By Colbert I. King
Saturday, March 24, 2007
The extraordinary $122 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help prepare and send to college more than 2,000 youths in the District's poorest wards could, if those goals are achieved, transform the city's future economic and social landscape.
Converting potential high school dropouts into college-educated citizens has never been attempted in this city on such a scale. But with careful targeting and tight administration, the District should earn a rich return on the Gates investment in the form of a generation of educated, well-grounded and productive young adults.
Whether the infusion of Gates funds can alter the intersection of race and governance in the District is another matter. Our history is not encouraging.
That point was brought home last week in the Washington City Paper's "Loose Lips" column.
"Not only has [Mayor Adrian] Fenty shopped west of the river for his appointees," the column observed, "but he's also shown an affinity for white ones, especially in the public-safety realm.
"Police Chief designee Cathy Lanier, Fire Chief designee Dennis Rubin, and Attorney General nominee Linda Singer are white. So are City Administrator Dan Tangherlini and the mayor's legal counsel, Peter Nickles."
And in the unkindest cut of all, the column referred to a comment by Ward 8 political activist Philip Pannell, who told WJLA-TV that the makeup of Fenty's cabinet, and his nominations to boards and commissions, "makes Tony Williams look like Shaka Zulu."
Whoomp, there it is. A hot topic of conversation among black residents was suddenly on display in a popular newspaper column.
Is this focus on race a holdover from the Marion Barry era? No. It's been part of the District for more than a century.
Read " The Senator and the Socialite," Lawrence Otis Graham's new book about former slave Blanche Kelso Bruce, the first black man to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate.
Bruce, a senator from Mississippi during Reconstruction, and his wife, Josephine, the daughter of a wealthy black Philadelphia physician, were the toast of Washington in the 1870s. Their son, Roscoe, a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard University and a protege of Booker T. Washington, was appointed superintendent of the District's "Colored Schools" in 1907.
Roscoe Bruce's promising career here ended in disaster when he lost favor with black parents and supporters. Consider these observations in the book:
"Roscoe was able to engender enthusiasm and support from the white . . . members, who felt that he spoke their language and represented their kind of black.
"Black parents accused him of ignoring them, of favoring a certain class of people in his selection, promotion and retention. . . .
"Most of the white . . . officials were nevertheless still smitten by the charming Roscoe who spoke with eloquence. . . . Here, they thought, was a colored man who didn't 'act colored,' 'sound colored,' or even 'think colored.' Here was someone they could completely understand and utterly control."
Graham writes that Bruce tended to undermine his own contributions by being dismissive of black Washingtonians who could have helped him. What's more, Bruce came across as courting white people for their support because he deemed them more important -- an accusation hurled at his parents decades earlier.
Bruce, by catering to whites, lost his foothold in the black community -- ironically, the very leverage he needed to keep white support.
"We want him out of here" was the rallying cry of blacks who filled Metropolitan AME Church (on M Street, around the corner from The Post) on the evening of June 10, 1919, Graham writes. With Roscoe Bruce losing his usefulness, the white board demanded his resignation in the spring of 1921, and he left the city in disgrace.
Does this story have a moral?
Adrian Fenty is no Roscoe Bruce. The mayor is engaging, energetic and intent on doing a good job. He's in no one's pocket, as he has assured me and others. But is he still in step with those core voters who launched him politically?
It's one thing to conduct frequent grip-and-grin visits into the community; tapping the community for talent is another matter. Fenty would do well to remember the old adage that those who ignore history are bound to repeat it.
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The Gates Foundation and the D.C. College Access Program are godsends for D.C. public education. Now the D.C. Council must do its part.
City lawmakers will soon consider Fenty's school-takeover plan. Should it be rubber-stamped as he demands? Before voting, legislators should read the examination of Fenty's four-part achievement plan prepared by the Council of the Great City Schools only a few days ago. The council's 25-page analysis (available with the online version of this column) concludes that the plan's implementation does not match Fenty's vision and that it is not even internally consistent. Those reported shortcomings, however, can be fixed legislatively. At issue: Are council members policymakers or echoes?
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