Response to Anthony Samad: Accountability is More Than Self-Serving Talk

Response to Anthony Samad: Accountability is More Than Self-Serving Talk 

The Reagan trickle-down model of educational, economic and political and other opportunities has long been an erratic drip. Certain of its agents and wannabes are fringe pretenders who have eluded accountability and close scrutiny; they also include in their ranks some who have undesirable and questionable legal and moral histories. In accepting these mercenaries, we continue to legitimize their flimflam.

One example is Anthony Samad’s unsupported and fallacious assessments of the Black Education Task Force leadership, mission and objectives.  His Our Weekly column (Sept. 3-9, 2009) says that the Black Education Task Force “was caught sleeping on the resolution and tried to react to it at the last minute.” This is a deliberate lie-Samad knows full well that BETF never changed its position opposing the Yolie Flores-Aguilar Public School Choice Resolution. The quote exemplifies Samad’s individualistic, non-group orientation, his constant rhetoric for Black unity notwithstanding. His evaluation of the BETF distorts the role of its leadership and its participants in addressing the current challenges of LAUD’s African American students. He demonstrates a lack of intellectual honesty by basing his evaluation on the outcome of the LAUSD School Board’s approval of the proposal for 51 new and 200 low-performing schools, rather than the proposal’s implications for Black students.  This is more than ironic for someone who always claims to put the issues first.

It is past time for accountability. We urge the Task Force to not stand idly by when such wrong is perpetrated. We suggest that it challenge claims of genetic privilege, whether the phenotype of the perpetrator is white or Black, when it comes to the education of African-Americans. We believe the BETF’s own responsibility is to hold accountable elected officials and private citizens who display avarice, arrogance, braggadocio, effete snobbery, intellectual dishonesty and moral deficiencies at the expense of the rights and needs of African American students.

Anthony Samad and those whose behavior hinders sincere efforts to improve the quality of education of Black students must be exposed. We can no longer afford to be silent or to appease their self-serving, fraudulent and compromised leadership that disadvantages Blacks in general and Black students in particular. They are our future. 

 

Larry Aubry, Convener, Advocates for Black Strategic Alternatives. Email: [email protected].

ABSA Members: Michael Guynn,  Association of Black Social Workers; Dr. Samuel Shacks, Pediatrician; Erin Aubry Kaplan, Writer/journalist; Kokayi Kwa Jitahidi, Community Organizer; Larry Aubry, Community Call to Action and Accountability; Dr. Melina Abdullah, Professor, Cal State University Los Angeles; Dr. Eugene Hubbard, Orthopedic Surgeon.