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well, i think one response to the basic register of simon's interview--which (again) i think is really interesting--is that there's a serious systemic problem that *can* be addressed but which isn't being addressed *at all* in part because confronting it would require a basic change in the way we all understand what american capitalism is, what it does and has done--and more importantly that what has happened is a function of policy choices based on ways in which information has been framed---the result would be that very different kinds of policies have to be put into place along with a different relation to information...
in other words, i think that there's a pretty strong argument here against the continuation of the existing relation between education, the class system it reproduces and the various institutional mechanisms that have been put into place to not really deal with the effects of the first two.
1. it would appear that the relation simon talks about between economic marginalization, an educational system that is a direct mirror of this and the reproduction of marginalization follows directly from the fact that educational funding is tied to local property taxes.
2. there has to be a different kind of information generated that is realistic in its results, and which does not simply feed back onto the institutions that gather that information the bureaucratic image of the world intertwined with indices that enable movement or "progress" to be fed back into that image. if what simon describes in generally accurate, then it looks like these institutions are geared entirely around preserving their funding, so generate pictures of the world symmetrical with their program design and "benchmarks" that indicates motion in order to be able to demonstrate to funding sources that motion is happening.
so the basic problem is that we, collectively, have allowed the development of largely self-referential types and streams of information. this is a systemic problem. it is a really really serious systemic problem.
how on earth is it possible to develop coherent plans--coherent programs--if there's no interest in generating systematic images of the social situations these plans are supposed to effect?
if you ever read stuff about how stalin's various economic plans were implemented and the ways in which information was rigged to provide an illusion of implementation, you may find that it's not that different from what's being talked about here. the stalinist system was wholly incoherent and held itself together primarily through violence. what holds the american one together?
so there's at the least an information collection/co-ordination problem.
more basically, there's a fundamental political problem that has to do with the ways in which bureaucracy has been instituted in BOTH state and non-state contexts compounded by an apparent lack of awareness of system-characteristics of bureaucracies---how they tend to parse their environments for example--because there ARE general tendencies (the imperative to reduce complexity, say)...
within that, it seems to me that there has to be a serious rethink of how information about the socio-economic realities in america are produced, what the status of this information is, how it is used, etc.
because the situation simon outlines is entirely insane.
of course, you or i may or may not see evidence of this depending on whe
re we live geographically--which corresponds to class position.
3. i can imagine any number of initiatives--say micro-credit, say larger-scale initiatives, that could be undertaken in order to grow various types of economic activity in these marginalized areas that may or may not be geared around any "integration" into the larger=scale capitalist status quo--but this would have to be understood as a desirable political end--and the problem would have to be amenable to being outlined.
frankly, conservatives--and this includes republicans and democrats--are perfectly content to let an entire segment of the american population rot, so long as they don't have to look at the consequences of that rotting in their insulated everyday lives.
because that, folks, is what simon describes for you.
welcome to america.
and this is just one place.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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