My dad and I are debating Tierney’s column via e-mail. Tierney wrote that African-American support for vouchers could lead to party realignment and the passage of new voucher bills.
Dad writes in his last e-mail:
But the PROBLEM remains, the contradiction, as Marx would say: upward-aspiring black parents watching their kids going to crappy public schools, falling behind more and more every year, while Democratic politicians send their kids to private schools and extol the merits of public education.
Two things can happen: the black parents can say, “Oh, OK, the problem’s insoluble, we’ll just have to take it.” Or else, at some point, there might be a different reaction.
A dream can be deferred and deferred and finally dried up, like a raisin in the sun. Or it can explode.
My far less eloquent response:
But that’s not the situtation at all. What’s happening is that there are a few black leaders who are demanding vouchers. However, most black leaders are deeply indebted to the urban Democratic machine, which is in bed with the unions; they’ll never come out in favor of vouchers. Public opinion polls show that blacks want vouchers, but many poor blacks don’t vote. The African-Americans who do vote are highly, highly unlikely to vote Republican.
Upwardly mobile blacks are moving to the suburbs. The rest just have to suck it up like they’ve always done.
No change in party affiliation. No change in vouchers.
Apt. 11d 