Extra! Extra! Japanese Government Funds Distance Education on the Rez

No, it hasn’t happened yet. But who knows, stranger things have happened.

By “the rez” I mean, of course, the reservation. In this case I have no particular reservation in mind but rather am thinking of all 300+ of them as a collective entity that encompasses 2.3% of the landmass of the United States. While most of them are rather small, a few are quite large, with nine larger than the state of Delaware while the lands of the Navajo Nation are roughly the size of West Virginia.

What’s interesting about these Indian reservations is that the tribes possess tribal sovereignty, which means that in some respects these reservations are foreign nations. That’s why a few tribes have been able to get rich from gambling casinos on the rez. Federal and state laws don’t apply on the reservation, and if the reservation happens to be in the middle of are populated by people with money they’d like to gamble away, when then come on down!

But I’m not interested in gambling. I'm interested in poverty. Many reservations are, in effect, third world countries within the territorial United States. Over a quarter of Native Americans live in poverty as compared to 15% nationally. Poor people generally get lousy education and that, in turn, makes it difficult for them to work their way out of poverty.

And that’s where the Japanese come in. As I indicated in my post on Takeshi Utsumi, the Japanese government funds distance education in third world nations. Why not fund distance education in these third world nations that just happen to live within the territorial boundaries of the United States of America?

Think of how THAT would play in the news. Seventy years ago the United States defeated Japan in World War II and occupied the country for several years. Now the Japanese are extending foreign aid to these poverty-stricken nations within the larger nation, the nation that is the richest in the world, but still has 15% of its citizens living in poverty.

We’re living in a world where the largest corporations are larger than many small nations. And those corporations conduct business in many different nations and operate in such a way that puts them effectively beyond the sovereignty of those nations ¬– for example, take a stroll through the New York Times archives for stories about Apple Computer and Foxconn, the Chinese company that does much of their manufacturing. Think about that for a moment. That’s absolutely routine. That’s how business is done in this, the 21st Century.

So, why can’t a wealthy nation, such as Japan, contribute foreign aid to sovereign tribes in America?

What would the Bureau of Indian Education say about this? Would the Japanese be interested?

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For more information on American Indian education, see the website, American Indian / Indigenous Education, maintained by John Rehyner of Northern Arizona University.

Moynihan Was Right

Back in the day, 1965, Patrick Moynihan published a now infamous report, The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, which opened as follows:

The United States is approaching a new crisis in race relations.

In the decade that began with the school desegregation decision of the Supreme Court, and ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the demand of Negro Americans for full recognition of their civil rights was finally met.

The effort, no matter how savage and brutal, of some State and local governments to thwart the exercise of those rights is doomed. The nation will not put up with it — least of all the Negroes. The present moment will pass. In the meantime, a new period is beginning.

In this new period the expectations of the Negro Americans will go beyond civil rights. Being Americans, they will now expect that in the near future equal opportunities for them as a group will produce roughly equal results, as compared with other groups. This is not going to happen. Nor will it happen for generations to come unless a new and special effort is made. . . .

The fundamental problem . . . is that of family structure. The evidence — not final, but powerfully persuasive — is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled, poorly educated city working class the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated. There are indications that the situation may have been arrested in the past few years, but the general post war trend is unmistakable. So long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself.

The thesis of this paper is that these events, in combination, confront the nation with a new kind of problem. Measures that have worked in the past, or would work for most groups in the present, will not work here. A national effort is required that will give a unity of purpose to the many activities of the Federal government in this area, directed to a new kind of national goal: the establishment of a stable Negro family structure.

The report kicked off a firestorm in which Moynihan was lambasted for empty-ump sins of misunderstanding and racism. In this 12 minute Bloggingheads.tv conversation John McWhorter and Glenn Loury argue that Moynihan was right, but he was the wrong color to say what he said.