Too Many Minority Students Misbehaving? Solution: Stop Punishing Them

[Draggingtree]

The New American:

Wednesday, 12 November 2014

Too Many Minority Students Misbehaving? Solution: Stop Punishing Them

We’ve all heard of affirmative action and apportioning jobs based on racial quota. But now Minneapolis school officials want to mete out punishment based on racial quota. It’s part of a wider movement — orchestrated by the federal government — to reduce the number of suspensions of black and Hispanic students. Breitbart News Network’s Warner Todd Huston reports on the story,writing:

 

The Minneapolis public school system [MPS] announced a major new district-wide policy for disciplining students: any suspension of a non-white student requires the district superintendent' s approval.

 

The MPS has been stung by reports that students of color are 10 times more likely to receive a suspension than white students. The Minneapolis school system has an enrollment of over 32,000 students. Seventy percent are non-white.

 

School superintendent Bernadeia Johnson, a black woman, maintains that she wants to "disrupt" the current suspension trends.

[clearvision]

From the article...

 

As pundit Linda Chavez related earlier this year, while five percent of white students will be suspended at some point in their academic life, only three percent of Asian students will. Thus, if it’s assumed that the black-Hispanic/white suspension gap is attributable to prejudice, why is it never asked if the white/Asian gap is as well? Moreover, since the greater suspension rates of blacks and Hispanics would seem even more profound if they were compared to that of Asians, why are whites used for comparison purposes? (We also might wonder, why isn’t boys’ suspension rate being higher than girls’ considered “sexism”?)

 

[NCTexan]

Obviously they believe that the rules were made for white kids.... It isn't fair to expect minority students to be able to comply.

 

Now who are the bigots in this discussion?

[Valin]

Civil Rights Commissioner Objects to Institutionalized Racism in Minneapolis Public Schools
John Hinderaker
November 24, 2014

We wrote here about the Minneapolis public schools imposing a quota system for suspending students. I wrote:

Why does [school Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson] suppose that students, white, black, Asian, Hispanic or whatever, are being suspended? Presumably it is because they were disruptive and were degrading the learning environment for the other students. Does Ms. Johnson seriously believe that teachers and principals are suspending students for no reason? If so, then those teachers and principals should be identified and fired. But of course Ms. Johnson believes no such thing.

Today Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow wrote an excellent letter to Ms. Johnson, questioning both the wisdom and the legality of a racial quota system in the public schools. You can read it in its entirety below. Here are a few key paragraphs:

 

 

The Seventh Circuit has addressed the problem of racial quotas in school discipline. In People Who Care v. Rockford Bd. of Educ., Judge Posner wrote, “Racial disciplinary quotas violate equity in its root sense. They entail either systematically overpunishing the innocent or systematically underpunishing the guilty. They place race at war with justice. They teach schoolchildren an unedifying lesson of racial entitlements.” The Seventh Circuit’s criticisms apply as well to Minneapolis’s new quotas for racial discipline. It too exposes students who belong to non-preferred races to a stricter discipline policy than students who belong to preferred races. It teaches them that justice is not colorblind and that we do not stand or fall on our individual merit. In the event of litigation, I expect that the Eighth Circuit will find its sister circuit’s reasoning persuasive.

 

(Snip)

 

This is the dark side of disparate impact. In trying to avoid disparate impacts caused by racially neutral policies, entities begin to deliberately discriminate by treating people differently based on race.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

Federal Regs Push Minneapolis Into Illegal School Discipline Quotas

George Leef

12/2/14

 

Combine an administration that disdains the idea that it has any legal boundaries with the “liberal” penchant for coerced equality and you get some amazingly absurd results.

 

A case in point is the recent cave-in by public school officials in Minneapolis to the Department of Education regulations I wrote about here, regulations that threaten schools with loss of federal funds if they punish “disproportionate” numbers of students from certain groups.

 

The “proportional discipline” rules are beginning to bite. After all, bureaucrats don’t just make rules for the sake of keeping busy – they demand obedience.

 

(Snip)

 

 

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Coming soon to a school system near you.