Mandela has shown us the way to prevent resegregation of schools and end 287g deportation

Personal experience -- or those of others I respect -- mostly direct my opinions on issues.

And so it is with the school rezoning plan passed by a narrow vote recently in Nashville.

Separate can never be equal in putting mostly one race in one school and most of another race or ethnicity in a different one. I learned that truth in 1974, when I walked into the halls of Frederick Douglass High School in northeast Oklahoma City.

I was a product of what was then called forced busing to achieve racial balance. The federal judge who issued the school order in Oklahoma City was villified, as would be judges in Boston and Michigan simultaneously. But these jurists made the right decision.

For what I and others discovered in being transported many miles from home to another public school and neighborhood was that resources and up-to-date textbooks were in short supply at historically black places of learning.

The science books did not include the moon landing. The microscopes were of a different era. Madame Currie must have used them.

The curriculum did not include Latin until my senior year, and even then it was canceled. So no pharmacists would come out of this high school.

I received a truly inferior education compared to my older brothers who had gone to the predominantly white high in southeast Oklahoma City.

Yet I received the greatest social education possible. I was a minority in a black-dominated high school and neighborhood for three years. I learned of the hurt and humiliation my African-American brothers and sisters had endured. I heard the story of the 1964 state championship basketball game in which the white referees were only calling fouls on the Douglass players.

Without equal parental and community support -- particulary from people of political power -- separation is simply damnation.

That's history.

That's the present time, too.

Now, I have suffered some disappointments since then from both predominant races. African-Americans failed to speak up and act morally at the turn of the millennium for immigrant children in Nashville public schools. These children needing English language help were getting less of an education as required by a federal order with the U.S. Department of Education. Teachers were being swamped and learning curves curtailed in every classroom.

So out of desparation, some teachers made the decision to simply leave immigrant children behind in learning and life. This was not bilingual education. This was simply English language education.

The black school board president at that time promised myself and Father Joe Pat Breen at an appearance on NewsChannel 5 that money would be in the school budget to correct these wrongs. It was not. And then Mayor Bill Purcell ignored our pleas.

Al Gore's deputy campaign manager in 2000, Janet Murguia, a Latina, promised to address the wrongs being done to children who looked me and her. She had worked in the Clinton White House. That was the last I heard from her. Now she heads the National Council of La Raza(NCLR). So you can guess what I think of NCLR.

It seems people of influence in all races betray to the status quo and the powers that be.

The Nashville branch of the NAACP now has threatened to sue Metro Schools or at least get some kind of guarantee for more than $6 million in additional funding for schools that will be segregated as mostly black.

With the way the Metro budget has been hamstrung, I don't believe the securing of that kind of funding is possible through political means. Mayor Karl Dean is trying to find some of the Teflon his mentor Phil Bredesen successfully wore as Nashville's CEO. Sorry, Karl, it's only available to mega-millionaires.

If the NAACP wants to sue, I would be more than happy to contribute to its legal costs. I hope other Hispanics would, too.

Jeff Woods of the Nashville Scene blogged the following this afternoon: Black leaders have settled on a strategy to try to overturn the school board’s resegregation plan. They’ve decided to wait until after the Aug. 7 elections to give the new school board the chance to change the plan. If the board refuses, then a lawsuit is certain, a source tells Pith(in the Wind).

Parents already have come forward to serve as potential plaintiffs, and the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund is compiling a file on the case. Among the documents in the file: Pedro Garcia’s “smoking gun” memos.

The NAACP is holding strategy sessions weekly with prominent black ministers and attorneys.

“Everybody in the meetings understands that, if the new school board doesn’t change this or doesn’t overturn it, then really the reason we’re meeting is to prepare for a lawsuit,” the source says. “There’s no question they will sue.”

It is past time for the most vulnerable among us of all races and ethnicities to share one agenda. Let's start with the lawsuit and support the NAACP. Then let's join together against the 287g deportation program.

The great Nelson Mandela always reminded his followers that "our greatest fear" is not that we are powerless. Our greatest fear is that we are more powerful that we believe.

Securing that kind of belief requires the joining of all the vulnerable of all races and ethnicities to one political agenda. For good and real progress in Nashville, we must put the days of destructive segregation behind us and blaze a new trail of equal justice for all.