The greatest difference between now and 1964, when I began teaching, is that public policy has pretty much eradicated the dream of Martin Luther King.

Racial segregation has come back to public education with a vengeance.

When I was young, I was religious.

Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.

The greatest difference between now and 1964, when I began teaching, is that public policy has pretty much eradicated the dream of Martin Luther King.

Placing the burden on the individual to break down doors in finding better education for a child is attractive to conservatives because it reaffirms their faith in individual ambition and autonomy. But to ask an individual to break down doors that we have chained and bolted in advance of his arrival is unfair.

I beg people not to accept the seasonal ritual of well-timed charity on Christmas Eve. It's blasphemy.