No decent person is defending mayoral school board appointee Ann Hsu’s comments on race. So, don’t feel the need. She certainly doesn’t; she’s apologized, and her supporters claim she’s off on a grand apology tour.
It has, thus far, been the Ford Pinto of apology tours; the NAACP, on July 22, met with Hsu in person and then proceeded to vote, 105-0, to call on her to resign from the school board. Last week, the local Democratic Party followed suit.
Hsu did not return our many calls to multiple phone numbers.
Ethically, if not always strategically, it’s good to apologize after you’ve said or done something indefensible. But the act of apologizing, in and of itself, does not earn one absolution. The NAACP members I spoke with appreciated Hsu’s acknowledgement of wrongdoing and her pledge to improve herself. But they would appreciate her doing this while not serving on the oversight board of a school district that is plurality Black and Latinx.
So, that’s where we are.
But first, the specifics. Question No. 5 on a San Francisco Parent Action form for Board of Education candidates running in November’s election asked “How can SFUSD increase academic outcomes for the most marginalized students?” Hsu answered:
From my very limited exposure in the past four months to the challenges of educating marginalized students especially in the black and brown community, I see one of the biggest challenges as being the lack of family support for those students. Unstable family environments caused by housing and food insecurity along with lack of parental encouragement to focus on learning cause children to not be able to focus on or value learning.
It warrants mentioning that this is not some sort of gotcha question, and San Francisco Parent Action is not an adversarial entity. Nobody is taking Hsu’s response out of context. And that response — which Hsu either penned or allowed to be penned in her name — was deliberative. It was written out and submitted.
So, we can all acknowledge the longstanding statistical measures outlining disparate outcomes for this city’s white and Asian public school students and their Black and Latinx counterparts. But it’s a hell of a thing to, unprompted, say the “biggest challenges” for Black and brown children are “lack of family support” and “lack of parental encouragement to focus on learning.”
In essence, this is pinning Black and Latinx students’ poorer outcomes on bad parenting. This is putting the onus back on the students and their families. This is stating that Black and Latinx parents don’t care about their children.
Politics runs in the water in San Francisco like fluoride. Fluoride, in minute quantities, keeps your teeth from rotting. Too much, however, is poison — and kinda melts your face. That feels like San Francisco. In L’affaire Hsu, the moral and the political are crashing headlong into one another. And, of course, the political is given deference.
Regardless of Hsu’s suitability for the post, or the school board’s ability to handle issues of race and equity with her on it, it would not be a good look for Mayor London Breed to — for the second time — call for the ouster of one of her own recent Board of Education appointees. It is not a good look that Breed’s ostensibly vetted recent appointee, Hsu, thinks these things, let alone says these things, let alone writes these things down. And it was out-and-out political malpractice for Hsu’s candidate statement to either go unread by a consultant/mayoral minder — or slip past one.
Breed has this year made four appointments due to recalls that succeeded, in no small part, due to Asian American voters. And she appointed just one Asian: Hsu.
So, Breed has no desire to alienate Hsu’s vocal supporters. That would be Asian Americans, but not just Asian Americans: There is a sizable contingent of San Franciscans who, if informed that a nuclear missile was headed our way that would reduce the city to a glowing pile of rubble, would exclaim, “How will this affect the re-institution of merit-based admissions at Lowell?”
The mayor, apparently, would rather have them with her than against her.
Those voters, in February, overwhelmingly recalled commissioners Alison Collins, Gabriela López and (Breed appointee) Faauuga Moliga. They were incensed about the Board of Education opting to strip the names of figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Paul Revere off schools that were locked and devoid of students, and undoing Lowell High School’s admissions policy in a process so clumsy it violated open meeting laws.
But, perhaps most damaging of all was the unearthing of years-old tweets in which Collins accused “many Asian-Americans” of “using white supremacist thinking to get ahead … Do they think they won’t be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n****r is still being a n****r. You’re still considered ‘the help.’”
Collins refused to show any contrition for these statements, and rebuffed the entreaties of her Asian American allies and endorsers. She also rebuffed calls from virtually every political figure in San Francisco to resign, and instead filed a surreal lawsuit against the district and her Board of Education colleagues for $87 million. She did not win. She did not place or show, either. She instead served as the catalyst for the recall movement. And Ann Hsu was a major player in that movement.
Well, what a predicament: The African American Collins’ insults of Asian Americans in part spurred Hsu and other Asian Americans to recall her — and, once installed, Hsu has insulted African Americans.
And this is the very scenario pro-recall elements and the mayor cheerleading it pledged would not happen. This Board of Education was supposed to be focusing on education; Hsu et al. were supposed to make the school board boring again.
Mission failed.
If Hsu declines to step down, and there is no reason to predict she’s going anywhere, no matter who asks her to resign, her divisive statements will be the overwhelming focus of attention and rancor leading up to November’s election, to the detriment of actual discussions about the quality of our schools and the role of the Board of Education (and, for that matter, honest discussions about race).
That’s why fellow mayoral appointees Lainie Motamedi and Lisa Weissman-Ward abruptly ruptured their slate campaign with Hsu. A burgeoning chorus has called for Hsu to step down: The NAACP, a growing number of elected officials and Democratic clubs, the San Francisco Democratic Party.
Hsu will have to find a way to win a citywide, high-turnout election without support from the local Democratic Party or both of this city’s LGBTQ Democratic clubs, and District 8, which includes the Castro, is the city’s most reliable high-turnout area.
This massive, unforced error has provided any nascent political opponents with a bevy of hand- and footholds to scale what was previously a sheer cliff. By focusing all of their political fire on Hsu (and perhaps ignoring Motamedi and Weissman-Ward) the teachers’ union or any other motivated foes of de-facto mayoral control of the school board can flip the balance.
They only need to win one of the three contested seats to wrest control away from Breed. That seems a lot more doable now, especially as Hsu, somewhat inexplicably, embraces polarizing political figures like Leanna Louie and Josephine Zhao. The latter has behaved as Hsu’s surrogate and accompanied her to the NAACP meeting. Multiple attendees at that meeting say Zhao talked so much that she had to be told to let Hsu speak for herself.
The Board of Education serves as something of San Francisco’s political triple-A team. Hsu is seen as a politician who could matriculate from the school board; in two years, she could give District 1 supervisor Connie Chan a run for her money in the now more moderate-friendly D1 (a district that happens to be 44.5 percent Asian and 1.6 percent Black).
Hsu said what she said, but make no mistake; much of the agitation both for and against her is driven by her potential to ascend the city’s political ladder.
This dispiriting mess is part and parcel of a mayor’s office that seems to lurch from crisis to crisis and has repeatedly allowed its appointees to be needlessly buffeted. The process for determining mayoral appointees in this town feels more akin to The Bachelor than functional government.
District 6 supervisorial appointee Matt Dorsey is an intelligent and shrewd political veteran, but the mayor’s office dropped him into a situation where he had to languish without a proper staff for weeks and weeks, and lashed him to political positions that put a target on his back from organized labor.
Hsu was allowed to, in one neat move, implode the entire strategy of running an organized slate of back-to-business, subject-matter-focused public school moms for the Board of Education.
And, even though the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin was, for months, a foregone conclusion, Brooke Jenkins was given scarcely 24 hours’ notice that the job was hers. The mayor’s office then compounded that by overtly sending a staffer into meetings alongside Jenkins at the DA’s office and micromanaging elements of the independent prosecutor’s office down to the text and layout of her business cards.
As of Friday, meanwhile, the “About us” link on the DA’s website was dead, and the careers section still stated that “our team is led by DA Chesa Boudin.” The “latest news” was Boudin suing scofflaw fishermen. Evidently nothing newsworthy transpired at the DA’s office in June or July.
When it comes to its beleaguered appointees, this mayor’s office has been remarkably hands-on where it should be hands-off, and hands-off where it should be hands-on.
It remains to be seen how voters handle all of this. Regardless, perhaps Hsu could start by telling her supporters to stop defending the indefensible. Perhaps that would be the “teachable moment” we keep hearing about.
> “But they would appreciate her doing this while not serving on the oversight board of a school district that is plurality Black and Latinx. ”
Whether a plurality, majority, or minority, why should that matter? That has no relation to the (lack of) quality of her answer, only the consequences.
Honest questions:
1. How is Hsu’s response substantively different than Obama’s Father’s Day speech in 2012 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj1hCDjwG6M)?
2. How does Hsu’s response draw the ire of the NAACP, UESF, and others, yet these same organizations nary said anything for Alison Collins’ tweets? Or, if we wanted to be more timely, Shamman Walton’s recent treatment of a SF Sheriff deputy cadet? Both examples were intentional and explicit uses of racist slurs. By these organizations non-response to either examples, are we SFers to believe that Hsu’s offense was greater?
I’ve lived in the city a quarter of century and am still amazed at how dysfunctional city politics slow this city’s progress.
Joe,
Apology please ??
I consider myself a ‘decent’ person.
I consider Matt Gonzalez one too.
We didn’t discuss this matter but both agreed with Hsu’s original comments and said so to deflect some fire to ourselves.
Even if the lady has now even become self-hating her call was and is correct.
My reaching that judgement after decades of experience in the matter of teacher/child/parent/guardian/Justice System interaction does not make me indecent.
Matt deals with over 20,000 cases yearly and has for twenty years and you’re the first person friend or foe I’ve ever said that his poor judgement made him indecent.
Bottom line is what do I recommend as a result of my great experience, intelligence and compassion ??
Have less unwanted or ‘for-profit’ children.
Give $10,000 to anyone on Earth who’ll get sterilized.
For those unloved children who cause most of a school’s troubles (I worked with worst of worst and one of my students can destroy the learning experience in a class and 3 can do it to an entire school) …
Mentorship for the carrot and more flexibility in moving students out of regular school settings if a failed IEP and Continuum of Care warrant same.
Pre-judging the smartest and most experienced readers you have on a subject to be morally deficient if they disagree with you ??
In your first sentence ??
I understand where your bad vibes are coming from.
I went to a family reunion last month and it was more like a cage wrestling event.
Go Niners !!
h.
It may not make you indecent, but it makes you unqualified for the job.
H. —
Matt didn’t defend Ann’s comments. He said he believes in forgiveness. There is a huge distinction.
JE
Why are “hard-to-staff” (official SFUSD lingo) schools hard to staff? Why do the teachers and social workers get paid more at these schools? Is it because the kids are going home to very stable and loving domestic spaces? Is it because the parents are really good at putting their phones away and turning off the stupid television and giving their kids focused, loving attention and home-cooked meals? Weird. They should be easy to staff because the parents are so responsible and capable. Seems like a waste of money to pay these employees more.
The topic is racist commentary targeting Black and Latino families and you refer to a Pinto in your piece? Is this a joke?
In the meantime, SFUSD teachers, paraprofessionals, and staff are STILL being underpaid or, in some horrifying cases, HAVE NOT BEEN paid due to the new payroll system. Our 403b contributions are not going to where they should be. Our tax withholdings were (illegally?) changed, resulting in thousands of us paying huge amounts in 2021. I owed $5000!
In the meantime, our COVID sick days have disappeared.
In the meantime, we have NO PLANS for Monkeypox, for which the governor has just been declared a statewide emergency.
In the meantime, the last projection saw us 400+ classroom teachers short for the 2022-2023 school year.
SFUSD school board and UESF are dancing around playing race-bating “gotcha” games, while real concerns are not being addressed.
This is just pathetic.
Having the wrongly cultured kid can be the most expensive thing you can do for yourself & the country. You ain’t gotta have kids. Chew gum, cold showers. Give us a break.
This article, besides well-written and informative, was laugh out loud funny!
When your implicit bias suddenly becomes explicit. Whoops.
I think the silver lining is Hsu’s questionnaire answer shows what some kids are up against. And what they’re up against is bias and disproportionate levels of discipline. Hsu has offered a glimpse into a mentality that perpetuates these realities.
And studies have shown, realities they are (here you go, BigFrisco):
The Equity Project at Indiana University
Are Black Kids Worse?
Myths and Facts about Racial Differences in Behavior
If you have the misfortune of being Extremely Online, it’s really obvious that the pro-Hsu camp (Louie, Mary Jung, Garry Tan, and others) are engaged in a deliberate, coordinated PR strategy of flooding the zone with s**t on social media.
Some rando Twitter account that didn’t exist until Hsu’s comments surfaced in mid-July gets followed by Jung, Tan, and others out of nowhere. Then it starts posting some ludicrous new defense of Hsu (take your pick: Alison Collins whataboutism, Shamann Walton whataboutism, claims that Ann Hsu is an innocent immigrant who couldn’t have understood her own use of English {she immigrated when she was in 5th or 6th grade}, random non sequiturs insinuating that Hsu is more legitimately Chinese than Gordon Mar or Connie Chan, and on and on forever). Within a couple days someone like Jung is amplifying that exact silliness and an army of faceless eggs on Twitter immediately start spamming journalists and politicians with it.
Yesterday, in a fundraising email from SF Guardians/Recall SF School Board:
“We’re glad that Ann immediately recognized that she had erred, unequivocally apologized, and continues to make every effort to learn and grow. We’re confident she’ll emerge a better leader.
…
We are fully committed to campaigning to elect all three commissioners we endorsed — Ann, Lainie & Lisa, to the school board this fall.”
There was no immediacy about her error. Her answers were written, hopefully vetted, and submitted. She meant what she said.
In the political climate of this country, apologizing and promising to do better is not enough.
I strongly believe in the NAACP. Blaming parents in this way is systemic racism. It is the same as the old and worn, “pull themselves up by the boot straps,” analogy.
Her first lesson should come from spending a time at schools with actual diversity, and ask to meet with Black and Latine families there. Not a photo op. Not an election stop. A-listen-and-not-speak stop.
Her second lesson should be to have a few people carefully read her answers and question her on them in advance of letting them out to the voting public.
If she wants to continue on the political stage, and make better of the politics of our entire country, she needs to learn to think and act very differently.
In a 2001 article, John McWhorter (a very intelligent Black man) wrote that black attitudes, rather than white racism, were what held African Americans back in the United States. According to McWhorter, “victimology, separatism, and anti-intellectualism underlie the general black community’s response to all race-related issues”, and “it’s time for well-intentioned whites to stop pardoning as ‘understandable’ the worst of human nature whenever black people exhibit it”. Truth hurts, keep calling people who can tell reality from ideology … racists.
You should also include a mention of Justice Clarence Thomas, a black man in an interracial relationship. He wants to allow states to decide if his marriage is legal, which means he doesn’t really think it is. He also is happy to decimate voting rights of African Americans.
Then there’s Peter Thiel, the anti-gay gay guy. ….
Finding someone who says “something” is rather easy. That does not mean what they say makes sense or has any legitimacy.
My god.
The stench of this comment.
Wow, did you really just call a Black linguist, a “very smart Black man”?
Call him by his profession and qualification, or am I meant to blindly trust you to say that he’s qualified to speak about political issues when he really isn’t?
The same article also has many factual inaccuracies about aspects of gaps between race, law, and society that are purposefully omitted or just ignored. Especially the failure to address racial profiling and proven biases in courts when it comes to assessing sentences.
He’s an opinionated non-professional, not a professional in any stretch for this subject.
“No decent person is defending mayoral school board appointee Ann Hsu’s comments on race. So, don’t feel the need.”
And with that Joe calls an end to all discussion on race.
Thanks, Joe.
You’re welcome, Champ.
JE
Oh my god. He read my post… Awesome.
I moderate the comments, Champ.
JE
First: “,,,without support from the local Democratic Party or both of this city’s LGBTQ Democratic clubs,…”
The flipside take of that is the Nov. election will provide a window into how much influence that support has. Since the issue here is Asian voters(as if they’re a monolith) , a reasonable question is how connected are they to those groups?
Second: Hsu’ statement continues to: ” … We (SFUSD) need to work better with community organizations to take care of students’ needs outside of school hours so that teachers can focus on teaching inside of school hours. We can try to solve this problem through having more community schools. We can also learn from charter schools that are doing better than us in this aspect…..”
I don’t know how to interpret that politically or racially. But I think it’s relevant and germane to any discussion of her answer. And it’s also unfair for it to be excluded because it is context.
she didn’t JUST speak to the structural disparities that Black and brown families face and the impacts these has on kids’ educational outcomes. she didn’t JUST say that society doesn’t want Black and brown kids to succeed… she said that Black and brown families don’t even want their kids to succeed. she gave voice to deep seated racist perceptions that many folks (if these comments are any indication) share. it is not a crazy/woke/cancel-culture thing to NOT want her to be on the board of education… just like we are better off collectively to not have the folks commenting in her favor here to be on that board or any other elected body.
This is what’s wrong with politics, rather than thinking about a SOLUTION, we berate politicians for speaking uncomfortable truths. But is pretending this isn’t a problem for these kids the better solution?
I think a BETTER SOLUTION is to target these kids with more afterschool programs and free/heavily subsidized care. RATHER than writing useless articles about what about someone lack of political shrewdness.
Hsu spoke the truth, because she’s not a politician. She couldn’t get away with speaking the truth because she’s not black; Barack Obama has said something similar many times.
I’m tired of being gaslit by faux outrage; progressives and MAGAs are about equal here. Hsu is the Al Franken of San Francisco. I hope she has more courage to carry on than Franken did.
? Al Franken staged pictures of himself poised to grab a colleagues breasts as she slept?
Hsu has shown her opinion of many of the children and families she serves in other ways, calling her sons classmates at Galileo (where she is the PTA president) “the riff raff”. I hope she does step down, and more than that, as the author stated, perhaps Hsu could start by telling her supporters to stop defending the indefensible. Perhaps that would be the “teachable moment” we keep hearing about.
“ No decent person is defending mayoral school board appointee Ann Hsu’s comments on race”.
Wow. San Franciscans are inundated with bullying comments from pie-in-the-sky, head-in-the-clouds social scientists like Joe. So many of us have kids in the public schools, see the problems, and know the teachers who get paid so little and who struggle to educate our kids. So many of us have neighbors or know well-off parents who pay huge sums to send their kids to private school in SF. (I thought they were “decent” people, but apparently they are all racist because they feel that their kids will get a better education at private school and it’s worth the cost)
So many of us don’t melt down with Hsu’s sentiments because, while they could be misconstrued as impugning a whole ethnic group, we give her the benefit of the doubt because she appeared to be speaking based on her properly narrow focus on why certain kids struggle at school, and there is some truth to her statements. Kids get better results when parent are more involved. I don’t think she wasn’t saying that all black and Latin parents are bad and lazy. I don’t think she was denying that historic racism and poverty play a role in lack of involvement.
This is the big problem- our SF public school system doesn’t work well for any of our kids (black, Latin, white, Asian) and it has long been controlled and managed by these social scientists who love to attack, yet they lack competence in running a school district and getting kids educated, and their primary goal is to further a larger social agenda. All at the expense of our children who only pass through the education system once. If we can’t evaluate results and suggest improvements without being called racist, we are destined for continued failure.
Well said!
Man, are you Josephine Zhao?
If you have to make up an argument to cover for her, you’re really stretching out her lack of competence of “limited four months” to make up for a racist stereotype.
And you have to be insane to think that competence can come without community trust first.
Imagine coming into the district and say we have respect for people of all cultures and identity, and hear the head of the school board saying Black and Brown people are generally bad at parenting in a school district that needs their trust for better outcomes.
You probably don’t even know they make up nearly half the district.
Those parents aren’t going to trust SFUSD, and if you’re that dense to not see that problem, you’ll never figure out how to make SFUSD more “competent”.
The sad part here is that the progressives are in such corrupted disarray that even an incompetent Breed, the reigning monarch of the unforced political error, is running circles around them in double time.
All of this, and Laguna Honda, and there is no recall brewing against Breed. That’s yer political asymmetry right there.
But there are many differences between Collins’ tweets and Hsu’s statements. In fact the only vague similarity is that both refer to race.
Some are: 1) Collins statements were several years before she was in a political decionmaking position accountable for students, and were from her as a parent in adversarial exchanges with other parents; 2) Hsu’s statements reflect a profound racial bigotry (as your article points out), while Collins’ stem from a sophisticated theory where race and class oppression intersects (a la Malcolm X discussions of “field Negro” vs “house Negro”), and are not racist. 3) while you can argue that Collins’ were an “insult” (I’d say “undiplomatic” since she did not offer more of an explanation for the public), Hsu’s are beyond insulting, they are racist and disqualify her to serve SFUSD students.
Was Hsu interviewed before her appointment? Her selection is so reckless that it should disqualify whoever was responsible for putting her on the BOE.
Your ridiculous woke logic is what makes you the (black) mirror of Maga goofballs. Said another way: you’re comments are goofy
Reading Collins’ racecraft before the recalls brewed was like fingernails on a chalk board, especially given her class status, and I agree with removing symbols of oppression from places of honor as one part of a long strategic campaign of social revolution to uproot white supremacy.
Listening to Collins, like so many identitarians, were my race politics not well established by movement leftists, I’d probably be persuaded otherwise. Communicating race to gain status within your in-group is no substitute for taking risks for the heavy lift of actually organizing outside of your comfort zone.
Well, are Teflon-coated mayor thinks they’re defensible. That’s a kind of politics.
Second comment, I don’t want to conflate two distinct and disparate matters, but I am curious whether a similar piece will be written about President Walton’s statements to a Sheriff’s Deputy? If we are talking about conduct and statements that are indefensible and unbecoming of an elected or appointed official, then surely President Walton’s conduct necessitates a similar discourse?
Note: I am not a doctor or lawyer so I can’t comment on malpractice. That said, if I were to speculate as to what a doctor or lawyer would say, I believe they would conclude the definition of political malpractice (unfortunately) went out the window upon the election of Donald Trump. Perhaps we should start holding our elected and appointed officials to a higher standard again, which would be refreshing.
The comment by board member, Hsu, in isolation of any data to support it, is insensitive and if not racist on the borderline. What I am curious about is whether there is data to support her comment? Governor Newsom’s early childhood “master plan” to address the unequitable outcomes of children in public schools uses a three pronged approach: 1. universal preschool, 2. increases to paid family leave, 3. childcare vouchers, subsidies, and tax incentives. According to Governor Newsom, he is ” creating a comprehensive, family-centric system driven by equity”. There are specific references to black and brown children in the plan for example he states: “prohibiting suspensions and expulsions in subsidized early learning programs, which has disproportionately impacted young Black boys”. There has to be some data that supports this plan given it was approved by the legislature at a cost of $550 million per year. If there is such data, then perhaps the statement should retracted and restated with perspective? Without data supporting the statement, I understand the outrage. Although, given the aforementioned “master plan” that is “driven by equity”, and the disproportionate outcomes of Black and Latino children in San Francisco (based on SFUSD’s data), I have to believe it exists and if it does, then it should be part of the conversation.
>The comment by board member, Hsu, in isolation of any data to support it, is insensitive and if not racist on the borderline.
Which it is, as a borderline opinion standing along in addition to other things she said.
>Although, given the aforementioned “master plan” that is “driven by equity”, and the disproportionate outcomes of Black and Latino children in San Francisco (based on SFUSD’s data), I have to believe it exists and if it does, then it should be part of the conversation.
Which it doesn’t, because she didn’t. If you read carefully, you would notice that she had a “limited four-month exposure”. That’s it as a citation.
The problem at hand isn’t whether that’s true or not, though in reality you’d find out it’s definitely not in the context of the whole population, but very few as it must be assessed by each individual family to ascertain something as abstract and hard to measure as “lack of parental support”. Which isn’t easily measured by something like “suspensions and expulsions” which can mean many things outside “lack of parental support”. The reality is that the data doesn’t exist, and faces ethnical and cultural problems if you attempt it. And honestly, if a parent is willing to get their kid into school, I doubt many are attempting “lack of parental support”.
The problem is, she made an opinion that defeats the public respect of the district, and once respect is gone, there is no progress.