Pomona Unified board president to be honored Friday
Advocating equity and protesting discrimination are not new habits for Dr. Roberta Perlman of Pomona.
The Pomona Unified School District Board of Education president, Chino optometrist and Inland Valley activist has, since childhood, felt she could positively impact children and society.
So, she did – by standing up for the rights of youthful peers who couldn’t always speak for themselves, protesting racism and discrimination as a teenager and acting as an advocate for the underrepresented of all ages.
The Latino and Latina Roundtable and the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement will recognize Perlman’s consistency in adhering to the values of the United Farm Workers co-founder at the ninth annual Cesar Chavez breakfast at The Avalon at Fairplex on Friday. The 8 a.m. scholarship benefit will also honor UFW organizer Josefina Flores, educator Delfino Segovia and activist Francisco Sola.
Perlman, from Brooklyn, initially wanted to be a teacher. Although her career later shifted to optometry, she has maintained her focus on children and education as an activist, parent and public official. A discrimination experiment in the 1960s, conducted by an Iowa teacher who split her class into blue- and brown-eyed students and treated them differently, made an indelible impression on young Roberta.
"Those in the discriminated group became hostile, aggressive and their test scores plummeted dramatically," Perlman said. "The scores of the kids in the favored group went up and they were happy and well-adjusted. The same thing happened when she switched the two groups. That was really powerful. I never forgot that. "
And, in remembering, Perlman purposely devotes her energy to transforming the lives of children, helping them get greater access to educational resources.
She credits her "grit" to her mother, a woman "who wasn’t political. She just believed in doing right. She said some rules are meant to be broken if they are unfair or unjust. She said it just takes one person with enough guts to just do it. She was the Cesar Chavez of her time. "
Convinced that her parents’ principles defended equity and equality, Perlman said adhering to the values of Cesar Chavez and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was easy for her.
"Cesar Chavez and Dr. King saw injustice and had the guts to step out of their comfort zones to challenge it, protest it and end it," she said. She co-founded Decker Elementary School’s "Reading Under The Stars" and literacy programs, was Pomona’s 2009 Woman of the Year and a member of Pomona’s Youth and Family Master Plan committee.
Even if it involves something as simple as weekly reading to children – selecting books and stories from a multitude of cultural and ethnic experiences – doing something positive always affects children positively, she claimed.
"I met a young man the other day who is now 26. He said, ‘You were so important to my life. I looked forward to you walking into the classroom every week.’ I did it," she recalled, smiling, "because I cared about them and it brought me joy to see kids engaged and interested. "
Perlman doesn’t view her activism for civil, human and children’s rights as unique.
"There is a long history between Jewish people and civil rights in the United States," she said. "When you are persecuted, you understand persecution. You can empathize with the persecuted. The Jewish experience of persecution and long, painful history help you really feel what it feels like. It gives you an appreciation for struggle and civil rights from a very human point-of-view.
"Discrimination is not just something in the history book. It’s something you know and feel," she added, explaining her commitment to inclusion. "It’s important to advocate academics in the classroom, promote the cultural climate of schools and communities and join together to get where we need to be to make us one world.
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