What are you going to do about “black on black” crime, an African American father and son from Atlanta ask the Republicans. The teenage son says, “It feels like the Taliban is right outside.” Mitt Romney responds that the young man in the video is lucky because he has a father who “by all appearances loves him.” He continues, “The civil rights issue of our time is the failure of inner city schools to prepare kids for the jobs of tomorrow.”

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.