14 March 2003
The real reason Joel Giambra said that dumb thing that got him into so much trouble last Saturday night
Bruce Jackson
Giambra's mess
Erie County Executive Joel Giambra caused a row last Saturday when he told a group of Buffalo parents, teachers and school administrators that the reason he'd pulled his children out of Buffalo's magnet Waterfront School and moved them to the Christian Central Academy in Williamsville was because "our children began to be fearful of black kids."
The Buffalo News just about fell over itself trying to help him dig his way out, including publishing a photograph of him with Buffalo Common Councilman Charley Fisher at his side in Monday's paper even though Fisher figured nowhere in the article, a hugely slanted piece by Robert J. McCarthy on Tuesday, and then a whitewashing editorial on Wednesday to accompany the story by Robert J. McCarthy and Anthony Cardinale about a statement Giambra issued late Tuesday night. That latter article was headlined "Giambra issues apology," though the only thing Giambra apologized for in his statement was "my clumsiness in communicating."
Clumsy communication wasn't what was caused the row. Saying he'd pulled his kids out of a city school because they were afraid of black kids caused the row.
Giambra says that wasn't the point he was on his way to making Saturday, that he was going to say something about problems in Buffalo city schools. But we'll never know what he was going to say Saturday because that remark seems to have disrupted the meeting.
I have little sympathy for a politician who stumbled over his own words. Words are a politician's stock-in-trade. Politicians are word-dealers. They're like lawyers: they are always parsing sentences and phrases in the most specific ways. They're better than anybody at saying or avoiding saying something, at accusing an opponent in ways that require no data in substantiation, in making claims about themselves and promises about the future.
Giambra's further speculation in his Tuesday conversation with News reporter McCarthy that the US Constitution wasn't grounds for anything of moment in these discussions was an astonishing unintended admission of ignorance about the foundation for all government in this country. Does he think all these matters are ad hoc, made up as you go by people with attitudes?
A teacher writes...
I discussed all of this at some length in "Joel Giambra's mealy-mouthed hypocrisy," published in Wednesday morning's Buffalo Report.
That afternoon, I received this email:
I read your piece and just wanted to say a few things. I'm a retired Buffalo teacher. I taught at Waterfront from the time it opened in 1976 until my retirement in 1999. I had two of the Giambra children in my class and feel I know the family and their values.
Joel's remarks were unfortunate, but, in my opinion, the interpretation is distorted and blown way out of proportion. Waterfront had a period of a few years when administrative problems caused a terrible breakdown in discipline. All attempts by parents and teachers to rectify the situation were unsuccessful. Michelle Giambra was a dedicated and very involved parent who made invaluable contributions to the school. She and other concerned parents tried their best to work with the administration to improve the deteriorating situation, but without success. She and a number of our most involved families left in frustration. My decision to retire at that time was influenced, in part, by the inadequate lack of leadership at Waterfront that was the major cause of the problems. I just wanted to offer an insider's view of the situation and to say that, having worked closely with the Giambra family at Waterfront, I think this brouhaha is based on a misunderstanding and has been blown way out of proportion.
...and a reporter calls
That's important perspective. The details behind it, and, presumably, Giambra's choice, came from a reporter friend who works in electronic media who called the same day and said, "Do you want to know the real story why Joel pulled his kids out of Waterfront school?"
"Of course," I said.
"Waterfront School had a principal who believed in disciplining white kids but not in disciplining black kids. Parents complained to her but she ignored them. They complained to school officials and they got nowhere. She'd discipline white kids, not black kids. So they moved their kids to other schools."
"I never heard anything about this," I said. "Are you sure about this?"
"That's what they all said."
"And you did a piece on this?"
"No. I couldn't. I wanted to, but I couldn't. Not one of the parents was willing to go public about it. I said to them, 'This is important. Let us tape you talking about this and we'll do the story. They said no. I said to them, 'You know I can't air this without any of you on tape. Without you, it's just my word.' But none of them would go public about it. Every one of them said no."
"Including Joel?"
"Including Joel. I tried to talk him into it. He refused."
No ordinary parent
Just about any parent whose children suffer because of incompetent school administration feels anger and looks for a solution. If they've got the money, they can always do what Giambra did: move the children to a suburban private school.
Anyone can understand why those other parents may have chosen to remain silent when they felt they were being ill-served by the school and ignored by the school system. Ordinary parents in such a situation have virtually no power except, if they can afford it, transfer, which is what they chose.
But Joel Giambra was and is no ordinary parent. He has been Erie County Executive almost four years and before that he was Buffalo Comptroller. He was a man with not only great political power but great public visibility. Public disclosure of daily incompetence or bias by a principal in a magnet school by an ordinary parent might have been ignored by an school administrator, but it would have been far more difficult to ignore the one person in city government who oversees all spending of public money or the chief executive of county government.
Joel Giambra was an elected government official and when something disturbing happened that he believed was causing harm to a great number of children, he chose white flight. He moved his kids to the suburbs and he kept his mouth shut.
A matter of character
He got in trouble last week for saying something a lot of people found really dumb or really offensive or both. Had he said, "I moved my kids because the school administrator refused to discipline other kids who were harassing them and I was afraid that this was instilling bad attitudes in them," or any of a dozen other things you can think up as well as I, there would have been no row. He got in trouble because he said what he said, and he has yet to take responsibility for that.
Everything he's said since has been general, broad, blaming. He has never backed off what his initial remark implied about black kids—that they were threatening or harmful to his children—he has just added other stuff to it. The waffling and mushy statement he issued Tuesday night, when he had plenty of time to choose his words and plenty of staff helping him draft it, clarifies nothing.
The problem is not, as he claimed in that Tuesday night press release, that he didn't say well what he meant; the problem is that he said exactly what he meant. And the problem is also in what he didn't say. Racism exists as well in silence as it does in sound.
Perhaps the more telling fact is what he did at the moment he had a choice about how to act, the time he kept his mouth shut, the time he decided to use his money to protect his own kids and not to use his powerful office to protect anybody else's.
Giambra is a man who frequently talks about the need to fold Buffalo into the county, to consolidate services and functions, to modernize. He meets regularly with his almost all-white kitchen cabinet in the almost all-white Buffalo Club and makes the decisions that he goes back downtown to carry out. He spends a lot of time pontificating about government, expecting us to trust him.
He had a problem with Buffalo's education system that, had he gone public with it, might have cost him some votes. So he maintained silence.
What other problems that really matter does he also walk away from, turn his back on, maintain discrete career-protecting silence about? How, knowing what we now know about him, can we ever trust him to tell us the most serious and difficult things we need to know?
Joel Giambra had a fine opportunity to show us his real character after Saturday's gaffe. I think he did exactly that. And that is the problem.
Copyright 2003 by Buffalo Report, Inc.