Since the start of this blog way back in 2002, we’ve been watching a curious trend being pushed by far left academicians for a return to separate but equal education.
We’ve already looked at segregated college dormitories, and separate but equal graduations. What’s next on the list? Mark J. Perry, a professor at the University of Michigan, quotes on his blog from a piece in the Arizona Republic, which notes “The Tucson School board is calling for a two-tiered form of student discipline. One for Black and Hispanic students; one for everyone else”:
With the goal of creating a “restorative school culture and climate” that conveys a “sense of belonging to all students,” the board is insisting that its schools reduce its suspensions and expulsions of minority students to the point that the data reflect “no ethnic/racial disparities.”
From the section of the 52-page plan titled “Restorative School Culture and Climate”: “School data that show disparities in suspension/expulsion rates will be examined in detail for root causes. Special attention will be dedicated to data regarding African-American and Hispanic students.”
The board approved creating an “Equity Team” that will oversee the plan to ensure “a commitment to social justice for all students.” The happy-face edu-speak notwithstanding, what the Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) board of governors has approved this summer is a race-based system of discipline.
Offenses by students will be judged, and penalties meted out, depending on the student’s hue. TUSD principals are being asked to set two standards of behavior for their students. Some behavior will be met with strict penalties; some will not. It all depends on the color of the student’s skin. It is an invitation to chaos.
As Michael Graham noted in late 2002, when he was promoting his remarkably prescient book, Redneck Nation:
In 1948, Strom Thurmond was a politician obsessed with race. The modern American liberal is obsessed with race. Strom Thurmond thought schools and courts should treat citizens differently based on their skin color. Liberal supporters of, among other things, race-based admissions policies and hate-crime laws agree. Strom promoted the “multicultural” view that institutions like Jim Crow and segregation might appear irrational or unjust to outside agitators, but they were a perfect fit with southern culture.
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Having fled these attitudes among my rural southern neighbors, I know live in a modern, liberal America where Ivy League colleges are building segregating housing because “race matters.” I actually heard one modern defender of segregated public schools (blacks-only academies) say “black people learn differently from white people.”
And of course, it was only last year that a certain prominent spiritual leader was telling his audience in a nationally-televised speech precisely that last point:
He was trafficking in stereotypes, though to a p.c. theme to which few could object. But soon, Wright’s speech turned more serious. More subtly separatist. More Afro-centric.
He claimed these differences were genetic (imagine Charles Murray trying to pull this off!). European-Americans have a “left-brain cognitive, object-oriented learning style. Logical and analytical,” explained Wright, whereas blacks “learn not from an object, but from a subject. They are right-brain, subject-oriented in their learning style. That means creative and intuitive. The two worlds have different ways of learning.”
The logical conclusion of Wright’s words was that whites and blacks should be schooled separately, but he did not expand on the point. What was important is that whites and blacks inhabit different spheres — two worlds, in fact. And now we were at the nut of Wright’s message.
As Graham noted in 2002, “Gee, I haven’t heard that since I was 12 — from a klan member!”
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