Journalistic Unfairness
Cut from Hess. And now that his back is turned, so to speak, Poinsett immediately belittles Hess’s testimony as “outsider analysis of inner-city dynamics.” We’re told that “some” black leaders dismiss Hess as “at best, a dilettante in African American ethnography,” and that “others” dismiss Hess’s “new leaders” as “inadvertent pawns” of Chicago Panel, of a “self-serving business community,” and of Designs for Change, which Poinsett introduces as “a prominent downtown educational research group that loudly espouses concern for the education of black children. Designs, in particular, is distrusted by a large group of black community leaders.”
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We hear from two black legislators, the 2 who happened to vote against school reform in 1988 (the other 17 supported it). We are encouraged to wonder if school reform is but one more example of a paternal white elite telling blacks what’s good for them. The piece ends on a note that we’ll call paranoia. Poinsett writes, “Some black activists fear that current events in the $2.9 billion Chicago school industry may be part of a larger scenario to rid the city of any vestiges of black political power.” (These activists construe decentralization as a scheme to fire black bureaucrats on Pershing Road.)
Hess, an early interview, rubbed Poinsett the wrong way. “He talked about the new generation of black leaders,” Poinsett told us, “and I thought this was premature. Many of them were elected [to local school councils] with just 30 or 40 votes.”
The reaction to Poinsett’s article was almost entirely positive, says Lenz, with two pointed exceptions. One was a private letter from the chairman of Chicago Panel to the chairman of the Community Renewal Society, the other a scathing reply from the chairman and vice chairman (both black) of Designs for Change. It thundered: “A blatantly inaccurate history of Chicago school reform and the role of African-Americans in it, basic distortions about our organization . . . and racial slurs.” Racial slurs? One singled out by Designs had Deanes telling Poinsett: “The white boys are making millions of dollars on the backs of our children. That troubles me.”
As Catalyst does not publish over the summer, Designs’ critique failed to see the light of day until the September issue came out a week or so ago. And now, with this critique finally on its way to the public, Linda Lenz answered it. In a letter, she reminded Designs’ chairman and vice chairman of Catalyst’s mission “to stimulate debate,” discharged in this instance by airing “the festering antagonism” that threatens “the progress of school improvement.” She said that until the larger truth of school reform, “which may well be on your side,” becomes clearer, “Catalyst can only print the varying interpretations, taking care not to trample on the facts that emerge. . . . Inflammatory comments,” Lenz went on, “when espoused by leaders . . . are part of the story.”
An indifferent boy during America’s first postwar war, in Korea, we came of age in the throes of the second, in Vietnam, and expect any day now a war we can share with our children. No two wars are alike; and one of the curious ways in which war with Iraq will differ from every other war of our lifetime–indeed, from every other war of this century–is that this will be a Republican war, bringing to a boil ten consecutive, popular, selectively prosperous years of Republican administration.
