Thread by @AliMCollins

Our SF school board is listening to folks who promote Jim Crow Education policies. For real!

Let me explain… (A thread. 🧵) 1/

It is not surprising many “Save Lowell” proponents (and others) are also fighting against anti-racist and LGBTQ-affirming education and believe CRT is “indoctrinating” our kids). 2/

Folks like Lawrence Lee promote the use of “grandfather clause” policies and “literacy tests” as a means of excluding low-income, disabled and English Language Learner students from applying for SFUSD’s most-resources high schools. 3/

You may have heard the term “grandfather clause” used to describe an old rule that continues to operate under certain conditions when a new rule or law takes effect. 4/

While many people are aware of this term, they're not aware that it originated after the civil war as a means of preventing Black Americans from exercising their rights to vote after that right was guaranteed by the 15th amendment. 5/

Grandfather clauses are among many other Jim Crow laws that were put into effect as a result of the civil war in an attempt to restrict Black Americans from exercising their rights as guaranteed by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. 16/

What does this have to do with education?

When Black Americans were guaranteed the right to vote as a result of the 15th Amendment, many white Southerners were upset by this, because they were outnumbered and wanted to maintain the political power they had established under the racial cast system of slavery. 18/

The 15th Amendment clearly stated that you could not prevent citizens from voting based on race. But, you COULD use other criteria. (Are you following me on this?) 19/

Based on this, a rash of new voting restrictions started popping up, in order to prevent Black Americans from voting.
(See the full list here: 20/ abhmuseum.org/voting-rights-…)

Among them were the following:

- Property tests required voters to own property.

- Poll taxes required people to pay fees in order to vote. 22/

- And literacy test prevented folks who were not literate from voting. (You may remember that enslaved Africans were not allowed in many states, to be taught to read. It was punishable by law.) 23/

Now this all seems well and good, (if you are a RACIST!) but there was a problem… 24/

There were also a lot of poor white Southerners, who would not be able to meet these requirements. 25/

In order to ensure the passage of these new laws, they established a “grandfather clause”, which allowed you to vote if your father or grandfather had voted in previous elections. 26/

Pretty sneaky, huh?

So, what does this have to do with our education system? 27/

Well, if you've been watching videos I've been sharing, proponents for “merit” admissions, use Jim Crow rationales to justify the need to eliminate a race-neutral lottery and go back to an admissions policy than has proven to be discriminatory. /27

A lottery doesn’t systematically exclude low-income, disabled or immigrant students. But, folks like Lawrence Lee (who favors “merit” admissions) use grandfather cause rationales to argue for a discriminatory admission system because “We’ve always had it that way.” 28/ @kron4news

It’s not just Lowell, BTW. Many elite public schools use tests as a means of excluding students. In Boston, they even call them “exam schools”. You won’t be surprised to learn many of these tests, have been proven to be discriminatory against Black and Latinx students. 29/

If you’ve been following this conversation nationally, you may remember @DrIbram, even advocated against Boston’s standardized admission tests. As he stated in his letter to the Boston School Committee, standardized testing has always has a problematic history. 👇🏽
30/

Jim Crow Education policies abound. I was shocked to learn that as recently as 2020, students applying to Thomas Jefferson High School in Northern Virginia, were required to pay a $100 application fee. (Sounds like a poll tax, to me.) 31/ washingtonpost.com/local/educatio…

If you’ve followed along on this epic thread… THANK YOU for doing your homework! 32/

It’s time we ALL get educated. The right-wing assault on our school boards threatens to “take back” our country to Jim Crow days, and dismantle our public education system along the way. We must fight for progress in our public education system! #NoJimCrow #SiSePuede

Closing out this 🧵. Face it—meritocracy is a scam. If we really valued “hard-working” kids, we would elevate students who literally work-harder: low-income, disabled and immigrant youth meet academic challenges while ALSO navigating poverty, ableism & language barriers. Fin/