Features

Blacks Struggle With Including Gay Rights Under Civil Rights Banner 

African Americans continue to grapple with the issue of gay rights, which have only recently been discussed openly in the community, gaining steam under the umbrella of civil rights, reports the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a black newswire in Washington D.C. 

At the recent commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington, Martin Luther King III, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), Al Sharpton, and Coretta Scott King all linked the struggles of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders with that of African Americans to gain equal footing in the United States, according to the report by Hazel Trice Edney 

Some blacks don’t agree with this view. “I think one of the things that’s happened with the Civil Rights Movement is that it has been broadened to include so much that what it has done is effectively put the black issue to the side,” says Rev. Roscoe D. Cooper, pastor of the Metropolitan African-American Baptist Church in Richmond, Va. “I think that there are some folks who, because they need public attention, grab a hold of every issue and want to be politically correct.” 

Rev. Joseph Lowery, former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was quoted as saying he doesn’t think that the gay rights struggle is synonymous with the civil rights movement. “I think there are similarities,” he said. “It always has been divisive, but it’s time for the choir to sing. I don’t mean just an excluding choir. I mean an inclusive choir. And if I’m going to err in terms of critical issues like that, I’m going to err on the side of inclusiveness.” 

Chinese American Police Officers Accused of Racial Profiling 

Incidents of racial profiling and police violence have been in the spotlight in Bay Area cities recently. The Chinese-language Sing Tao Daily highlighted an incident where the alleged offenders were uncharacteristically two Chinese American officers. 

Palo Alto police officers Michael Kan and Craig Lee pleaded not guilty of felony assault on Aug. 22 They were accused of beating 59-year-old Albert Hopkins, an African American, with a baton and pepper spray, according to the paper. 

Answering a call from a nearby resident, Lee approached Hopkins, who was sitting in a parked car on the evening of July 13. Lee questioned him, but Hopkins refused to get out of the car or tell Lee his name. Lee then called for backup. When Kan arrived, he asked Hopkins to step out of the car, but he did not comply, according to the report. 

Peter Waite, Deputy District Attorney of Santa Clara County said that Officer Kan tried to pull the driver out of the car and a struggle ensued. The two officers used batons and pepper spray to arrest Hopkins. Paramedics were later called and Hopkins was treated for bruises. 

After the incident, the Palo Alto police began an investigation and ordered the two officers to take a two-day administrative leave, the Sing Tao said. If found guilty of the charges, the officers could face three years imprisonment. 

English-Only Education for Immigrants Has Failed 

Five years after California voters approved a proposition that virtually eliminated bilingual education from public schools, it appears the new approach of immersing immigrant students in English-language study has failed, writes an analyst. 

Backers of Proposition 227 claimed ending bilingual education would enable immigrant students to learn English within a year, writes Domenico Maceri, a foreign language professor at Allan Hancock College. But in fact, he says, recent statistics from the California Department of Education show that only 32 percent of students in English-only immersion programs can speak basic English. 

In a front-page commentary for Central Valley’s El Mexicalo bilingual weekly, Maceri writes, “The promise of Proposition 227 has clearly not been kept. Five years after its passage, California’s foreign-born children are not learning English in a year.” 

He said that despite other successful statewide educational measures that have reduced class sizes and increased standardized testing to hold teachers more accountable for results, immigrant students are still lagging notwithstanding the immersion programs. 

Plus, he says, state statistics also show that a majority of students in immersion programs are not graduating to normal English classes in one year and also are performing dismally in statewide high school exams. 

He contrasts these results with what he says is the more successful approach of schools using a “dual-language” model, in which all students are taught in English and a foreign language. He cites Cesar Chavez Elementary School in San Francisco, which is an English-Spanish dual-language school, as an example. Maceri says that last year only 3 percent of the school’s students were proficient in English, according to the California English Development Test. This year, that number jumped to 38 percent under a dual language policy. 

Andrew Lam, Donal Brown, Kai Lui, Kapson Lee and Marcelo Ballve contributed to this report.