There is so much wrong with this, I don’t know where to begin. So at Nettleton Middle School, in Nettleton, Mississippi, they say that if you want to be Class President you have to be white and if you want to be Vice President, you have to be black. And on down the line. They also segregate in other areas.
Oh, and if you are Asian, or a Native American, you are shit out of luck, I guess. I would go on pointing out the many contradictions, but sheesh, I think most of ya’ll get it.
By the way, that sound you are hearing right now is the rest of the entire state of Mississippi simultaneously smacking itself in the face to do a facepalm.
You know these things boggle the mind. How did things get so completely wrong there? I mean you think racism is dead, or on its death bed, but then one day you are fishing and you draw in a Coelacanth of segregation. And you look at it in astonishment and say, “how do you even exist in 2010?”
But let me take a moment and express a deeper thought than just, “what the fuck?” I mean every now and then these “living fossils” turn up. A few years back I remember where a principal segregated the prom. When a biracial girl asked him, presumably sarcastically, what prom she was supposed to go to, he told her that her parents made a mistake in creating her. And I remember watching news footage of one black woman crying at the thought that her children would have to go to that same school the next year—she had no other options. She was too poor to have other options.
In the linked article, the woman, Brandy Springer, decided to move to take herself out of the system. That is great. Seriously that is wonderful. She has withdrawn both her children and her tax dollars from that Jim Crowe district and I applaud her for it.
But most people can’t do that. Most people are stuck with what they got.
I have alluded to the fact that I am learning disabled. I don’t remember if I have shared with you that when I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina, that I made the “mistake” of seeking the most reasonable accommodations. They not only refused to do so, but they engaged in active forms of discrimination until I gave up and dropped out.
Now the story ends alright. I later got my GED, went to a mid-level University and then on to a one of the best law schools in America. And in business and in life I do pretty well for myself. But in that time when my dreams were broken, when I believed I had no future, the most bitter thought was that these bastards took away my right to an education, but my parents still had to pay for it.
Our current “free” education system is wrong. It is wrong to create a set of economics that make it easy for the richest students to escape the public schools, that makes it hard for the middle class to afford that, and positively traps the poorest in them. I know about the founding of the current free school system and I know it was motivated by the best egalitarian ideal: that every person deserved a square chance at success in life. But like most government programs, it is losing sight of its original purpose.
And when the only game in town is the government, as it is for most people seeking to educate their children, then when that government entity is taken over by bigots, it can be devastating. Most people can’t move. Most people can’t afford to send their children to private school. So their children will face discrimination in their education, even denial of their right to an education, and have nowhere else to go.
What we need is a radical privatization of our school system. What I propose is this. it balances the need to give everyone a square chance at life, while also introducing some market competition.
First, every parent would receive a voucher. Now it is often argued that vouchers never pay for much. I agree. So let’s make it pay for a lot. For instance, I once heard it said that in America we spend an average of $6,600 per student per year. So let’s get them a voucher for that amount.
Second, every public school would be converted to a tuition basis for funding.
And of course measures would be adopted to make sure that the states still offered a viable alternative, just in case every private school refuses to admit black students, or more reasonably they all become religious schools leaving no secular alternative.
It is often objected that many private schools are religions and this would raise establishment clause concerns. First, it is illogical to assume that if private schools are now overwhelmingly religious that they will remain so if most children go to private schools. Second, even if most of the money goes to religious schools, it is at the direction of the parents, not the government. In that sense it is no different than a state employee receiving a paycheck and giving the majority of it to his church. It is his money and his right. Same with the parents; it becomes effectively their money.
And that is not just my opinion. That is the opinion of the supreme court. There have been cases where states would offer to, say, deaf children free sign interpreters to help them go to school wherever they chose to go to school. Believe it or not, someone had a problem with that, claiming that if a deaf child used a state-sponsored interpreter, that this amounted to aiding religion and the court reasoned exactly as I did: that is it no different than a state employee putting his own earned salary into the coffers of a church.
Right now, our schools are socialist institutions. That is the reality of it all. And they are inflicted with the classic failings of socialism: prices go up, salaries go down, and quality goes down the tubes. What I am proposing is a radical injection of capitalism into that system. It won’t eliminate bigotry like we saw in this story or what I personally faced. But it will limit its effects. And most importantly it will fundamentally change the relationship between schools and parents. Rather than being people seeking their benefits from the state, they will be customers. They can say, you will educate my child, or by God, I will take that money somewhere else.
In Nettleton, Mississippi, Brandy Springer as so offended by the racism in her school she moved her whole family to withhold her child and the money associated with her child, from that school. Every parent, rich or poor should be able to do that.
Update: The school tries to explain itself in a press release:
After being notified of a grievance regarding upcoming student elections at Nettleton Middle School, research was conducted that evidenced that the current practices and procedures for student elections have existed for over 30 years. It is the belief of the current administration that these procedures were implemented to help ensure minority representation and involvement in the student body. It is felt the intent of these election procedures was to ensure African-American representation in each student office category through an annual rotation basis.
So in short, this started as affirmative action. Which goes to show something else: how often affirmative action can end up looking like just plain racism.
Further they explain:
Therefore, beginning immediately, student elections at Nettleton School District will no longer have a classification of ethnicity. It is our intent that each student has equal opportunity to seek election for any student office.
Oh well, that is good. Apparently they have learned their lesson, right? Right?
Future student elections will be monitored to help ensure that this change in process and procedure does not adversely affect minority representation in student elections.
Ah, crap.
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