Today the Drudge Report covers the Justice Department’s racialist attack on school discipline policies. The DOJ policy is based on the idea that school discipline policies are racially discriminatory because black students comprise a greater percentage of students disciplined than their percentage in the general population. Call it exceeding the bad behavior quota.
That this four-year-old federal policy exists wasn’t news. I covered it in my 2011 book Injustice. What is newsworthy is how these radical racialist education policies will outlast the Obama administration, and Republicans are ill-equipped to reverse it even if they win the White House.
As I wrote in Injustice:
The DOJ’s reasoning goes like this: if minorities face school discipline at rates greater than their overall percentage in the population, then the school is engaging in racial discrimination. As Civil Rights chief Tom Perez explained, “Black boys account for 9 percent of the nation’s student population, but comprise 24 percent of students suspended out of school and 30 percent of students expelled.” This preposterous racial bean-counting is an affront to the very concept of individual responsibility.
In January 2011, Perez announced that the DOJ would use a “disparate impact” analysis on school discipline cases to determine whether discipline policies were racially discriminatory. Thus, if blacks were disciplined in higher percentages than their share of the population, the DOJ would bring a lawsuit to stop the discipline policy. The new policy was on display at a DOJ conference on September 27 and 28, 2010, entitled “Civil Rights and School Discipline: Addressing Disparities to Ensure Educational Opportunity.” Attorney General Holder addressed the gathering and sought to “better understand the causes, and most effectively remedy the consequences, of disparities in student discipline.” Perez then complained that minority “students are being handed Draconian punishments for things like school uniform violations, schoolyard fights and subjective violations, such as disrespect and insubordination.”
Some might argue American schools have already allowed far too much disrespect and insubordination among students. That Tom Perez gives quarter for these acts illustrates the cultural demographic he and his fellow Obama political appointees seek to protect—the disrespectful and insubordinate.
We’ve come to expect this sort of policy from Eric Holder of protecting the lawless and misbehaving. The New Black Panther voter intimidation case dismissal was mere prologue.
Republicans in Congress have shown minimal skill in stopping these radical racialist programs. Instead of defunding the components of the DOJ that perpetrate these lawless policies, they continue to vote for spending resolutions and budgets that fuel them.
And even if the GOP takes control of the Justice Department in 2017, it will take an Attorney General willing to roll up his or her sleeves and clean out the mess inside the Civil Rights Division that is fueling these nutty and lawless policies. Only a few GOP figures understand the scope of the problem and have the courage to correct it. Among them are people like Representatives Louie Gohmert or Trey Gowdy, Senators Jeff Sessions or John Cornyn.
Here are three reasons why even these four would struggle in 2017 to reverse this lawless nuttiness:
1. Imbedded Radicals at DOJ
Republicans make an enormous mistake to assume that Eric Holder is behind every bad idea and the bad policies end when the GOP takes control. Wrong. PJ Media has reported over the last three years about the radical transformation of the civil service taking place inside the Justice Department. These are career civil servants who cannot be removed from their positions easily, if at all. The radical anti-discipline policies are the concoction of the Educational Opportunities Section at the DOJ Civil Rights Division.
The Educational Opportunities Section has been filled up with radical leftist lawyers who will continue to push these policies from the ground up, even in a Republican administration. I saw it firsthand when I worked as a DOJ lawyer in the Bush administration. The best the GOP leadership could do in many instances was put out leftist fires. Debates over Supreme Court briefs and election policies always met with a well-entrenched chorus of leftist lawyers pushing policies at odds with the administration, and often the Rule of Law. Political overseers have ablative will. They can only resist so much.
Better yet, look at the biographies of the lawyers hired from 2009-2011 in the Education Opportunities Section. PJ Media went to court to obtain their resumes.
Their backgrounds are a stew of racial grievance, representing Al Qaeda terrorists, abortion radicalism, “Black Student Movements” and United Nations race activism directed at the United States. Now they are writing federal policies against school discipline.
They are also suing school districts. Consider Meridian, Mississippi. The DOJ pushed these nutty anti-discipline policies on Meridian in a federal lawsuit – and Meridian caved to DOJ demands. You can read the Consent Order here. (Consent = Meridian voluntarily agreed to the federal order curtailing school discipline).
It’s no accident that the attorneys behind the Meridian school discipline case are among those we featured in the PJ Media expose. The crackpot background of Section Chief Anurima Bhargava is too long and nutty to be repeated here. Click the link for details. Even during the next GOP administration, Bhargava will have a job.
2. Fear of Career
The second reason the GOP will have a hard time rolling back the radical Obama-era policies at DOJ is because many of those appointed to political positions will have a Fear of the Career DOJ employee. During the Bush years, when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faced criticism from left wing blogs and Democrats in Congress, his response, like Meridian’s, was to cave. He pushed power down, into the hands of these long term career bureaucrats. Worst of all, he was proud of it, and spoke openly about how important they were. A number of other political appointees at the time advised him to do this. Gonzales ignored the advice of those who told him to fight back against the left-wing attacks.
Depending on who the next GOP President is, expect some political appointees to be named who are afflicted with Fear of the Career DOJ employee. Instead of reversing these radical Obama-era polices, they will enshrine them and make them permanent through acquiescence. Instead of boldly reversing these lawless policies, deference to institutional continuity will be more important to the ill-chosen political appointee.
As an aside, the PR mantra during the Alberto Gonzales era was not to respond to attacks coordinated by Democrats in Congress and far-left blogs. “That would just prolong the story,” I heard many times. They were stuck in a 1990’s model of the news cycle. Let’s hope the next GOP administration learns something from the combat effectiveness of the Holder regime.
3. Consent Decrees
The final reason that the next GOP administration will have a hard time undoing the nutty radical policies of the Obama-era DOJ is the existence of consent decrees. These consent decrees don’t vanish just because President Obama will in 2017. They remain in force, and the next administration will still have to enforce them.
By now, those first learning about the radical racialist school discipline policies at DOJ should be more concerned about how they will be undone, rather than that they exist.
****
images courtesy shutterstock / Monkey Business Images / spirit of america / CBS News
****
Join the conversation as a VIP Member