate before pulling out. Another Latino might yet emerge as a Harris challenger, with Orange County Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez and Xavier Becerra of East Los Angeles, part of the House Democratic leadership, still possibilities.

          But right now Harris dominates this race, in part because she got in early and acted fast. Unless someone else acts soon, it figures to be more coronation than contest.

         

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    Elias is author of the current book "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It," now available in an updated second edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com