Education

OE-ED: Dr. Shawn Joseph Under Constant Attack in Nashville

THE TENNESSEE TRIBUNE —

Published

6 years ago

February 20, 2019

By Niara Savage, Special to the Tribune from The Voice

NASHVILLE, TN — Over two years ago, in a unanimous decision by the Metro school board, Dr. Shawn Joseph became the first African-American to lead Nashville’s 86,000 student school district. The face of the new director of school’s would finally match that of the increasingly black and brown student body. It’s essential for young children of color to see people who look like them holding positions of stature and power. Dr. Joseph provides the crucial minority representation of the next generation craves. Joseph’s significant experience in education, as well his ability to identify with the unique experiences of minority students solidified the idea that Joseph’s four years as director of schools would prove promising for the Metro Nashville Public School District.

Last September, in response to a spike in low performing schools in Tennessee, Dr. Joseph held a conference in which he outlined a detailed plan to improve the state of the education system by recruiting and coaching quality teachers. Critics who easily pointed out Tennessee’s low performing schools coincidentally failed to acknowledge any of Joseph’s tremendous successes.

Over the past two years, Dr. Joseph has ensured access to gifted and talented programs for elementary and middle school students. In addition, more students are taking advanced placement courses and industry certification classes. Reading and ACT scores increased, while the number of suspensions was reduced.

Two months later, a group of 10 furious protestors interrupted a school board meeting to call for Joseph’s firing. At the same meeting, several members of the school board were sure to put their distrust and lack of faith in Dr. Joseph on full display. Despite the loaded criticisms, Joseph maintained an optimistic and dedicated spirit, saying, “I love my job, and I am committed to the children of this district.”

Regardless of Joseph’s unwillingness to bite back at his critics with bitter words, pent-up frustrations quickly boiled over to aggressive tensions. Increasingly high-stake efforts have been made to run Shawn Joseph completely out of his position just over three years into his four-year term.

In January, Joseph was notified that the Tennessee Board of Education is deciding whether or not to discipline him after allegedly failing to report cases of teacher misconduct. In the midst of the ongoing firestorm surrounding Joseph’s performance, Mayor David Briley has made public his support of the embattled director of schools.

Amid controversies surrounding Joseph’s use of a rap song at a principal’s meeting back in May, as well as his membership in the historically black fraternity Omega psi phi, Tennessee’s marred racial history casts a suspicious and familiar shadow over the superintendent’s unusually tumultuous term.

Last month school board member Jill Speering encouraged her supporters not only to attend meetings in opposition of Joseph but also suggested that they wear masks to protect their identities. In response to these comments, Councilwoman Erica Gilmore (who had previously recanted her call for Speering to apologize) stated “The South’s history of wearing masks to public events on subject matter dealing with someone who is African American is long and very tragic.” Speering has not apologized for her comments, stating that the situation was simply blown out of proportion.

Black America (our children included) can only watch as the ongoing public castration of one of the most prominent black men in the Nashville community continues. Furthermore, the same education system that has traditionally been criticized for being disproportionately female-dominated, despite the documented evidence that male educators add significant value to the classroom setting, is persistent in its attempt to run Dr. Joseph out of town.

In a political climate where Americans have lifted their voices in response to the racist and xenophobic rhetoric of Donald Trump by electing the most diverse cohort on Congressmen and women in the nation’s history, how will the people of Tennessee be viewed after running the first Black school superintendent out of office following months of comments about rap songs, black fraternities and threats of mask-wearing?

Shawn Joseph’s election to the office he holds is representative of a rapid change taking place both state, and nationwide. The Metro Nashville Public School District, the state of Tennessee, and America itself are becoming increasingly brown. If Tennesseans are unable to resist racist microaggressions the Volunteer state may be left frozen in it’s sinful, bigoted past.

This article originally appeared in The Tennessee Tribune.

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Activism

LIVE! — TOWN HALL ON RACISM AND ITS IMPACT — THURS. 11.14.24 5PM PST

Join us for a LIVE Virtual Town Hall on the Impact of Racism hosted by Post News Group Journalist Carla Thomas and featuring Oakland, CA NAACP President Cynthia Adams & other Special Guests.
Thursday, November 14, 2024, 5 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PST

Published

1 week ago

November 12, 2024

Oakland Post

Discussion Topics:
• Since the pandemic, what battles have the NAACP fought nationally, and how have they impacted us locally?
• What trends are you seeing concerning Racism? Is it more covert or overt?
• What are the top 5 issues resulting from racism in our communities?
• How do racial and other types of discrimination impact local communities?
• What are the most effective ways our community can combat racism and hate?

Your questions and comments will be shared LIVE with the moderators and viewers during the broadcast.

STREAMED LIVE!
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Art

Brown University Professor and Media Artist Tony Cokes Among MacArthur Awardees

When grants were announced earlier this month, it was noted that seven of the 22 fellows were African American. Among them are scholars, visual and media artists a poet/writer, historian, and dancer/choreographer who each receive $800,000 over a five-year period to spend as they see fit. Their names are Ruha Benjamin, Jericho Brown, Tony Cokes, Jennifer L. Morgan, Ebony G. Patterson, Shamel Pitts, Jason Reynolds, and Dorothy Roberts. This is the third in the series highlighting the Black awardees.

Published

3 weeks ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

Tony Cokes. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Special to The Post

Tony Cokes

Tony Cokes, 68, is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. Cokes’s signature style is deceptively simple: changing frames of text against backgrounds of solid bright colors or images, accompanied by musical soundtracks.

Cokes was born in Richmond, Va., and received a BA in creative writing and photography from Goddard College in 1979 and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1985. He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.

According to Wikipedia, Cokes and Renee Cox, and Fo Wilson, created the Negro Art Collective (NAC) in 1995 to fight cultural misrepresentations about Black Americans.^[^5]

His work has been exhibited at national and international venues, including Haus Der Kunst and Kunstverein (Munich); Dia Bridgehampton (New York); Memorial Art Gallery University of Rochester; MACRO Contemporary Art Museum (Rome); and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Harvard University), among others.

Like a DJ, he samples and recombines textual, musical, and visual fragments. His source materials include found film footage, pop music, journalism, philosophy texts, and social media. The unexpected juxtapositions in his works highlight the ways in which dominant narratives emerging from our oversaturated media environments reinforce existing power structures.

In his early video piece Black Celebration (A Rebellion Against the Commodity) (1988), Cokes reconsiders the uprisings that took place in Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, and Boston in the 1960s.

He combines documentary footage of the upheavals with samples of texts by the cultural theorist Guy Debord, the artist Barbara Kruger, and the musicians Morrisey and Martin Gore (of Depeche Mode).

Music from industrial rock band Skinny Puppy accompanies the imagery. In this new context, the scenes of unrest take on new possibilities of meaning: the so-called race riots are recast as the frustrated responses of communities that endure poverty perpetuated by structural racism. In his later and ongoing “Evil” series, Cokes responds to the rhetoric of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”

Evil.16 (Torture.Musik) (2009–11) features snippets of text from a 2005 article on advanced torture techniques. The text flashes on screens to the rhythm of songs that were used by U.S. troops as a form of torture.

The soundtrack includes Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Britney Spears’s “… Baby One More Time,” songs known to have been played to detainees at deafening decibel levels and on repeated loops. The dissonance between the instantly recognizable, frivolous music and horrifying accounts of torture underscores the ideological tensions within contemporary pop culture.

More recently, in a 2020 work entitled HS LST WRDS, Cokes uses his pared-down aesthetic to examine the current discourse on police violence against Black and Brown individuals. The piece is constructed around the final words of Elijah McClain, who was killed in the custody of Colorado police. Cokes transcribes McClain’s last utterances without vowels and sets them against a monochromatic ground. As in many of Cokes’s works, the text is more than language conveying information and becomes a visualization of terrifying breathlessness. Through his unique melding of artistic practice and media analysis, Cokes shows the discordant ways media color our understanding and demonstrates the artist’s power to bring clarity and nuance to how we see events, people, and histories.

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California Black Media

On Your November Ballot: Prop 2 Seeks to Modernize Public Education Facilities

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities. If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

Published

3 weeks ago

November 4, 2024

Oakland Post

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond (Courtesy Photo)

By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

Proposition 2 would authorize the state to issue $10 billion in bonds with $8.5 billion dedicated to elementary and secondary educational facilities and $1.5 billion for community college facilities.

If approved, the proposition will make changes to the formula used to determine the amount each district is required to contribute to be eligible to receive state funding from the bond revenue. It would also require the state government to cover between 50 and 55% of construction project costs and 60 and 65% of modernization project costs.

Supporters argue that the money is critical for making safety improvements in schools, as well as modernizing science labs, performing arts spaces and kindergarten classrooms. School districts in lower-income areas have no other way to pay for these improvements.

According to the Public Policy Institute of California, 38% of students attend schools that don’t meet the state’s minimum safety standards. The research shows that schools with sub-standard facilities tend to have students with lower attendance rates, lower morale and lower overall academic performance.

California Black Media spoke with a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) spokesperson on why she believes it should be a YES vote on Prop 2.

“Measure US, Los Angeles Unified’s Local Public Schools Safety and Upgrades Measure on the November ballot would provide $9 billion to upgrade Los Angeles public schools for safety and 21st century student learning and college and career preparedness. The average annual cost to property owners is estimated at 2.5 cents per $100 of assessed (not market) property value. The Los Angeles Unified Board of Education adopted a Resolution on October 22 to support Los Angeles Unified’s Measure US, and State Propositions 2 and 4,” the spokesperson said.

Opponents argue that the state should include school repairs in its regular budget instead of putting the burden on taxpayers. Opponents also argue that the proposition would not directly impact students. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is on record as one of the organizations opposing the proposition.

“Proposition 2 is $10 billion of bonds, new state debt, to pay for school facilities. It is almost certain to result in higher property tax bills, because school districts must provide a ‘local match’ of funds in order to receive money from the Prop. 2 state bonds. That will lead to districts issuing new local school bonds, which are paid for by adding new charges to property tax bills,” said Jarvis.

Opponents also have voiced concerns about what they view as an inequitable distribution of funds. They believe that lower-income school districts should receive a greater share of the state’s sliding scale for matching funds.

“Enrollment is declining in both K-12 district schools and community colleges and the declines are projected to continue. But Proposition 2 commits California to pay an estimated $18 billion, including interest, for school buildings that may not even be necessary. Vote no on proposition 2.”

A “yes” vote gives approval to the state to issue $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.

A “no” vote will prohibit the state from issuing $10 billion in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities.