A new yearlong mission from Orange County, called the Community Civil Rights Educator Program, clearly focuses on the negative, rather than the positive. Check out this portion of the Herald-Sun story:
The 10 local residents, to be selected in January, will participate in a training program, funded through the Department of Housing and Urban Development, held over six weekends. Training topics include fair housing, landlord/tenant law, predatory lending, consumer rights, employment discrimination, Title VI and immigration labor laws, hate crimes, violence against women and “Race: The Power of an Illusion.”
We should be proud of our civil rights progress. We should honor the many brave souls who fought what was, decades ago, very real and insidious discrimination. But this is 2006 and we must be willing to acknowledge incredible progress is this area. I suspect this program won’t do that.
