“ALL in for Education AZ” Holds News Conference About Latino Representation On State Education Boards

1. My main thought after observing Arizona politics and education systems for almost 20 years is I want more people in political / educational leadership positions who are COMPETENT, HONEST, and RESPONSIVE to constituents. Doesn’t matter to me what color or ethnicity they are. They could all be Latino or African-American or Asian or Anglo, or blue with purple spots. If they’re doing their job properly, any leader in a position “representing” constituents or having authority to make policy decisions for constituents has to do the homework needed to understand the major issues of ALL major groups within the constituency, not just the group within the constituency that they themselves belong to.

   If we really think that it’s impossible for a person of one ethnicity to properly represent a person of another ethnicity, we need to officially and formally change our theories of representation, explicitly designating “Anglo reps,” “Latino reps,” “African-American reps” on Boards and in legislatures, with the understanding that each rep would be responsible only to the portion of the population to which they belonged. But that is not the way our institutions and governance theories are currently framed. The idea behind them, right or wrong, is the idea that “human being and citizen” is a meaningful category whose meaning is not negated or superseded by all the different ethnic and cultural categories and identity groups into which human beings and citizens happen to fall.

2. It’s a pretty obvious point that if Ethnicity A can’t properly represent Ethnicity B, then the converse is true. Ethnicity B can’t properly represent Ethnicity A, either.

   So where does that leave ANY constituent who is not of the same ethnicity as their elected representative in this country? Unrepresented?

   People who make this argument should think through its logical implications and potential consequences. Are Anglos in Raul Grijalva’s congressional district “unrepresented”? Should they be pushing for some kind of change in the political structure that will ensure they have proper “representation”?

3. Meanwhile, the question of who represents labor vis a vis the banks and the test and textbook selling corporations is unaddressed. More than the ethnicities of the people on those boards, Id like to know which of the potential K-12 board reps will defend good curricula and constructive professional standards against corporatized, scripted crap and which of the potential regents are capable of advocating for releasing students from their current state of decades-long indenture to the banks. But as usual, such issues dont get addressed while the Dems act like identity politics is the only game in town.

4. Question: If the three state education boards had 29 appointed Latino members and one Anglo, would anyone think that would be unfair and unbalanced? I’m guessing lots of people, including Trump who would see another anti-immigrant opening, would scream, “See? They’re taking over!”

5. And that wouldnt be right, either, David. But my point is that in framing your arguments that way, you leave that opening for them.

   We should focus on what unites us, not what divides us. What unites everyone outside the 1% are the economic policy issues, which include universal HIGH QUALITY public ed, not universal public ed with the correct ethnicities on its governing boards. If we could clone someone like Ocasia-Cortez and put her in every one of those Board positions, that would have one kind of effect. Perhaps even you will admit that cloning Lea Marquez Peterson and doing same would have an entirely different policy effect, and probably one you wouldnt like.

   Its the policy agenda that matters to some of us, not the ethnicity.

6. Great call Questions. But all constituents in Grijalvas district are not represented. But don’t worry, Mexico is. That’s just how blind voters are in Tucson.

7. Answers: You gave the best answer possible to make my case. Grijalva represents Mexico because, um, because he’s, you know, one of, uh, them. Doesn’t it seem reasonable that Latinos would feel that Anglo leaders are more likely to represent Anglo than Latino interests?

   Questions: It would be a wonderful world if everyone looked out for everyone else and did things that unite us, not divide us. But unfortunately, that’s not the way things generally work. A white guy like me could easily say, “Let’s forget about race and ethnicity, let’s just all get along,” knowing that the power structure will be looking out for the interests of white guys like me. If I were rich and white, the government would be my oyster with a big shiny pearl waiting for me inside. But members of minority groups know the power structure only thinks of them as an afterthought, if it thinks of them at all. They need adequate representation so when an issue comes up which might have an averse effect on them, they can say, “Wait a minute, here are some things you’re not thinking about.” (That’s a reason why it’s wonderful to have so many more women with a place at the table. Men like me can’t understand how things affect women as well as women can, so we can pass stupid, injurious laws or regulations even if we think we have women’s best interests at heart.)

8. Eloquently argued, David, but:

   Representatives can get the information you would like them to have from talking to their constituents and / or from having diverse staffs, and they need to be held accountable for doing this. As long as youre insisting that Anglos cannot represent Hispanics properly and men cannot represent women properly, you will be making yourself vulnerable to the argument that Hispanics cant represent Anglos and women cant represent men. Not a healthy or constructive way to frame representation in a pluralistic democracy.

   The reality is that some in every identity group CAN represent their own group and other groups fairly, some in every identity group cant or wont. Fitness for high office has to do with the competence, honesty and responsiveness of the individual in question, not with their gender identity or ethnicity. Plenty of women choose reps based on their policy preferences and their perception of the quality of the candidates character; plenty voted for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton and would do so again if given the opportunity.

   Identity politics cannot unite Americans, but policy agendas can. All genders and all ethnicities need health care, social security, fair wages, and good education and in the current noxious and dangerous political climate its damaging to the common good to insist on criteria other than WHO WILL FIGHT FOR THESE THINGS FOR ALL OF US when selecting leadership.

9. Arizona’s state education boards should look like Arizona. More specifically, they should look like Arizona’s students. ( I guess illegals.)
   Arizona for Latino Leaders in Education is calling on Governor Ducey to use those opportunities to appoint qualified Latino education leaders (why? I would appoint a person that is qualified to run the position no matter what his race is.) but this PC crap is why Arizona and other states are screwed up.

10. Not because “he is one of them.” Because his politics led him to do it. Hate America comes from all races. They teach it in our schools.

11. Questions: Men have a much better chance of considering women’s issues if there are women at the table to add information men might not think of. Likewise adding representatives of minority groups to the discusion. Everyone does better at decision making if they know as much about the issues as possible. So I’m going to say white men can’t do a good job alone, even if they want to. And too often they don’t want to, which is another reason to make the table diverse: to keep everyone honest.

    Here’s an overly simplistic example. Sometimes Democrats schedule an important event on one of the Jewish High Holidays, which means observant Jews can’t attend. They’re not being antisemitic. They just don’t know. If a Jewish guy like me is in the room, I’ll make sure we consult a Jewish holiday calendar before we choose event dates. Yet there’s no chance they would schedule an event on Christmas or Easter, because it goes without saying to people living in a majority Christian society, that would be ridiculous.

12. I get what youre trying to say, David, but again: our political system is not based on the idea that only Hispanics can represent Hispanics in governing bodies. The idea is that whoever is elected has to represent ALL their constituents. They can and should be held accountable for becoming knowledgeable about the needs and life experiences of all the various groups in their constituency. Again: the model you propose would require a structural change in our systems of representation. Instead of geographic reps, we would have ethnicity reps: all Anglo men in district 2 would be represented by John Smith. All Anglo women in district 2 would be represented by Judy Smith. All Hispanic men in district 2 would be represented by Juan Garcia. All Hispanic women in district 2 would be represented by Juana Garcia. Etc. That is not the system we have. You can advocate for changing the games structure if you like, but as long as the game is structured the way it is, we play by the rules and try to make the theories behind it work for the good of all.

13. Headline today from the Washington Post: big winners in the primaries are Trumps twitter account and Bernie Sanders Democrats.

    Nationally, not many are listening to mainline Democrats exhausted, divisive and ineffectual talking points. People of all colors, ethnicities and identities are being bled dry and want to UNITE behind a sane economic agenda, not divide into identity groups and bicker with one another. The genuine OPPOSITION is being led by Sanders.

    In contrast, headline today from the Arizona Daily Star: a Democratic gubernatorial primary candidate with very little governance experience, someone publicly endorsed by Kristel Foster, Cam Juarez, and Eva Dong has won the Democratic gubernatorial primary. He said he wouldn’t accept donations from lobbyists, but evidently he didn’t know enough about the mechanics of running a clean political campaign to keep himself from getting tripped up in one of the donation scandals typical of his crowd:
    https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/david-garcia-return-campaign-donations-lobbyists-promise-10713626
    If you read the donation list in the above article, you will see that, ironically, one of the donations he had to return came from Kristel Foster, she of the ESI donation scandal of 2016:
    https://tucson.com/news/local/education/tusd-school-board-campaign-contributions-raise-red-flags/article_a89773ad-ff91-569f-84bd-b9543e92f343.html

    Democratic primary voters in this state are so interested in thumbing their nose at Trump and his pardon of Arpaio that they forget to look closely at what KIND of public school governance this candidate chooses to affiliate himself with. Does the candidate himself even know? Probably too busy teaching courses in the beautiful THEORIES of public education to bother with something as lowly as tracking what exactly Foster, Juarez, and Dong have been responsible for doing in TUSD and Sunnyside.
    https://tucson.com/news/local/column/steller-dong-abused-power-with-vote-on-sunnyside-buyout/article_60442d3b-edf8-5d04-a52f-d0ca15ba2cc7.html

    And while he evidently sees no problem with the worst kind of public school governance, he is on fire with the noble cause of getting rid of vouchers, locking poor families into schools chronically mismanaged under the governance of figures like Foster and Dong, both of whom (unlike Juarez) are still in office.

    The sad reality is that identity politics, in addition to being inappropriately factionalizing in a context where we need unity, in addition to being unaligned with the theories of governance behind a democratic system of representation based on geographic districts, not identity groups, is often used to distract the electorate from what they SHOULD be looking for in assessing the fitness of candidates for high office: counter-productive and compromised campaign and governance behaviors.

14. They are owned by their hatred for Trump. It has blinded them from truth and reality.

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