The Perimeter Primate: Who’s right: Arne or Michelle?

The Perimeter Primate: Who’s right: Arne or Michelle?

Who’s right: Arne or Michelle?

by The Perimeter Primate

Arne Duncan: “I believe education is THE civil rights issue of our generation, the only sure pathway out of poverty, and the only way to achieve a more equal and just society.” (Facebook, Info page on May 20, 2010)
Michelle Alexander: “I believe that the mass incarceration of people of color in the United States is the most pressing racial justice issue of our time. And that it is a tragedy of as great proportions as Jim Crow was in its time.” (Bill Moyers Journal interview, April 2, 2010)
Arne Duncan (b. 1964) earned a bachelors degree in sociology from Harvard. Afterwards, he played professional basketball in Australia for four years. Duncan returned to the U.S. and ended up running John Rogers’ non-profit education foundation (Ariel Education Initiative), sat on a number of non-profit boards, and was also “on a team that later started a new public [charter] elementary school.” (Rogers and Duncan attended the same private