No Latino Panelists at Civil Rights Commission Conference

From Mary Ann Zehr at Education Week:

A full-day conference this week hosted by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights didn’t have any speakers on panels who were Latinos. And it wasn’t just Latinos who weren’t visible at the conference, as the story I wrote about the conference published by edweek.org conveys. No prominent civil rights groups had representatives on the panels. It’s not clear if that was a result of their not being actively recruited or if, assuming they were actively recruited, didn’t participate because they don’t like the direction the commission has taken on civil rights issues.

Martin Castro, who stepped up to the microphone during a Q & A and is the chairman of the Illinois advisory committee to the commission, criticized the conference for having “an amazing lack of Latinos on the panels.”

In an interview, Gerald A. Reynolds, the chairman of the commission and one of four Republicans on the eight-member commission, said Castro’s criticism was “legitimate.” But he added that instead of trying to have “every facet of civil rights” represented on the panels, conference planners opted for a “more-focused” approach. Click here for the rest of the piece.

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