Posted on 05/30/2002 8:16:46 AM PDT by xsysmgr
The current issue of Time magazine has a dubious article on "Learning While Black." The teaser reads: "You've heard of racial profiling on the roads and in the skies. But are minority kids also being unfairly singled out for discipline in schools?" The article is not completely one-sided, but the unmistakable gist of it is that the answer to the question posed is, "Probably so." But neither the anecdotal evidence nor the statistics cited are at all persuasive.
The story begins and ends with the story of a student for whom we are supposed to feel some sympathy, but the article concedes that the youth has "a filthy mouth" and "has been known to saunter into class on his own schedule." He was suspended after "he threw the first punch in a fistfight." The article calls him "a C student"; at the end of the article, however, it is noted that he is worried about "the D and F on his latest report card and whether they will affect his prospects for studying architecture in college."
The reason he and the NAACP think he is "a victim" — of racial discrimination, naturally — is that the white student he punched and who suffered "five stitches over his left eye" was suspended for only three days, versus our victim's one-month suspension and later reassignment to another school. But even if we knew nothing about the two students besides what Time tells us, it seems pretty plausible that there are good reasons for the different punishments. And, indeed, a conversation I had with a school-system spokeswoman confirmed that the extent of injury, who started the fight, past infractions, and so forth all may be considered under the system's student-conduct code in deciding what punishment to mete out.
The statistical evidence is even less persuasive. In big capital letters running across the bottom of the first two pages in the Time story, a finding of the Civil Rights Project is announced: "NATIONALLY, AFRICAN AMERICANS ARE 2.4 TIMES AS LIKELY TO BE SUSPENDED AS WHITES." Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the 2.4 figure is accurate. But the Time article ignores completely two factors that are likely to explain the disparity better than racism: illegitimacy and a pervasive notion among many black students that if you're not acting out, you're acting white.
The illegitimacy rate among blacks is more than triple that of whites: 69 percent of African Americans are now being born out of wedlock, versus only 22 percent of non-Hispanic whites. Does illegitimacy help explain suspensions? As a matter of fact, yes, although there is no mention of it in the Time article. Not every child born out of wedlock is a behavior problem, of course, and many children from two-parent families are; nonetheless, the data clearly show a correlation between illegitimacy and school behavior and performance.
A Department of Health and Human Services study found that for whites, blacks, and Hispanics at every income level except for the very highest, children raised in single-parent homes were more likely to be suspended from school, to have emotional problems, and to behave badly. Another study showed that white children of unmarried women were much more likely than those in two-parent families to become delinquents, again after controlling for income. Other studies have found illegitimacy to correlate with getting into trouble with the law, dropping out of school, having illegitimate children of one's own, and unemployment.
In a column earlier this year, George Will discussed a study by Paul Barton, then with the Educational Testing Service, titled "America's Smallest School: The Family." It found the presence of two parents in the home to be an important factor in school performance. Thus, North Dakota is the top state in math scores and the next-to-top in percentage of children in two-parent families; the District of Columbia is next-to-last in math scores and dead last in family composition. Will concludes by pointing out that, between birth and their nineteenth birthday, an American child will spend nine percent of his or her time in school, and 91 percent elsewhere. For many more blacks than whites, he says, "elsewhere" is not an intact family.
Another likely reason for problems in black performance and behavior in school is something that John McWhorter — an African-American professor of linguistics at Berkeley and author of American Experiment Quarterly — points out: that black students are "told by their black peers that to do well in school is to act white. Doing well is selling out. It is white students who do well; a proper black person really shouldn't do well in school." They make no secret of this, says McWhorter, who has seen it and experienced it firsthand, and it is true at every income level.
Indeed, McWhorter and USA Today last week both focused on the affluent Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, where "studies found that blacks made up only 10% of the top performing students and 90% of the lowest performing students." USA Today points out that researchers "blame a variety of factors, including peer pressure, low parental expectations, too much television and the impact of rap culture on black students, including middle class students."
This is not, of course, a message the civil-rights establishment wants to hear. The Time article highlights the role played in challenging school discipline by "civil rights activists," "civil rights attorneys," and the NAACP. What's scary is the success these groups are having. Time notes that some schools are "bend[ing] their discipline codes" after public pressure by organizations like the NAACP, so that "principals [are told] to stop handing out suspensions for picayune infractions like 'gum chewing' and reserve the punishment for violent offenses." Earlier, the article refers to "nebulous infractions like excessive noise and disrespect," and later describes how the activists and attorneys would like a program "allowing students to be tried by a peer jury [I guess this means other students] for violations such as arguing with a teacher or using profanity."
But this let-the-little-things-slide approach is dangerous. Compare the famous "Broken Windows" article by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, which concluded that "serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked." When the message is sent that little rules are not taken seriously, it's not long before the big rules are broken, too. Conversely, if students know that they are on a tight ship, then they are more likely to stay in line.
The student protagonist in the Time article is given the last word: "You learn which teachers treat different ethnicities differently. And you learn that when you're around them to stay quiet and keep to yourself." Well, we can agree to disagree about whether in fact the teachers are treating different ethnicities differently, but staying quiet and keeping to oneself isn't a bad code of conduct for students to follow in every classroom, is it?
The NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund like to pretend that, if there are racial disparities in academic performance or behavior, it must be the result of antiblack racism, but this is nonsense. Thus, the NAACP has called on every state to submit a plan to ensure that blacks are not over-represented in discipline or remedial programs, and not underrepresented in gifted-and-talented programs or graduation. No one would dispute that bias still occurs, but it is not systematic or systemic, and it is clear that the road to closing these gaps is through the black community itself.
Indeed, the stance of the civil-rights establishment is contrary to the interests and self-respect of African Americans. When discipline breaks down in inner-city schools, it is not suburban whites who will suffer. And what do we make of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's opposition to a change announced this week in Florida, that schools there will no longer require a lower IQ score for blacks to be admitted to gifted-and-talented programs than whites? A double standard like that is about as insulting as it gets.
— Roger Clegg is general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity.
I never doubted that in you. Otherwise, this debate would either not take place or deteriorate into something unpleasant.
No defender of a.a. (a form of apartheid imo) can truthfully answer when I ask them if they would go to a doctor knowing the he only got into med school because of a.a. (some of the hardcore black nationalist types/whackjobs would but none of their white allies would.)
The real tragedy is that the black professional who attained his education w.o. benefit of a.a. is also suspect which is the syndrome your children are facing. Thus, a.a. is one of the most insidious underminers of black success. Another brilliant Liberal program at work.
I don't know of any AA quotas for women in university admissions. I know that there have been some job quotas for women in other areas, but that's not what we were talking about. I vigorously dispute that women were ever AA beneficiaries in university admissions.You really don't know, then, do you? Gender quotas have been an issue in universities and medical schools since the 70's. Here, I found a site that addresses it. This is a pro-AA site, so it has a leftist slant. But, you can do a search yourself to find other articles on gender quotas in college admissions. Click here
So, ask yourself, how does anyone know that RACE plays a major role in college admissions? We know because "race" has been written into affirmative action policies, and educational institutions admit to "considering race" in selecting applicants.
Well, guess what? "Gender" is also written into affirmative action, and educational institutions admit to "considering gender", too.
Here's a piece of text from an ACLU site for you. Maybe now you'll believe it:
Affirmative action for women
An ACLU briefing paper on affirmative action reports: "Six million women have received opportunities in employment and education directly because of affirmative action programs. Between 1970 and 1990, the proportion of women physicians doubled from 7.6% to 16.9%. From 1972 to 1979 -- the years when affirmative action programs were most vigorously enforced -- the number of women becoming accountants, lawyers and judges, and school administrators increased substantially. And during the last 10 years the overall number of black professional women grew 125%." (7)
I don't know how old you are, but I remember in the 70's people complaining that men were being denied access to medical schools, for example, to make room for less qualified women.
I am not trying to take away from anyone's success, including yours. I'm simply pointing out that African-Americans are not the only recipients under AA.
Of course, the civil-rights establishment is only interested in their own continued existance.
And then you will likely be sued, if the job requirement was simply "bachelors degree" or some such.
Way back when, employers could just hire kids straight out of high-school, give them a simple test to see if they knew how to read and write well, and put them to work. Then the feds decreed that such tests, if they had "racially disparate impact" (i.e. more whites passed than blacks), were discriminatory and thus forbidden. So employers then started makeing college a requirement, on the assumption that they would wind up with people who were somewhat literate, and the response was to create nonsense-degrees so that the stubbornly-illiterate could meet the job requirements
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