The Ghost of November Past (1995)

USUALLY by Christmas night Scrooge is put away, safely back on the shelf for another year. And his Bah! Humbug! is forgotten until the next holiday season. Not this year, though. The Dickensian tale of meanness, poverty, love, and redemption will stick around for a long time -- though there is no guarantee that redemption will be part of this story. There are many aspirants to play the continuing role of Scrooge. The most likely candidate is the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and its leadership, hell-bent on telling the Tiny Tims of this world that they will have to pay for the sins of their fathers -- and mothers. The major sin, of course, is that their parents are not working like the rest of us. Are there no workhouses for the poor? asked Scrooge. Some suggested solutions are to take bread away from children, place them in orphanages, or give them prayer in the schools. Granted, the extreme rhetoric about social issues that is embedded in the Republicans' Contract with America is mostly symbolic. Prayer in the schools, for example, is an important issue primarily for a segment of the voting public that influences what happens politically in the South. The promise of the House Republican leadership to have Congress pass a school prayer amendment to the Constitution by the Fourth of July mixes sacred and secular symbols in a slick, sick way. On one level the attack on welfare recipients is also symbolic -- and racist. The rhetoric that paints a picture of welfare cheats having babies in order to stay on the dole is associated with people the media tell us about most often: people of color who live in public housing projects in the cities. Having put black men in jail because they are those most shut out of normal means of earning an income by the lack of jobs for unskilled labor, we are now going to put black women and their children out on the streets. Scrooge is not confined to Washington, D.C., however. In California the xenophobia that overtook voters in November and led to the passage of the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 was West Coast Dickens to the core. Welfare, illegal immigration, and school prayer are emotional issues that tend to boil over in public discussions and in policy making because people are demanding solutions from systems that just don't work. Certainly, schools would be better places for children if there were more civility in them, and the disincentives for independence in current welfare programs definitely need to be changed. But must we ravage the Constitution and deny help to children in order to solve these complex and long-range problems, most of which stem from economic forces and not from so-called lazy loafers? THESE ISSUES also eventually wind up as problems for schools and teachers to deal with, no matter what policies emerge from the debates. If a school prayer amendment does pass, for example, and is declared constitutional, the onus will be on the states to decide who will write the prayer, what it will say, who will be excused from praying, and how they will be excused. The prospect of educators monitoring student prayers should make the shades of Jefferson and Madison rise up in protest. If the proposed changes in welfare are approved, teachers will experience a marked increase in the number of children with address unknown. A mother who temporarily loses her job, a mother with a disabled child, a teenager who cannot or does not identify the father of her illegitimate child, a child of immigrant parents who work and pay taxes but still live below the poverty line -- all of these people would lose the support that helps them with housing and food. Private charities will have to cope with more and more children whose primary needs are not learning the ABC's. Stripped to its base, Proposition 187 is about education and food. …