A black minister cried shame on the leaders of African-American groups opposed to school vouchers, urging them to argue the merits of their case rather than lower themselves to the status of “racial mudslinger[s].” He also called on the black leaders to “respect the integrity of black Americans, the majority of which support school choice.”
Responding to a September 10 anti-voucher news release issued by People for the American Way on behalf of national African-American leaders, Bishop Earl W. Jackson Sr. said that the groups–the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, and the African American Ministers Leadership Council–should be ashamed of what they had done.
“At a time when this country needs to experience racial healing, they recklessly throw about such statements as ‘[school choice] is really an attempt to divide the African American community against itself’ and calling proponents of vouchers ‘immoral,'” said Jackson, who is National President of the Samaritan Project.
“Black Americans have the right to ask why their so-called leadership pumps money and resources into keeping low-income parents from choosing where their children go to school,” said Jackson. “They pretend to be our children’s leaders, yet instead, they choose to fight school choice the only way they know how: with sophistry and by attacking the other side with spurious ‘racist’ labels,” he added.
“The purpose of education is not to provide jobs for teachers, it is to teach our children,” declared Jackson, pointing out that in some cities, 40 percent of public school teachers send their children to private schools.
The Samaritan Project is an organization dedicated to implementing a racial reconciliation model built not on government action, but on faith and personal responsibility, and rebuilding the American family.
