Esther J. Cepeda

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Welcome to Esther J. Cepeda's archive of columns published by The Washington Post Writers Group and other publications. 

 

Follow Esther on Twitter: https://twitter.com/estherjcepeda

 

 

 

Donald Trump hates children

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

WASHINGTON -- Does Donald Trump hate immigrant children?

That's not hyperbole. Is there any other way to interpret his administration's efforts to wreck these children's lives starting at the moment of conception?

Let's begin with the newly enacted public charge rule, which -- if pending lawsuits don't prevail -- will penalize legal immigrants who accessed federal benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps or housing assistance by making them ineligible for green cards and eventual citizenship. This means that women pregnant with soon-to-be U.S. citizens will have to choose between getting help for themselves or going without for eventual citizenship, as many are already reportedly doing.

And the new policy's ramifications could spread to non-immigrant children who attend schools with large Latino or other immigrant populations. The federal government uses the number of children who qualify for free and reduced-price meals to distribute funds earmarked for low-income students. The net result of poorer immigrant families waiving benefits will be that schools with the same number of low-income kids will have fewer funds with which to educate them.

But wait! The administration has an idea to cut those numbers down, too.

Right now, it is federal law that all children, regardless of immigration status, are entitled to a free and appropriate public education. Trump whisperer and senior adviser Stephen Miller wants to end that, despite repeated failed attempts to overturn Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court case that guarantees that undocumented children can go to public school. Keeping out undocumented kids has been on the nativist wish list for years and will certainly rear its ugly head again.

Just last week, Trump reintroduced the idea to end birthright citizenship so that children born to immigrants or refugees on U.S. soil would no longer automatically be U.S. citizens. Conveniently, that would resolve the key criticism of the public charge rule, which is that it harms U.S. citizen children on the basis of their parents' legal or potential citizenship status.

The Trump administration also just announced that it will publish a new regulation invalidating the 1997 Flores Settlement agreement, which codified the medical fact that keeping children in detention facilities for extended periods of time is physically and emotionally harmful.

As a result, children who enter the country with their families and are put into detention will be eligible to be held in facilities indefinitely instead of the current limit of 20 days.

And we know what those detention facilities have looked like under Trump. Recently, a federal appeals court in California had to clarify to the administration that "safe and sanitary conditions" for minors have to include edible food, clean water for drinking and bathing, basic hygiene items like soap and toothbrushes, and sleep. Yes, uninterrupted blocks of sleep in adequate sleeping accommodations.

I know what some of you are thinking: "But they're 'illegal'!"

First of all: So what? Kids are kids. Have a heart, for Pete's sake.

Second, there have been several documented cases of U.S.-born children having been accidentally swept up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and then detained before getting sufficient legal assistance to be freed. Even one instance of this outrage is too many.

Worse than that, there are U.S.-born citizens who end up in foster care when their undocumented family members are deported or put into detention. An estimated 5,000 suffered this fate way back in 2011, before the uptick in detentions and deportations, according to the American Immigration Council.

Third, not all Latinos are first- or second-generation immigrants, much less undocumented ones. But most Latino children have some tie to immigrant caregivers. Hispanic children make up nearly one-fourth of students in public schools.

How do you think stressed-out immigrant children, worried about their family's hunger or homelessness or immigration status, perform in school? How do you imagine these problems impact learning, or collaboration and play at school with classmates who don't have the same worries?

What do you imagine that does for a classroom, a lunchroom, a playground, a school?

How about when an ICE raid rocks a community?

What does that mean for the children, the grandchildren, nephews, nieces, family friends?

For some of those students, it means acting out in class, disruptions, lost teaching time (and frazzled teachers). It means the fraying of communities at the epicenter of where we create civic-minded citizens. It means that children -- and not just those who have immigration-related fears -- feel unsafe.

If that isn't a country that, by presidential proxy, has contempt for children, I don't know what is.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

 

Latino oppression precedes Trump but is growing worse every day

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- There's a lot of fear in the Latino community right now of being targeted by someone with a grudge against immigrants.

But attributing the unease to the recent shootings in El Paso, which specifically targeted Mexicans, overlooks the relentless struggle of being nonwhite in America. And the tension ratcheted up after Donald Trump first launched his presidential campaign on the premise that Mexicans were "rapists" and "murderers."

The journalist Rachel Hatzipanagos recently wrote in The Washington Post: "Across racial and ethnic groups, about two-thirds [of respondents to a Pew Research Center study] said that it has become more common for people to express racist views since Trump became president. Researchers say victims of racism experience negative health outcomes. Studies have linked Trump's rise to an increase in premature births among Latinas, and others have tied it to increased anxiety and depression in the general Latinx population."

I worry most about all the Hispanic children who will grow up not trusting white people.

I grew up in a friendly, predominantly white, working-class neighborhood in Chicago -- the kind where plumbers, nurses and sanitation workers were able to own a home and send their kids to the local Catholic school. I can't imagine how different my life would have been had my parents lived with suspicion or rancor from their neighbors.

It's impossible to say for sure, but it seems unlikely that I'd be as successful had Mrs. Hannigan, who lived three doors down from me, not made it her habit to sit on the front porch just around the time the ice cream truck came by, ready to give me her spare change so I could buy an orange push-up.

Would I have grown up to marry a white man if the lovely and persistent German-born lady who lived next door to my family had not navigated the protective bubble my strict father enforced around me to introduce me to rocky road ice cream for the first time?

Would I have excelled academically through an elite college-prep high school if my white elementary school teachers hadn't nurtured me, teased out my strengths and held me to their highest standards?

It's difficult to know, but the difference is striking between those who grew up being oppressed by people who didn't respect nonwhites' language or culture and those who were treated kindly.

In his 2017 essay "My President Was Black," Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote that Barack Obama's biracial upbringing imbued him with the ability to trust whites, resulting in Obama being "phenomenal -- the most agile interpreter and navigator of the color line I had ever seen. He had an ability to emote a deep and sincere connection to the hearts of black people, while never doubting the hearts of white people."

Will Latino children be able to trust white people with that same level of confidence after the Trump presidency?

If not, it would be foolish to lay that shame solely at the feet of our racist, anti-Latino president. Stop to consider that -- though the tenor of attitudes toward immigrants has gotten more hostile under Trump -- decades of underinvestment in Hispanic students have kept them isolated from the very people, whites, they need to understand in order to succeed in this country.

Though low-income students of all racial groups are likelier to learn beside more middle-class pupils than ever before, racial segregation in schools has intensified. In fact, Latino children are likely to enter elementary schools this year with fewer white peers than a generation ago, according to a new study published in "Educational Researcher," the peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

On average, the nation's Latino children attended elementary schools in which nearly 40% of their schoolmates were white in 1998, but that fell to just 30% by 2010, according to data analyzed by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Maryland; and the University of California, Irvine.

The net result is that between 1998 and 2010, Latinos nationwide became more segregated within districts enrolling at least 10% Latino pupils, including in large urban districts.

We can't blame that on Trump.

That's on a society, in which the best teachers and resources go to affluent students. And the least trained teachers populate the most under-resourced and highly segregated schools, in which students are most dependent on school for an education.

Inequality -- and Latino distrust -- stands to haunt our country for decades to come.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Charlotte, NC's Our Bridge program a model for welcoming refugees

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- The last time I saw Sil Ganzó, she was beaming as she gave a tour of her after-school care facility for newly arrived immigrant and refugee children.

Based on her enthusiasm, you'd have thought the tiny, two-room storefront for the elementary-school students had the grandeur of Google's headquarters. But, as I recall, it had few windows, and she was fighting to get local dog owners to pick up after their pets on the loose gravel outside the building -- the barren spot where the trash cans were kept but also where the kids liked to make up games and run out their wiggles.

That was back in 2015, when I visited the OurBridge program in Charlotte, North Carolina, which Ganzó runs as executive director. I learned on my visit about the astounding diversity and expanding population of U.S.-born Hispanics, immigrants and refugees in the American South.

Charlotte continues to expand and serve as a gateway for new Americans. This has meant major changes for OurBridge and for Ganzó's newcomers.

"We've grown! In the last couple of years, we tripled the number of kids to about 200 and expanded to middle school-aged kids. Our home is now a beautiful building with hundreds of acres of green space, a lake and a kitchen," Ganzó gushed to me on the phone recently. "We partnered with an elder care organization and are renting it for one dollar a year! We can take the kids to cook, on hikes; they have soccer fields and have planted a garden."

It sounds like an oasis for children who are often scarred by the effects of war, deprivation and unspeakable trauma -- whether it be from crossing our southern border or arriving here from Syria, Burma, Bhutan or the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Truly, it's a sanctuary. And I don't mean the new facility -- I'm sure it is beautiful, but when I visited, I witnessed gold-standard student-centered engagement. Kids working with each other to build block towers, teachers modeling self-advocacy and problem-solving, older students helping younger ones with homework, groups practicing English and filling in the blanks with their shared language of hand gestures and smiles.

My visit to OurBridge sprung to mind when I heard Ken Cuccinelli, the White House acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, make a mockery of the Statue of Liberty's famous Emma Lazarus-penned inscription. He suggested: "Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge."

What he didn't say was that almost all poor, undereducated immigrants can pull themselves up by their bootstraps -- they just need a loving, helping hand.

"We make our families feel cared for, not just by teaching their kids English, but by advocating for them in the community," said Ganzó, herself an immigrant from Buenos Aires, Argentina. "Last year when we had ICE agents knocking on doors, I had a parent calling me from the closet, scared because they were outside her house. We went to our elected officials to ask that the city not cooperate. Unfortunately, the mayor didn't sign on to do that, like many other major cities, but it gives our families peace of mind that someone is fighting for them."

Ganzó said that both parents and students come to understand and eventually love the U.S., not because they're offered English as a second language classes or after-school care, but because they feel connected to their new home when their own homelands are honored.

"We know we don't want our families to 'assimilate' -- that word is misused because it means that one culture supersedes the other. What we want to achieve is acculturation, where you learn and become part of a culture without losing your identity or where you come from," Ganzó said. "We take the kids to their markets where they see their flags. We'll go to the Nepali store, the Asian market, the Latino food market, the African store -- then we ask them to help us buy the food for their recipes, and it makes the kids so proud that they know something that we don't know."

People who seek to keep others out of this country don't realize that people who make the treacherous and heartbreaking journey to this country do so because they want to get on their own two feet. They don't want a handout, but their success here does rely on being met with a welcoming hand.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Trump trying to put Latinos back into the shadows

CHICAGO -- The massive immigration-reform marches of 2006 started as a response to, among many other things, pending legislation that would have made unlawfully present immigrants into felons.

The marches helped squash the legislation, which was known as the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. But the rallies also had a lasting impact on our country by marking the beginning of a move toward bringing unlawfully present immigrants out of the shadows and into the spotlight to take a well-deserved bow. These are your neighbors, the people who cheaply cut your lawn, help you take care of your elderly, prepare your food from farm to table and clean your homes and offices.

After the 2006 marches, unlawfully present immigrants began to "come out," echoing the phrase that LGBTQ people use when disclosing their sexual identity to others.

"In the last few years, many immigrants, particularly those who were brought to the United States illegally when they were very young, have invoked the narrative of 'coming out.' Specifically, they have publicly 'outed' themselves by disclosing their unauthorized immigration status despite the threat of deportation laws," wrote University of California at Davis law professor Rose C. Villazor in "The Undocumented Closet," an article published in the University of North Carolina's Law Review in 2013.

"In so doing, they have revealed their own closet -- 'the undocumented closet' -- in which they have been forced to hide their identity as 'undocumented Americans.' Notably, by choosing to become visible, these undocumented Americans are slowly yet powerfully reforming immigration policy by demanding that they are recognized as lawful members of the American polity."

Most people will remember a period of time when young, unlawfully present immigrants were making headlines by being publicly "undocumented and unafraid." And then some of their parents started being open about their illegal status.

That really stuck in the craw of people like President Trump and his immigration advisers -- official ones like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon and unofficial ones like Kris Kobach -- who have made demonizing immigrants the cornerstone of Trump's election and reelection campaigns.

Trump popularized making America "great again" -- an idea that seemed to rest on the belief that immigrants, regardless of whether they are legally or unlawfully present, are what made America not great.

Cue the rash of white Americans getting caught on tape attempting to shame non-whites for speaking languages other than English out in public, or physically harming non-whites seemingly for just being themselves. The shooter who killed 22 people at an El Paso Walmart in early August freely admitted he was targeting Mexicans.

Not "illegal immigrants," but what he and Trump's followers consider a "Hispanic invasion."

Hispanic -- as in legal immigrants and naturalized citizens from Latin America and U.S. born citizens from parents with ties to Latin America.

Though the shooter said in his manifesto that his views on immigration pre-dated Trump's run for president, it hardly matters.

Trump's hard-charging campaign to keep immigrants away from the U.S. and make those strident "undocumented and unafraid" people scared is no secret.

 

Now that every brown-skinned immigrant and U.S.-born-Latino feels they are a target, Trump is moving on to terrorizing those who got into the U.S. "the right way."

This week, the White House announced new standards for obtaining a green card, and thus U.S. citizenship, increasing the scrutiny of applicants' finances to ensure they are not likely to someday use taxpayer-funded benefits like Medicaid, housing assistance or food stamps. These measures are expected to weed out low-income immigrants of color who Trump and his followers consider to be undesirable.

Starting last fall, when the idea of tightening the standards for which immigrants might eventually become a "public charge" was floated by the administration, the effects have been chilling. There are reports that immigrants are forgoing their U.S.-born children's food assistance and medical benefits for fear that if they used them, it could threaten their ability to eventually obtain a green card.

It's all a part of a master plan to make immigrants, even those who are documented, afraid.

But there are a lot of U.S.-born Latinos who aren't buying into this noise.

Many of us recognize there is a target on our backs. But some of us are happy to say -- to Trump and to anyone who feels they need to rid the country of Hispanics -- come at us.

Everything that happens to vilify and frighten Latinos in this country only serves to make us more willing to call our legislators, to register voters and canvas neighborhoods to get out the vote.

In other words, their hatred makes us stronger.

 

 

Be nice: Teens are having a hard time these days

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- If you know a teen -- a relative, a family friend or even just the kid behind the counter at your local pizza joint -- give them a gift today: Look them straight in the eye and assure them that everything is going to be OK.

It's the time of year when tensions are especially high for older children. Recent high school graduates might soon be saying goodbye to lifelong friends as they head off to college and oftentimes-daunting independence. Meanwhile, the pressures on high school juniors and seniors are ratcheting up as seemingly everyone asks the innocent but heart-stinging question: What are you doing after you graduate?

And this is the very least of their stresses.

It doesn't take into account the complicating day-to-day factors of life as an adolescent. Many worry about being able to afford a post-high school education or living arrangements. Others struggle with issues related to sexual identity that can emerge during these years. Some, of course, deal with chronic medical or physical conditions. And there's the mounting stress for many of simply being nonwhite in an America that is increasingly racially hostile.

Can you begin to imagine being a teen and starting the new school year feeling like you've got a target on your back because you have a dark complexion and maybe an accent from another country?

"Personally, I didn't want to go to school," 17-year-old Roman Pastrana told Education Week. Pastrana explained that when his senior year at El Paso's Eastlake High School began two weeks ago -- before the mass shooting there that apparently targeted Latinos and killed at least 22 people -- he felt anxious even though his family is documented and living in the country legally.

"Regardless of that fact, we're just scared. We're afraid that something can go down … Anywhere I go, I feel threatened," Pastrana continued. "A minor who hasn't even voted yet shouldn't have to be afraid of being in school or afraid of being Hispanic."

Education Week reported that similar concerns are shared by officials in school systems that serve large populations of U.S.-born Latino students and legal immigrant and undocumented youth.

"It's the first catastrophic, mass-killing event that targeted individuals -- adults, children -- just on the basis of being Hispanic, being Latino," said Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of the Miami-Dade district, where 71% of students are Hispanic. Carvalho noted the appalling likelihood that some of the victims at the El Paso Walmart were doing their back-to-school shopping.

It might have been the first mass murder to target Latinos in this country, but it may not be the last.

Distinct overtones of white supremacy are a feature, not a bug, of our current president's rhetoric. The attitude that Donald Trump exudes toward people from other countries is simple: They are inferior.

Immigrants are frequent targets of derision in his comments, tweets and applause lines at rallies. He's also, of course, insulted black people and women, and even mocked a disabled reporter. Which group will he target and demonize next?

Teens' lives are already racked with uncertainty and pressures -- to get good grades, find their first jobs, face pressure to drink or do drugs, and generally fit in and promote an Instagram- or SnapChat-worthy self-image. This all takes a heavy toll. A February Pew Research Center survey that 70% of all teens 13 to 17 believe that anxiety and depression are major problems among their peers. Another 26% said they are minor problems.

And a lot of teens work very hard not to show it -- to varying success. Therefore, they need understanding, comforting and support even at the most boring, ordinary moments.

The other day I went up the street to pick up some meatballs for dinner. They cost $6.40, and I gave the polite young man behind the counter a $10 bill. As he started counting out my change, he apologized. "I'm sorry I'm going so slow," he said. "This is my first time doing this."

I assured him that he wasn't going slow at all and that he was doing a great job and would only get better as time went on.

The teens around you are probably bearing a heavy load. Pay attention to them and, whenever possible, give them some kindness and encouragement.

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @estherjcepeda.

 

 

Changing the world -- one playing card deck at a time

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

PORTLAND, Ore. -- What do children with leukemia, trees in deforested regions of the world, and kids in the remote rural communities of Nepal and Kathmandu have in common?

They all have very young benefactors who eat, breathe and sleep playing cards -- and who care deeply about making the world a better place.

These dudes who champion such a wide range of causes are barely out of their teens or 20s, and many of them look like they've stepped out of an ad for skateboarding gear. Yet they spend hours on YouTube learning about cardistry, which is the art of making playing cards dance and somersault in the air.

It was breathtaking recently to see 400 or so of these young men looking like their hearts were in their throats as they watched a short film starring their cardistry heroes, Portland native Sean Oulashin and James Milaras, the Australian founder of the playing card design shop Joker and the Thief.

Milaras and Oulashin's documentary "Cardistry Was Here" is a 20-minute pitch for helping the vulnerable women and children of Nepal through educational programs, community development projects and, yes, teaching the kiddies how to make 52 playing cards jump, flip and twirl.

"A fellow entrepreneur asked me to think about what I could do for the community, and the next thing I know, I'm connected to someone who knew about Friends of Himalayan Children, which helps kids whose lives are affected by the gambling problem in Nepal," Milaras told me. "It seemed like an amazing opportunity to change the negative perception of playing cards in that community and help combat multigenerational gambling addiction by giving the kids something creative and fun to do with playing cards."

We spoke at the end of his presentation here at Cardistry-Con, a three-day gathering of playing card prestidigitators convened by Art of Play, the online curiosity shop, which is itself committed to sustainable printing practices and donates 1% of its income to planting trees in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

"Cardistry Was Here" showed Milaras and Oulashin delighting children with their card acrobatics and teaching them how to manipulate cards. It had such a visceral effect on the crowd that, immediately after the show ended, the pair raised almost double the amount of money they asked for to help fund more playing card decks, video tutorials, and underwriting for Friends of Himalayan Children's myriad education efforts.

"It was amazing, truly inspiring to see the kids' happiness and their ability to almost instantly establish a small community of their own within our larger cardistry community -- linking us all together," Oulashin told me.

The idea of giving children a community in which to grow also motivated Cameron Toner and Nate Lex, the co-owners of the Indiana-based Organic Playing Cards Company. They decided to partner with the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, an organization that helps kids and their families fight childhood cancers.

Toner and Lex explained to the Cardistry-Con crowd that their first, banana-themed card deck "Peelers" inadvertently helped raise awareness of the extinction of the Cavendish banana.

"Ever since then, we were looking to up that to the next level," Toner told me. "We want to spark the feeling of lifting each other up and also bringing others in to our cardistry community, and then having that community have a greater impact on the world."

Lex continued, "We have the fruit theme, and when we got to lemonade and lemons, we knew we wanted to partner with Alex's Lemonade Stand [Foundation]. ... it seemed like a good partnership because these are kids who don't have a lot of ability to go out, meet new people or be physical. And we can raise money, we can go visit these kids, see them in person and actually teach them cardistry."

Though Los Angeles native Ilia Dickey doesn't know how to handle a deck of playing cards, her son has been card-obsessed since fourth grade. She's starting a nonprofit dedicated to promoting awareness of social causes around the world through cardistry.

"It was cardistry that boosted my son's confidence and his ability to do better in school," Dickey told me during a break in the cardistry presentations. "And I'm super excited about how conscious this group is -- there's a lot of kindness, people are trying to share information. It's almost all about the greater good, that sense of community and belonging."

Hot take, nonprofit organizations: If you want young people to buy into your charity's mission, pair it with something they're passionate about. The graceful art of cardistry could be your inroad to a lifelong donor for any cause that pairs well with playing cards.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda Check out her card collection on Instagram at @estherjcepeda

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Cardistry transforms deck of cards into performance art

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

PORTLAND, Ore. -- What is cardistry?

I thought I knew.

It used to be that I'd describe cardistry to people as the choreographed manipulation of standard, poker-sized playing cards into beautiful, shifting shapes and patterns using hand movements like packet cuts, shuffles and fans.

But that was because I had only seen it performed and explained on YouTube. Sure, the flourishes, hand springs and acrobatic card moves are mesmerizing and impressive on video. But after stepping on to the dance floor of the historic McMenamins Crystal Ballroom here last weekend while attending the fifth annual Cardistry-Con, I now understand that it is a true performance art form.

You really have to see it live to believe that anyone would pour so many hours of hard work mastering intricate flips, pops, slides, fans and springs with 52 pieces of colorful paper.

But ohhhhhhhh such paper.

Because I have limited card-handling skills, low visual-art creativity and only an astronomically small fraction of the time necessary to practice the moves, my primary interest in cardistry is the playing cards themselves.

We're talking packets of truly breathtaking visual design -- everything from vibrantly colored abstract modern-art themes to calm expressionist motifs. Some designed to be fanned and create varied geometric designs, and others just single colors, made to be extra catchy to the eye when flipped over to its face.

There are high-end luxury decks made with thick, crushed paper, rimmed with foil and designed with ornate filigrees and other gothic design accents. And there are whimsical playing-card decks whose tuck cases look like juice boxes, complete with nutrition facts printed on the back.

Nathan Lex, co-creator of the Organic Playing Cards line, described the design aesthetic this way at the conference: "So that moms would pick them up at Target and think they're cute and then share them with their friends, but also so cardists would recognize them as something special."

This kind of inclusive mindset was apparent throughout the conference -- an ethos that I had not expected going into what I had initially thought would be a boys-only event.

It's true: Cardistry seems to appeal to a very specific slice of the population, mostly tattooed young men who, in their slouchy backpacks, oversized trucker hats and Vans skateboarding shoes, look like they'd be up for vandalizing your car.

But I was neither the only female, nor was I the oldest of the nearly 500 attendees. I met many parents who had accompanied their children -- some as young as 8 -- to the conference. Some people came from as far away as New Zealand and Brazil so that their kids could fling, slide, toss, launch and fan cards with the rest of us geeks who love making 2.5-by-3.5-inch pieces of pretty paper perform intricate and acrobatic ballet moves.

"I brought my son here because he's crazy about cards, and he doesn't have any friends at home to share this with," one mom of a high school junior told me. "It's been amazing to watch him be around other people who love the same thing."

Love.

Love came up over and over again throughout the three-day jam session and buying frenzy that was sponsored by Dan and Dave Buck, skilled cardists and owners of Art of Play, the online curiosity shop.

I stood in a ballroom packed largely with self-described socially awkward loners -- who were busily sharing tips, helping each other refine their shuffling technique and giving encouragement. All the guys (for now, there are but few female cardists) were incredibly supportive, quick to teach a move and instantaneous in their helping to pick up after the inevitable dropping of cards all over the floor.

By the end, after watching a boatload of incredible cardistry videos and talking to several parents who felt that their kids' social skills and concentration in school had been enhanced by intense practice of cardistry moves, I sat and watched a 60-something dad who was there with his teen son.

Days before, he told me he'd never picked up a deck of cards other than to play card games. During the very last presentation, he was intensely concentrating on a custom-designed deck, awkwardly trying to sybil cut and swing it.

"I think I'm going to learn how to do some moves and surprise him," he told me.

And I left Cardistry-Con, thankful that another student had been inspired and welcomed into the cardistry community.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda Check out her cards on Instagram @estherjcepeda

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

 

Trump and Pelosi show us why women of color struggle to succeed

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- People of color know Nancy Pelosi.

She's every executive who hired them because their "unique" viewpoint was sorely needed at her organization, but then ignored every new suggestion.

She's every mentor at a new workplace who suggested that it would be best to learn how things were done and try not to rock the boat.

She's every manager who bristled at expertise about their own community, target audience or demographic slice and suggested that the prevailing wisdom was more reliable than their lived experience.

Yeah, we know Nancy.

Pelosi diminished the Squad -- made up of freshman congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. -- by dismissing their social media clout.

For people of color -- and women, in general, for that matter -- getting dissed like that is par for the course.

It's been maddening to watch the whole situation play itself out -- from Pelosi's slam to President Trump capitalizing on Democratic discord by suggesting that the three U.S.-born and one naturalized citizen congresswomen "go back" -- because it has felt so terribly familiar.

Trump trotting out the perennial slam -- you're a foreigner, go "back" to some other country -- was to be expected.

And Pelosi ultimately responding to it all by simply waving away the whole mess with a terse, "Let's not waste our time on that," is also typical.

All "that" is a tailor-made case study on why women of color struggle to succeed in workplaces dominated by white people.

Nothing against white people -- they, like any other group of people used to being in positions of authority or seniority over others -- don't usually know they're belittling others. It's not like most people of any race or ethnicity wake up in the morning hoping to trivialize someone else's existence.

Yet, it happens.

And it's why most corporations, nonprofit organizations and other systems, like America's public schools, can usually do OK at recruiting diverse talent, but really stink at retaining them.

"It's clear that the factors preventing women of color from advancing at work are quite different from those holding white women and even men of color back," wrote diversity and inclusion experts Zuhairah Washington and Laura Morgan Roberts on the Harvard Business Review's website. "These include microaggressions, double standards, and unconscious bias to name a few. A 2006 survey of employees from five large U.S. companies found that women of color are most likely to experience workplace harassment among all groups. They are often held to a much higher standard than their white and male peers and presumed to be less qualified despite their credentials, work product or business results."

Washington and Roberts conclude that women of color receive less support from their managers and are less likely to have bosses who promote their work contributions to others, help them navigate organizational politics or socialize with them outside of work.

This leaves women like me and like the ladies in "the Squad" -- but who don't have millions of Twitter or Instagram followers -- without informal professional networks, meaningful mentoring and the workplace sponsorship that others may take for granted.

Fixing this problem to ensure that talented, ambitious women of color persist in their chosen professions, meaningfully diversify workplaces and pull others up behind them isn't easy. It is achievable, though.

First and foremost, recognize the problem. What's happening between these freshman legislators and the white power structure in Washington is more than just a juicy political soap opera. It's emblematic of how people of color finally make it into rarified spaces only to be told to shut up and go back to wherever they came from.

Second, commit to combating unconscious biases. We all carry stereotypes, biases, understandings and assumptions about others. There's no need to beat yourself up about them or feel guilty, just acknowledge that they exist, and understand that they guide your behavior.

Lastly, understand your privilege. Everyone has privilege -- and don't assume it's just about skin color and income level.

An individual who grew up in poverty might have the privilege of excellent health. Someone with a visible physical disability may have grown up in a loving, two-parent household.

The examples are nearly endless, so let's make all of this simple: When you're interacting with a person of color, ask yourself, what would Pelosi or Trump do in this situation? Then, make a better choice.

 

 

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

 

 

Our tax money is being used to fund human rights violations

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO — To those of us who have been following reports of the inhumane ways immigrants have been treated along the southern border, it comes as no shock that there's a Facebook group in which U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents made puerile jokes about the deaths of migrants, suggested how to humiliate Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility and posted a vulgar sexual illustration targeting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

Considering that nearly 1,500 allegations of sexual abuse in immigration detention settings involving employees of the Department of Homeland Security were reported between 2012 and March 2018 — a figure that is surely undercounted, given the power imbalance between victims and aggressors — this dehumanizing behavior shouldn't come as any surprise.

In a just world, millions of Americans would be protesting in the streets to free the children, women and families detained at the border who are, according to news reports, being denied access to medical care and basic supplies like soap, water and adequate food.

 

The same goes for the immigrants currently in detention centers in the interior of the country who are having their human rights violated. Lifesaving medicine is being withheld, and pregnant women have been forced to give birth in shackles. The list of barbarities goes on and on. But these people, who are marginalized on the edges of society, go largely unchampioned.

Which makes me wonder who will stand up for me, or my dad, mother, aunt or two cousins, should we find ourselves in the crosshairs of this country's deportation machine even though we are all U.S. citizens.

It's not a thought experiment.

The number of U.S. citizens who had encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — meaning that they were interviewed, screened and given a determination about whether they are lawfully present or not — rose sharply from 5,940 in 2016 to 27,540 in 2018.

This is according to a new analysis of Immigration and Customs Enforcement data by the American Immigration Council. The AIC had to sue ICE in order to get the figures.

"And we think this number is undercounted because there is an 'unknown' category [in the ICE data set] and this could be more U.S. citizens who were swept up in removal actions because they 'appear deportable,'" said Emily Ryo, professor of law and sociology at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law and a co-author of the analysis, during a press briefing.

We could spend a lot of time unpacking the notion that ICE agents appear to have such latitude and poor training in their work that they seemingly rely on looks to determine who they should approach. Instead, let me highlight a few other key findings:

• ICE encountered and arrested proportionally more women during the beginning of the Trump administration than during the last part of the Obama administration. In many cases, these were "collateral" arrests, where the women just happened to be present when someone else was being targeted by ICE.

• Between January 2016 and September 2018, more than 85 percent of people deported by ICE had either no criminal convictions or no convictions for crimes classified as violent or serious.

• ICE enforcement actions are disproportionately concentrated in certain parts of the country. From 2016 to 2018, custodial arrests increased 118 percent in the Phoenix, Arizona, area, 124 percent in Buffalo, New York, and 151 percent in Philadelphia.

Taken all together, a picture emerges of an agency that seems to disregard the civil liberties of people who "look" deportable and is spending precious federal resources in a scattershot manner with no prioritization for the so-called "bad hombres" that President Trump has said he wants to get out of the country.

These are our tax dollars at work — separating mothers and fathers from their children and families far from the southern border, even if they have no criminal history. (And for the umpteenth time, residing in the country without permission is a civil, not a criminal, violation.)

Call your representative in Congress. Tweet at them, post on their Facebook page or fax them.

However you want to do it, reach out and ask them why we're spending so much of our money on ripping parents and family members with roots in their communities away from their U.S.-citizen children instead of prioritizing violent criminals.

This crisis may be happening quietly and sometimes far from the border, but it's no less a humanitarian crisis for the people who are scarred by it.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com

 

 

Democrats: Ignore Rural America at your own peril

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

BRODHEAD, Wisc. -- This week I've tooled around the south-central Wisconsin towns of Orfordville, Monroe, Footville and Oregon, shopping at the Piggly Wiggly and Blain's Farm and Fleet, eating burgers at the North Side Pub and Grill and taking in a Beloit Snappers minor-league baseball game.

Being in the country is beautiful, with tons of wide-open spaces, green pastures and picturesque farms filled with horses, cows and goats.

The people are, of course, Midwestern nice -- I hadn't expected to be the only brown face in nearly every single one of these settings, but no one hesitated to smile or greet me warmly.

This is how it's done in the rural Midwest. Despite differing viewpoints on how to tackle climate change or worries about residential well-water pollution from massive concentrated animal-feeding operations (CAFOs), there's not a lot of fulminating.

Sure, you can hardly get away from Fox News playing in the background at virtually every diner, bar and auto repair shop. But there's tranquility and the unhurried pace necessary to do what few Americans in big cities can afford to do: put it all in a perspective that's open to whatever it takes to maintain a culture of quiet and a focus on nature's bounty.

This is exactly what the One Country Project is hoping to capitalize on as it seeks to rebuild trust and respect between coastal elite decision-makers and the people in rural communities who have to live with government policies.

Helmed by former Sens. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., the One Country Project is attempting to reopen the dialogue between rural communities and the rest of the country to develop more inclusive policies.

To start, the organization conducted something of a "listening tour" of Iowa, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by analyzing social-media traffic from Feb. 15 to May 15 to identify the most regularly discussed social, economic and political issues. The most salient topics were farming, climate change, education, health care, immigration, abortion and women's issues.

What they also learned is that rural folks are, understandably, scared about the future of farming culture -- due in no small part to what One Country's analysis calls "an underlying feeling of 'disrespect' toward farmers and the agricultural economy from their fellow Americans."

But despite feeling dissed even though they feed the country, their self-interest is slowly driving an open-minded attitude toward the contentious and partisan issue of climate change. One Country found that -- though the majority of the social-media conversation was basically neutral -- the amount of discussion declaring or implying belief in climate change (19%) was nearly double that of language surrounding climate skepticism (10%).

The need for solutions that prevent future floods and farming disruptions "points to the possibility that there is a chance to reach rural voters with a discussion of reasonable responses to climate change."

Not surprisingly, immigration was also found to be a much-talked-about issue. How couldn't it be? I'm pretty sure I hardly saw any brown faces while I was out and about being a tourist in rural Wisconsin, probably because they were all toiling away on the farms. Some estimates say about half of all workers on Wisconsin farms are undocumented immigrants.

Still, social-media comments revealed a bias towards limiting immigration, preventing crime and vilifying the Democratic Party's more tolerant positions on undocumented migrants.

This in particular was worrying, because One Country found that "Democrats are characterized as lacking a solution and not acknowledging the fact that rural Americans believe there is an emergency at the southern border. Interestingly, there is also a strain of discussion portraying Democratic positions as being driven by opposition to President Trump rather than by a committed stance on the issue overall."

This is an area where Democrats will continue to struggle as long as they lack a unified voice on immigration matters.

And if they keep painting rural Americans with the broad brush of intolerance, backwardness and hatred instead of trying to engage those populations with real issues that hit close to home -- such as the need for year-round visa programs for workers in nonseasonal industries like dairy -- they'll just keep widening the political chasm.

One Country heard rural residents speak loud and clear: Americans, especially Democrats, aren't listening to people in the flyover states.

They'd better start.

Continuing to make such a large portion of voters who represent key voting constituencies feel left out is, for Democrats who want a change election, perilous at best -- and stupidly disastrous at worst.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Don't bicker about terms, vote to keep kids out of cages

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- What's worse than a humanitarian crisis at the southern border that is eerily and despicably reminiscent of our forced internment of Japanese Americans during World War II?

That very few people know what's going on. And that even fewer care.

For many, the hazardously crowded conditions at southern-border detention centers, the recent deaths of adults and children in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, and President Trump's tweet last week promising to deport "millions" of immigrants living in the U.S. without permission simply fall by the wayside in favor of click-bait news catnip.

After all, why talk about the parallels between now and the time when Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized people of Japanese descent to be rounded up and put in prison camps? Did you know, by the way, that the group included anyone who was even remotely Japanese? If you were even one-sixteenth Japanese -- i.e., you had one great-great grandparent from Japan -- you could be sent to an internment camp.

It's infuriating to now hear semantic arguments on cable news over whether Latin American migrants at the U.S. border are in "concentration," "internment" or "prison" camps.

These frivolous spats effectively overshadow the tough-to-stomach reality that migrants are being penned in cages and locked in freezing-cold holding cells -- that is, when they're not fenced in under bridges and made to sit on the ground in 100-plus degree weather.

Reports about migrant detention centers have told of sickening conditions -- overcrowding, incidences of sexual abuse, rotten food, insufficient water, poor or no medical care for emergency situations, filthy bathrooms -- that are ripe for creating mass outbreaks of illness and violence.

But some people seem untroubled by the conditions, preferring to fret over the politics that have created them.

Eladio Bobadilla, an assistant professor of history at the University of Kentucky, put it this way in a recent post on the Latino Rebels website: "[Conservative] commentators are wrong, both historically and morally. Not only is it historically accurate to call these detention centers concentration camps, but the uproar reveals a curious and cruel irony: Conservatives are more outraged by the terms used to describe the detention camps than they are by the conditions inside them."

Typical.

The Trump administration has thrived by creating an alternate universe in which lies are facts, objective truths are suspect and real people's lives are mere collateral damage in the war against the left.

And a disturbing share of the country is just sort of accepting it. Not that this apathy is new.

You need only look to newspaper archives from the 1930s to see that we've always turned away from horrors with a yawn.

In 1933, neighbors near a campsite in Suffern, New York, that was being inhabited by Nazi sympathizers complained to their town's zoning commission. The neighbors weren't as upset by the swastikas painted on the visitors' cars as they were by the fact that the group was being rowdy and walking around naked in view of the church next door.

None of us is immune to being blind to the suffering of large groups of people in favor of worrying about our own health, our own homes and jobs and kids' educations. Very quickly, the specific awfulness of what a bunch of unknown foreigners at the border are going through can be subsumed by the also-overwhelming problems of America's crumbling infrastructure, the scary changes in our climate and a potentially bloody conflict with Iran.

So what do we do? We shut it off. We shrug and figure that someone else will worry about it.

This is exactly what our president wants.

This is exactly what the Republican legislators -- who carry Trump's water and stand by him as migrants are tortured for the purposes of firing up attendees at campaign rallies -- want.

And the Democrats?

With nearly two dozen people who think they can win the presidency in 2020 just by being "not Trump," there's not a lot of hope for a concise response to our country's challenges from Democratic organizations.

It's on us -- concerned individuals.

Outraged that some on the right appear more worried about terminology than human suffering? Register to vote.

Horrified that Gestapo-like tactics may be used to remove countless immigrants from their communities? Join an organization that will help other people, especially those in marginalized communities, get registered to vote.

And when the election comes, stop telling yourself that no candidate is good enough and your vote doesn't count anyway.

It will.

Anything less is tantamount to agreeing that what we call the people being caged and abused is more important than their agony.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Mental Health Needs of LGTBQIA+ go beyond Pride month

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Perhaps overlooked in all the colorful Pride Month celebrations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning (LGBTQ) population is the toll that the difficult past and often-uncertain future take on the mental health of people who aren't straight.

To put it in perspective, 39% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past 12 months, 71% of them reported feeling sad or hopeless for at least two weeks in the same time period, and 71% reported experiencing discrimination due to their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to The Trevor Project's inaugural National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health, which was released earlier this month.

The California-based Trevor Project, which provides crisis-intervention and suicide-prevention services to LGBTQ people under 25, undertook the largest survey of LGBTQ youth mental health ever conducted.

"Better understanding the mental health experiences of LGBTQ young people is a major step in addressing their significantly higher risk for attempting suicide," said Amit Paley, CEO and executive director of The Trevor Project, in a statement.

For both young and not-so-young LGBTQ people, there's typically a long road of first understanding one's self, then asserting a gender identity or sexual orientation, and then coming out over and over again to family, friends, co-workers, etc.

Under the very best of circumstances, it's not as easy being LGBTQ as it is often portrayed on TV and in films. And this is not the very best of circumstances: We live in a country in which the president -- despite tweets to the contrary -- seems to be working diligently to strip LGBTQ people of civil rights as well as access to serving in the military and obtaining health care, and who knows what else.

And, not surprisingly, the effects of trauma, anxiety or depression hit LGBTQ people of color harder because of cultural stigmas and a lack of access to mental health resources.

It's an issue that affects all people of color, even those with reliable health insurance coverage.

Over the past few months I've sought help for my own anxiety and depression, and to work through the challenges of being a married, middle-aged mom of two who has been coming out to my family, friends and co-workers as queer.

It has not gone well.

Thank goodness I was not in an all-out crisis when I sought help; it took days to find a therapist close enough that I could make it to appointments, coordinate with their office for insurance paperwork and actually get on the schedule.

And then the therapist and I didn't click.

I made it through two sessions, both of which left me in tears, and I canceled all my future appointments.

Now, I don't believe that a non-Latina therapist wouldn't be able to relate to me, necessarily, but my impression was that this particular therapist -- an older, affluent Caucasian lady who kept asking me why I hadn't done this and why I hadn't done that -- couldn't possibly understand my life, my family or my mindset.

For people diagnosed with depression, 64% of Latinos, 59% of African Americans and 69% of Asians -- compared with 40% of whites -- do not seek treatment, according to a 2008 national study. As a reason, the minority groups cite difficulties with accessing care and their expectation of low-quality care.

It's heartbreaking to imagine someone -- much less a young person, an uninsured person or anyone without lots of education, time and resources -- who is experiencing a depressive or anxious episode also having to go through the daunting rigmarole of dealing with health care bureaucracies just to access therapy.

And we would expect them to also try to find a LGBTQ-inclusive health care provider? Or perhaps a professional of their own background who can uniquely understand where they come from and how they exist in their communities? It's nearly unthinkable.

Meanwhile, we wear rainbows and march with Pride in general support of it being OK to be LGBTQ in 2019.

Cool. Do that. And then take action -- literally any action. Read up on LGBTQ issues. Or donate a few bucks to any organization, like the Trevor Project or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, to help them keep supporting so many vulnerable people.

There's no better way to celebrate your LGBTQ friends, family and acquaintances during Pride Month -- and year-round, for that matter -- than to actively give your support.

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT ESTHER'S COMING OUT:

- NBC LATINO ARTICLE BY RAUL REYES: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/i-m-queer-prominent-latina-syndicated-columnist-esther-cepeda-shares-n1023371

- ROBERT FEDER'S CHICAGO MEDIA COLUMN: https://www.robertfeder.com/2019/07/08/robservations-114-years-chicago-defender-ends-print-run/?fbclid=IwAR11C-1WfCJrupZkbe4fI5Y1NzlT-seg1sVcjIU-TPgYMx4BZiAtoWYjP2w

- CHICAGO'S WINDY CITY TIMES: http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Columnist-Esther-J-Cepeda-on-coming-out-writing-career/66681.html

 

 

 

 

Do Computers Help Kids Learn? It's Complicated

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- As a teacher who's been around to witness schools "go 1:1" -- meaning one laptop, iPad or Chromebook per student -- I can attest to the dystopian sight of full classrooms of young children with their eyes glued to glowing screens.

Those first weeks of the transition to technology are harrowing. I watch every moment that used to be spent with math manipulatives like dice, playing cards or actual books now replaced with interactive Google slides and electronic books that read aloud to students.

At the end of the day, the kids blink their dried-out eyes, rub their faces and stretch their necks just like 40-year-old "knowledge economy" cube dwellers at any tech company.

I'm in awe of how technology has changed our lives for the better in countless abstract and concrete ways, but it hurts to see kids who can barely read, write or do simple math -- this almost always describes my low-income students -- skip over foundational skills because "Google Docs has a spell checker" or you can type in simple math equations into a search bar and get an instant answer.

I'm not saying that the sky is falling, but when the rich -- especially elite tech workers - are opting out of smartphones and tablets for their children and are organizing to ban screens in their schools, we need to pay attention.

They are the vanguard of a class of highly educated people who recognize the dangers of allowing developing young minds to learn primarily, if not exclusively, digitally. This is happening just as middle- and low-income schools across the nation finally are able to access funds to outfit each student with a digital device. Some call this easing the so-called digital divide; some call it a form of social justice to create digital-first future citizens.

But do the ends actually justify the means? And if the "ends" are literacy, numeracy and civic involvement, do digital devices actually help get kids there?

As ever: It depends.

"When teachers use computers or tablets to teach, we don't find that there's a gain in knowledge or an actual impact on standardized test scores," said Helen Lee Bouygues, the co-founder and president of the Reboot Foundation, a Paris-based organization advocating for developing critical thinking skills in children and others. "And what our analysis shows is that in younger ages, in third and fourth grade, in all subject matters, there was no benefit to using technology to learn. And in reading we found a negative benefit."

The Reboot Foundation's new report is titled "Does Educational Technology Help Students Learn? An analysis of the connection between digital devices and learning." It answered this question by using data from the 2017 U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as "the Nation's Report Card," as well as from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test, which evaluates student achievement in more than 90 countries.

On average, the study found that "the students who reported low-to-moderate use of school technology tended to score higher on PISA than non-users, but students who reported a high use of technology tended to score lower than their peers who reported low or no use of technology."

The analysis also found evidence that, even after controlling for students' wealth and prior performance, the results were consistent across the international math, reading, and science assessments.

The U.S. numbers were mixed.

The NAEP data analysis found that "using computers to conduct research for reading projects was positively associated with reading performance." But using computers for general practice of such skills as spelling or grammar produced little evidence that the technology helped. Plus, even where learning technology did boost scores, low to moderate usage showed better results in performance, whereas high usage had a negative effect on scores.

"We found that when you're using the technology for very specific purposes, it can have a benefit," Bouygues said.

Unfortunately, this is not how I've seen technology rolled out at elementary and high schools. I've seen kids become experts at finding games and music while struggling to learn how to use the basic functions of word processing.

And I hear a lot of teachers bellowing: "I can see what you're looking at on the internet! Yes, even at home!"

Sigh.

The data aren't fantastic, but I choose to remain hopeful.

Educators will eventually work out the bugs because they want the best for their students.

With a little training they'll turn the tide, because they understand that the 1% might be able to give up their children's electronics, but everyone else's kids still need to access pictures of the Taj Mahal -- because they won't be visiting it over spring break.

 

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

A talk with Theresa Thorn, author of It Feels Good to Be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity

By ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- What I like best about the new children's picture book "It Feels Good to Be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity" is that there's no sad child who magically overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to have a happy ending.

As a teacher for grades K-4, I read a lot of picture books with important messages about respect, understanding the people around us and just being nice to others. Usually when a book wants to teach kids about interpersonal distinctions, it doubles down on differences before illustrating how similar all humans are.

In contrast, "It Feels Good to Be Yourself" is light. Matter-of-fact. Positive. And as ultra-diverse as the city of Los Angeles, where author Theresa Thorn lives with her husband and three children, one of whom is a transgender girl. Thorn is also co-host of the "One Bad Mother" podcast and co-author of the parenting book "You're Doing a Great Job! 100 Ways You're Winning at Parenting."

"It Feels Good to be Yourself," which is beautifully drawn by Atlanta-based illustrator and comic artist Noah Grigni, introduces us to Ruthie, an adorable brown-skinned, brown-eyed transgender girl. "That means when she was born, everyone thought she was a boy. Until she grew a little older -- old enough to tell everyone that she's actually a girl," Thorn writes.

From there we meet Ruthie's friends, who are cisgender ("everyone thought he was a boy, and as he grew older, it turned out everyone was right -- he is a boy"), nonbinary (which "can describe a kid who doesn't feel exactly like a boy or a girl") or have other ways to say who they are.

We learn that "whether you feel like a boy, a girl, both, or neither, or if you describe yourself another way, that is your gender identity. Your gender identity might match what people thought you were when you were born. Or, it might not."

Now, is this really the sort of thing that young children need to be exposed to?

Absolutely.

I work in a public-school district that has multiple students in early grades who are transitioning, or already have, to affirm their true gender identity.

Plus kids see and hear about various gender expressions ("which clothes you wear, how you style your hair, how you walk and talk" in popular music, on TV shows and even in the books their teachers read to them in school.

"I think there are a pretty good number of children's books that deal with gender identity at this point," Thorn told me in an interview. "A lot of them were really nice, but what I felt was missing was something that could clearly lay out the concept of gender identity in a better way."

Thorn walked the fine line of creating a book that was too informational and, therefore, short on a narrative arc that entices children to stay engaged through to the end, and one in which the terminology threatened to derail the flow of the story.

And once that was perfectly maneuvered, Thorn had to ensure that she was not inadvertently including judgmental language.

"I didn't want to say 'most people are like this, but one kid is like that,'" Thorn said. "With our own kid, when she transitioned, we never said 'You're different.' We said, 'There are lots of people like you.'"

With other books her family owns, Thorn says she's had to circumvent story lines about being ostracized or bullied. "I just skip over them. I don't need her thinking about this, there's plenty of time for her to confront that. I didn't want her to start out thinking she's the outsider."

This will be less likely among children in the same age group as Thorn's daughter.

I've taught in low-income schools that are majority African American and Hispanic, as well as affluent schools that are majority white. In each, the young students just accepted that different people have different feelings about their bodies -- and any number of ways they like to dress or express themselves in those bodies.

It's older people -- teachers, administrators, grandparents and other family members -- who might be similarly understanding if they just comprehended the vocabulary around gender identity.

Buy a copy of "It Feels Good to Be Yourself" for family members, friends or other adults who, at heart, just need a simple way to learn about a newly visible portion of our population.

My favorite passage will clarify any confusion: "No matter what your gender identity is, you are OK exactly the way you are. And you are loved."

 

 

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Reparations for slavery will benefit everyone in our country

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- In the spring of 1995, I sat in a stuffy classroom studying "Literary History of England, from Beowulf to 1800," while overlooking Southern Illinois University's iconic Pulliam Clock Tower.

I was on the verge of boiling over. Somehow, the lone Hispanic (me) and the lone black person in the tiny class were engaged in a shouting match over reparations for slavery.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., had just introduced a bill for a commission to study reparations proposals for African Americans and, apparently, it was such a hot topic that it made its way into our classroom discussion on "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."

Though I can't remember the student's exact words, they ran along the lines of blacks being owed by the U.S. for the forced labor and suffering of their slave ancestors. I felt targeted, because I had been braver in expressing my opinion than the handful of my white peers nervously sitting out the whole conversation.

"Why are you looking at me?" I shot back at my classmate. "My parents came to this country in 1973, long after slavery ended. They don't owe anyone anything!"

Thank goodness I'm no longer as young and ignorant as I was in 1995.

I think it's appropriate that the issue of reparations has now come back into the national debate. Several of the 2020 presidential candidates have embraced the idea of using federal funds to acknowledge and compensate those affected by the ongoing legacy of slavery, including discrimination and white supremacy.

Yes, in case you hadn't realized it from the bounty of research on the black-white gap in educational attainment, gainful employment, homeownership, health outcomes and a dozen other data points -- this legacy lives on.

Randall Robinson, author of the book "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks," argues that acknowledgment of the nation's debt to African Americans for slavery, subsequent segregation and continued exploitation would help heal our country's racial divide. "It's foolish to argue that the past has nothing to do with the present," Robinson was quoted as saying in 2001 in the Congressional Quarterly. "There's a reason why so many African Americans are poor: It's because a terrible wrong occurred in our history that produced a lasting inequality."

The question of whether reparations would actually help African Americans improve their social and economic status is hotly debated, but the question that really fires people up is who should have to pay.

I've done a 180 since college on the matter. Of course recent immigrants, Latinos and everyone else who thinks that they did not participate in slavery needs to sign on to the reparations movement.

I have believed this for a while now because, in the case of immigrants, if you adopt a country as your home, you have to take on their victories and their shame. But I now believe there are two more arguments in favor of vigorous support of reparations.

First, all people living in the United States today enjoy the nation's relative wealth, infrastructure, technological advancement, etc. -- all of which were built on the back of slave labor.

And if your skin is, by cosmic lottery, white, you benefit from societal preferences that are so ingrained in our culture that the reams of statistics I've quoted in this column over the years doesn't even begin to convince you -- the beneficiary -- of those preferences.

The second reason to support the reparations movement is that there is a ripple effect when the most vulnerable people in our communities get a boost, indicating that society values and honors the sacrifices their ancestors made.

If blacks get some sort of federally funded investment in their well-being, it will almost surely lift up the low-income Latino, Asian American, white and other people who live alongside them in blighted communities with bad air quality, dirty water, poorly performing schools and few jobs.

"Just, generally, we all do better when we all do better," said Maria Bautista, campaigns director for the New York-based nonprofit Alliance for Quality Education. "We haven't addressed the harm this country has done to African Americans and what that means for black communities today. We're seeing the outcomes [of the legacy of slavery] in terms of education, housing, criminalizing communities. When we start to address and repay the debt we owe to the African American community in this country, we can start towards justice for everyone in this country."

Reparations shouldn't be a controversial topic. Healing America's original sin stands to benefit everyone, not just those who are owed our apology.

========

Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Why isn't Julian Castro getting as much attention as Beto O'Rourke? Bias

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Why aren't I as sick and tired of Julián Castro as I was of Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke in March and as I am now of media-flavor-of-the-month, Pete Buttigieg?

I want to have Castro fatigue. I want to snark online about the glamour-shot treatment he got on the cover of whatever influential magazine the East Coast reveres most at the moment. I want his appearances on late-night TV shows to be the stuff of breathless news reports for days.

I want to be able to pass no newsstand, click on no news website and walk by no TV without seeing Castro giving a speech or rolling up his shirtsleeves.

This isn't because I have any sort of interest in Castro -- he's fine. I have no beef with him.

To be honest, most people here in the heartland are not already invested in the 2020 presidential campaign. The stampede of candidates is overwhelming and baffling even to those who are already following the horse-race coverage of who's up or down in the polls.

The reason why I want Castro to start taking up space in the public's mind is because it's annoying how the media anoints "hot" candidates -- even if the ardor only lasts a fleeting moment -- and they seem to never be female or people of color.

On paper, Castro checks so many boxes. He's young, he's Latino, he has as much experience as Beto and Mayor Pete, he can appeal to the right with his strong religious beliefs.

But even Castro's time as a former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development can be read as problematic.

"Consider ... his relationship with Hillary Clinton, his time in politics, and I think compared to the two others mentioned, Julián Castro is considered to be a part of the establishment that needs to change," journalist Shahrazad Maria Encinias told me, via Facebook, echoing the sentiments of other journalists I reached out to in order to discuss Castro's campaign.

And, for that matter, many think that, despite Castro's resume, there's not a lot of "there" there.

"I have worked for three elected officials and volunteered on several campaigns," another Facebook pal, Shelli Romero, told me. When I consider Castro, I think of him as young and inexperienced. And I don't know what he has accomplished -- maybe he has accomplishments, but he does not talk about them enough. I don't know who would be identified as his base. I have not heard concrete issues that would cause me to associate with him. ... I am not sure what issues to identify when it comes to Castro."

The Twitter account for the PBS documentary "Ruben Salazar: Man in the Middle" chalked it up to Castro being a little unrelatable: "His handlers have reduced him to role of competent functionary, endorsed by elite institutions. Perhaps a function of white supremacy that they are obscuring any personal, idiosyncratic aspect of his experience -- or maybe the guy is just that niño bueno ("good boy") robotic."

Still, others were more forceful about perceived media bias. One of my Twitter pals declared that the problem is: "Racism against Mexicans. It's as simple as that. Julian has more national experience that Pete."

Even President Trump feels Castro is no threat to his reelection campaign -- we know this because Trump hasn't blessed Castro with a snarky moniker or signature put-down.

Writing on the Latino Rebels blog, theologian Melissa Cedillo noted a disparity: "Castro is bringing his religion to the main stage and embodying Mexican-American faith in a way that not been seen before." Yet, Cedillo writes, "White Christianity often dominates the political narrative when it comes to faith." Are progressives "more comfortable hearing about faith from a white man than a Latino man?"

It's difficult to imagine that attractiveness, skin color, height and other cues and markers of social class and ethnicity don't play into the lack of coverage for Castro.

It's unknown whether the media has declined to breathlessly cover the young, Latino candidate's every move because more people aren't excited about him or if Castro is not breaking through because he just can't get the camera crews and news site bloggers themselves excited.

It's a shame that Castro may end up as another example of the way that, at this American moment, Latinos' prospects for success are likely limited by our complexions, hair color and surnames.

 

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

My abortion story, like so many others, is complicated

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Being a woman frequently means not having much of a voice. Using it to protest or advance policy can mean bearing one's soul, detailing one's most intimate moments or divulging the most terrifying, violent or shameful events of life.

Often for nothing.

Just ask Christine Blasey Ford. She stood up to protest the nomination of a man who allegedly acted without honor to be one of the arbiters of justice in the nation's highest court. Where did it get her?

For that matter, before Blasey Ford was threatened, doxed and subsequently driven from her home and into hiding, there were countless women who bared their souls as part of the #MeToo movement. Their hope was to bring about lasting change by describing how powerful men who abuse their influence, access and authority impact women's lives.

No dice. Sure, there are some foundations doing the work of attempting systemic change against sexual harassment (and a few grass-roots organizations helping working-class women who face daily abuses). But not that much has changed since Harvey Weinstein and other prominent men in positions of power were held to account for their own alleged sexual misconduct.

But what will become of the less-famous women who have taken to social media, op-ed pages call-in radio shows and neighborhood coffee shops to share their saddest traumas?

In recent weeks, a raft of state legislatures have passed bills that effectively ban abortion after a pregnancy reaches six weeks. And, cheering from the sidelines, some on the right are attempting to paint women who undergo the procedure as careless, joyful or sadistic. Pushing back against this tide, many women have been compelled to stand up and admit publicly to the horrible assault, tragic birth defect, failure of a birth control method or simple accident that led them to need an abortion.

Heartbreakingly, it seems like the flood of painful stories about abortions that ended what could have been life-ruining pregnancies will have no end.

Here's mine: I've never had an abortion.

In fact, the one time I was offered an abortion, I turned it down.

And that decision nearly killed me.

In early 2000, during my second high-risk pregnancy, a second-trimester ultrasound showed severe abnormalities that immediately led to an amniocentesis. I then underwent several other highly specialized tests designed to tell whether our daughter was going to have a debilitating disability or even live long enough to be born.

The diagnosis determined that the baby would either die in the womb or be born with multiple abnormalities that would pain her for what would be a very short life hooked up to loud machines. The chances that medical therapy or surgery could deliver a healthy infant were astronomically remote. At the time, the extreme long-shot try for a severely cognitively or physically disabled living child seemed like an infinitely better alternative to the recommended abortion.

(Now that I work with students with profound disabilities and see how parents struggle, it no longer seems like my child's life could possibly have been as joyous as I imagined it.)

Our daughter's birth revealed how profoundly ill she had been in the womb for the months we dragged her life out and I've never fully recuperated from the pain and guilt of knowing I could have ended her suffering much sooner.

My vitals crashed during the cesarean section I required in order to give her the chance to live long enough for her father and I to meet her. Had I not been at a wealthy community's top-tier hospital with elite high-risk obstetricians, I'd most likely be dead. I'd have left my other not-yet-2-year-old son motherless.

But I had a choice.

Most women of color don't have those kinds of resources available to them even though they are disproportionately likely to have high-risk pregnancies, unforeseen pregnancy complications and higher postpartum complications and deaths.

In a New York Times op-ed last week titled "Pregnancy Kills. Abortion Saves Lives," Dr. Warren M. Hern wrote: "Pregnancy itself poses a 'serious health risk' -- including the risk of dying and losing all bodily functions. A woman's life and health are at risk from the moment that a pregnancy exists in her body, whether she wants to be pregnant or not."

The "pro-life" stance too often disregards the mothers of fetuses. Call the draconian early-term abortion bans what they are: anti-choice and potentially pro-death for women.

And those who've had their lives saved because of an abortion should be the next wave of stories highlighted in the media.

 

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com. Follow her on Twitter, @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Chicago's first gay, black, female mayor offers hope for us all

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Well, we finally did it, America. The muscular, broad-shouldered city with the glory-days reputation of being hog butcher for the world inaugurated its first gay, black, female mayor.

On Monday, Lori Lightfoot, a former assistant U.S. attorney, was sworn in alongside her white wife, Amy Eshleman, and their 10-year-old daughter, Vivian.

It was a fitting tableau of a family that, though likelier found on Chicago's liberal North Side, still represents important constituencies in all corners of the city: mothers who struggle to make it in a town that is rapidly becoming too expensive to live in, LGBTQ folks who are searching for both equality and a visible example of accessing power, and children of color who must navigate the complexities of adoption.

It's not a moment too soon.

Chicago has been dominated by white, male mayors who have wielded what people around these parts call clout, doling out business and personal favors to the heads of neighborhood fiefdoms in return for get-out-the-vote operations that virtually ensured long-lasting tenures.

And where has all of it led the city? Budget shortfalls, pension overruns and stunning inequalities in massively under-resourced public schools and neighborhoods vs. wealthy enclaves with tony private schools. It has reinforced the perception of murderous lawlessness on the South Side and chic, safe affluence on the North Side. Plus it has given the city a taste for taking on big projects like signature museums and architectural gems while neglecting a housing crisis for the poor and middle-income residents.

Such long-standing and deeply entrenched challenges won't be magically fixed by the mayor's skin color, cultural competence or preference in romantic partner.

Yet ... what has been overshadowed in all the mentions of her making history with her demographics is the fact that Lightfoot overcame her skin color, culture and sexual identity to leap over the inevitable gatekeepers to achieve her professional goals.

Lightfoot somehow barreled past or sneaked around the myriad expectations that come with being a poor person and a gay woman of color. She earned a law degree and subsequently spent an award-winning career in law enforcement, first as a litigator and then in oversight roles at one of the city's most highly visible organizations, the Chicago Police Department.

The impact of her accomplishment is all the more impressive when we look at the research on everything from students clocking higher academic gains from teachers whose background fits theirs, to older patients faring better when cared for by a doctor whose race or ethnicity fits their own.

The two-thirds of Chicagoans who are not non-Hispanic white are left with a small bit of hopeful expectation that a mayor who has circumvented so many racial and gender thickets might finally provide the attention and investment necessary for them to thrive again.

The adage "you can't be what you can't see" is another way to say that a big idea or identity isn't possible, on a mass scale at least, until you see it with your own eyes.

Now Chicago's first black, woman mayor is openly gay and loves a mixed-race nuclear family of women. It's breathtaking to imagine how many people -- of all races, ethnicities, ages, genders and identities -- she and her spouse and child will inspire.

Make no mistake about it: Lightfoot will mess up. She'll make ham-handed mistakes.

She'll fail to heroically, single-handedly fix the problems that her predecessors have created and subsequently mismanaged for decades.

But right now -- at a moment in our nation's history where there seem to be few people of color entrusted with the power and prominence to make lasting and positive changes -- Lightfoot has two opportunities.

The first is to demonstrate, again, that black women (and by proxy, other women of color) are ultra-competent winners who can get the job done long after we're done celebrating their demographic attributes.

And the second, and most important, is that Lightfoot has the potential to demonstrate to Chicago and the rest of the country that strategic investments of money and other resources into hitherto overlooked communities have the potential to repair and rebuild a rapidly diminishing middle class.

Those who stand to benefit -- and really, it's all of us -- wish her well.

 

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

If technology helps the real 'you' come forward, go for it

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- I don't need the Snapchat gender-swap filter to show me what I look like as a man -- I can just look at any picture of my dad at my age and voilà.

But posting opposite-gender pictures using the filter was all the rage last week.

And even in this age of gender exploration, some young people who grew up in a world where it's OK to question every facet of their identities had complaints: Everything from condemning jokes about how many people were going to realize they were transgender to outrage that Snapchat was enabling the trivialization of what is a difficult journey in a trans person's life.

Rose Dommu encapsulated it perfectly in her post on the website of "Out" magazine -- "This filter is literally an instant transition, and the humorous way I'm seeing it shared is ... not cute. My Twitter mutuals don't go with me to every painful laser hair removal appointment ... don't shove a needle full of estrogen into their thigh twice a month ... They don't understand the pain and endurance required for trans people to get themselves even close to their ideal presentation -- so no, I certainly don't want to look into my phone screen and see what some app developer has decided the most perfectly feminine version of me is. Nor do I want to see memes poking fun at the very real violence trans folks face."

The cynic in me was revolted that Snapchat, whose 2017 IPO basically went nowhere because the service had become nearly irrelevant, was riding high on a wave of publicity that included breathless news coverage of instances in which someone fooled their parent or a potential love interest on dating platforms. All without the context of the physical violence, poorer health outcomes and high death rates that transgender people face.

But more importantly: Does creating an instantaneous and idealized version of the self as the opposite gender help or hurt individuals questioning their identities, or in the process of affirming their gender? Or anyone who chooses to enhance their faces with the many, free or cheap augmented reality apps that are readily available to use with their smartphones?

Past research has a story to tell.

As far back as 2007, the researcher Nick Yee, along with researchers at Stanford and the Palo Alto Research Center popularized the Proteus Effect, a phenomenon in which people behave in ways that correspond with avatars -- digital representations of the self -- that project an idealized version of the self.

In their paper "The Proteus Effect: Implications of Transformed Digital Self-Representation on Online and Offline Behavior," Yee and his co-authors found that people who were given taller avatars in an online game negotiated more aggressively than users given shorter avatars. They found that "both the height and attractiveness of an avatar in an online game were significant predictors of the player's performance."

More importantly, behavioral changes that started in the virtual environment transferred to subsequent, real-life, face-to-face interactions.

Jeremy Bailenson, a professor of communication in the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford, recently found much the same when investigating interactions in augmented reality. In this case, the simulation was created by wearing goggles that layer computer-generated content onto real-world environments.

When people interacted with a virtual person, they appeared to be influenced in similar ways as to when they had a real person physically next to them. Subsequently, their interactions in the real, physical world changed after the virtual experience. For example, people avoided sitting on a chair they had just seen a virtual person sit on.

"We know from the phrases 'Dress for success' that the way you represent yourself is important, and not just to others," Bailenson told me. "We infer how to act based on our own identity, we use self-perceptions to take cues from ourselves. We know that if people are using these representations [such as avatars and images of the self] often, that it does change how they act. The question is how we'll change when identity is fluid and we're beaming ourselves everywhere constantly."

Bailenson said he doesn't use any social media and was clear he has no easy answers for the gender-swap app conundrum or any other instance of projecting a highly stylized image of the self. We need more research, especially as the technology becomes faster and cheaper.

But I say to anyone out there looking to transform: You are beautiful. If you feel technology can help the "real" you come forward, you may just be on to something.

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

Poor kids with great grades don't do better than middling white students

BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA

CHICAGO -- Over the past few years, I've taught at schools that were low-income, terribly under-resourced and majority-African American and Latino. I've also taught at affluent, majority-white schools with nutritionally balanced lunches and laptops for every student.

What I've come to learn is that in all of these schools, the one factor that should move the needle of student achievement -- teacher quality -- only supports a woefully inadequate status quo.

My students who attended school in a building with ancient pipes that leached lead into the water fountains and with glue traps that were scattered around the school so that mice could die painful public deaths usually had teachers with their hearts in the right place. But the teachers also had low classroom-management skills or academic subject-matter expertise.

The few true believers with skills -- teachers who were there to prove that low-income kids could perform as well as their well-resourced peers in neighboring districts -- tended to burn out and leave for greener pastures relatively quickly.

In contrast, affluent schools -- where the "whole child" is considered, enrichment programs are built into test-prep-driven schedules and the calendar is marked with countless bells and whistles like field trips and special-learning activities -- attract the best-performing and most highly qualified teachers.

This staff tends to stay even if the money isn't great, because there's a lot of professional development, parents are highly involved and the student body tends to be stable and homogenous.

What would happen if we yanked all the great teachers out of high-performing schools and swapped them with middling- to low-performing educators whose professional goals were merely to make it to retirement?

Maybe not much.

As if we don't have enough research to prove that the rich keep getting richer while even the poor who manage to pull themselves up by their bootstraps get poorer, new data out of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) says that all the things we think matter in education take a back seat to socioeconomic status.

"The most talented disadvantaged youth don't do as well as the least-talented advantaged youth," says the CEW report "Born to Win, Schooled to Lose: Why Equally Talented Students Don't Get Equal Chances to Be All They Can Be." It adds that a child from a family in the highest quartile of socioeconomic status (SES) who has low test scores in kindergarten has a 71% chance of being in an above-median SES at age 25. However, a child from a low-SES family with high test scores has only a 31% chance of reaching above-median SES by 25.

And, of course, this effect is magnified depending on race or ethnicity.

Black (51%) and Latino (46%) 10th graders with math scores in the top half of test takers are rewarded for their effort and persistence by being more likely to earn a college degree within 10 years than their peers with math scores in the bottom half, but they're still less likely to earn a college degree than white (62%) or Asian (69%) 10th graders with math scores in the top half.

"To succeed in America, it's better to be born rich than smart," said Anthony P. Carnevale, director of CEW and lead author of the report, in a press release.

It's hard for teachers to navigate the public-school teaching industrial complex in search of meaning. No matter how poorly or well they educate their students, the well-to-do kids are going to fall up into the comfort their families can provide and the low-income students will struggle to find a future.

If that's the case, then we might be looking at the issue of equity in education the wrong way.

Never mind desegregating schools -- you can have majority-Latino and African American schools with incredibly high academic achievement. They get that way with money -- which can buy excellent teachers, resources for parents, extracurriculars for students and cash for going on college visits and granting loan-free higher education.

The only thing money can't buy, however, is the end to systemic racism and inequality.

You could pour cash into the excellent education of every Hispanic and black child in America and they'd still get left behind by a system that preferentially values whites' long-standing wealth and far-reaching social capital.

Until we recognize and address that disparity, money will be an inadequate method of boosting students of color -- the fastest-growing portion of our population.

 

 

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Esther Cepeda's email address is estherjcepeda@washpost.com, or follow her on Twitter: @estherjcepeda.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group