Letters of July 11

HS Student speaks out against SHSAT
The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) is another persistent function of oppression for working-class kids, specifically and most especially Black and Latin kids. The exam is not, in any way, an adequate or accurate measure of a student’s intellect, or academic merit; rather it is indicative of how much test prep a student has done. And the only students that can afford prep programs, much less have the privilege of knowing the SHSAT exists, are the students currently in specialized schools.
The difference between “specialized” high schools and regular high schools is a single test. The connotation behind “specialized” fools students into thinking that specialized school students are somehow more gifted. I have seen this in an alarming number of my Asian peers, who have aligned themselves with white students’ passivity. They are not only confined to but also championed by a myth that stresses their success. The model minority myth is still very much a powerful force today, dictating that Asians are natural overachievers and therefore, are the path other racial minorities should aspire to travel.
The rhetoric I’ve been hearing from my peers is troubling because it is so blatantly entitled, which only proves how successful the SHSAT has been at the segregation and marginalization of working-class students. The argument that abolishing this test harms Asian and white students would be a respectable opposition if not for its inherently racist undertones; why does it take a bill that targets an advantage of white and Asian kids for people to finally try reforming education inequality? What about schools in impoverished neighborhoods that have been incredibly underfunded for decades?
All students deserve better access to resources, and abolishing the SHSAT is the first step towards that.

We need Black-Asian unity
The model minority myth has always been used as a wedge to divide the natural unity between Black and Asian workers. We can see this clearly in the case of East Asian parents accusing Mayor de Blasio of
anti-Asian racism (see page 5). He had called to eliminate the entrance exam that bars Black and Latin students from entering the city’s elite schools. The false argument goes that by eliminating the test, the City is taking away one of the only ways Asian youth can work their way out of poor living conditions. Capitalist propaganda has won a small portion of the working class to see segregation as a necessity.
Researcher Ellen Wu in defines a model minority as “a racial group distinct from the white majority, but lauded as well assimilated, upwardly mobile, politically nonthreatening, and definitively not-Black.” The model minority myth is built on the foundation of anti-Black racism with roots in the 1960s. It was a convenient tool used to undermine the Civil Rights Movement, impede fightback from Asian workers, and effectively blame both Black and Asian workers if they don’t succeed under capitalism.
The narrative accepts anti-Black violence.
This myth erases the real history of Asians being anything but “a model minority.” Asian and Black workers fought against racist discrimination together, organized against imperialist wars together, and built romantic lives together:
The fight for justice for Vincent Chin, murdered by two racists in 1992 Detroit, highlighted racism against Asian workers.
Joe Ishikawa, after surviving the concentration camps in Colorado during World War II, worked to desegregated public swimming pools.
Yuri Kochiyama, a civil rights leader, aligned herself with Malcolm X and Black nationalist organizations.
Bobby Seale, the chairman of the Black Panther Party said in an interview with Gidra (a Asian nationalist political newspaper) in 1970, “In general, I see the struggle moving with all the people and not just Black people alone. I see the Asian people playing a very significant part in solving the problems…in coalition, unity, and alliance with Black people because…[it’s] the basic problem of poverty and oppressions that we are all subjected to.”
Perhaps the most iconic symbol of Black-Asian unity is the photo of W.E.B. Du Bois and Mao Zedong in 1959 China.
Following the 2014 Ferguson rebellion, a group called #Asians4BlackLives in the Bay Area organized under the banner of, “end the war on Black people” and affirmed the natural basis for multiracial solidarity.
PLP has long rejected the nationalist and “third-worldist” politics of the 20th century. We fight as one international working class. Any section of the working class that rejects or fails to unite with Black workers is digging its own grave. This situation also shows that smashing anti-Black racism is key to building any fightback.

Belfast: the racism of ‘peace walls’
We recently experienced some real “fake news” while traveling in Ireland. For 20 years, we’ve been told that the so-called Good Friday peace agreement in the 1990s had ended the long battles between Protestant and Catholic workers in Northern Ireland and that everything was peaceful now.
We went on a tour of Belfast. Our taxi driver was a young man during “The Troubles” that supposedly ended in 1998. We were surprised to discover that Belfast is divided by miles and miles of so-called ‘peace walls,’ up to 25 feet high, that enforce the separation of the two groups.The gates between them are locked from dusk to dawn. And even more walls have been built since the “peace.”
Both groups of workers view each other as enemies when they should be fighting together against bosses’ rule. Of course, it’s better now than it was before the Good Friday deal; for years, there was constant fighting and killing in the streets, with Protestants supported by the British military, and Catholics barred from many jobs and schools and opportunities.
The narrative frames the fight as between Protestants and Catholics religions, it’s really always been about land and power. The north was the most industrialized part of Ireland, and in the 1920s when Ireland had forced Britain to recognize its independence, Britain held on to that part, and set the mostly Protestant pro-British parties up against Catholic parties that wanted to be part of a united Ireland.
The Protestant working class was sucked into an ideological struggle against Catholics. Every July, they celebrate a 300-year-old victory of a Protestant king over a Catholic one, with huge bonfires and marches with anti-Catholic slogans and banners. It’s a huge event, essentially celebrating Britain’s oppression of the working class in Ireland.
Belfast is filled with murals which celebrate political victories. Some of the murals in the Protestant side celebrate the victory of the Protestant king’s conquest of Ireland in 1690, another the paramilitary member who promised to kill the most Catholics in a year. The murals on the Catholic side are often tied to the struggles against oppression, either oppression of Catholics in Northern Ireland, and related victories, or social justice struggles in other places.
This division between Catholic and Protestant enable the continued oppression of all of the working class by both British and local bosses. The only solution for those workers is a united class fighting all of the bosses. We gave a CHALLENGE to our tour guide. He had a good view of class issues and capitalism. We hope some of PLP’s ideas will infuse some members of our class.