Posted on 09/14/2002 1:39:33 AM PDT by Michael2001
ASHEBORO -- The Board of Education took no action Thursday on a request by the local NAACP to suspend all cheerleading after the chapter president complained that all of the students on the middle and high schools squads are white.
Wesley Fennell, the president of the Asheboro/Randolph County branch of the NAACP, asked the board to suspend cheerleading activities until a better way of selecting team members could be developed and implemented.
"The current selection process has resulted in the total elimination of African American cheerleaders from the Asheboro City Schools system," Fennell said.
The city schools have cheerleaders for sports teams at Asheboro High, and South Asheboro and North Asheboro middle schools, Fennell said. Total African American student enrollment in the system is 14.6 percent. Another 21.9 percent are Hispanic.
The board did not discuss Fennell's concerns and gave no indication of how it might handle them. Superintendent Diane Frost instead provided a copy of a letter she sent to Fennell on Aug. 30.
"Our goal is to provide a wide array of extracurricular activities for our students," Frost's letter stated. "We hope students will choose to participate in at least one school activity every year, because there is a strong correlation between participation and high student achievement.
"We encourage any student who is interested in cheerleading, or any other activity, to pursue it. We strive to have an inclusive process, and certainly encourage participation from all groups of students."
Fennell said he has also learned that no African Americans participated in selecting cheerleaders. He said that the college cheerleaders brought in to help judge high school tryouts come from predominantly white universities. He said the system should also bring in cheerleaders from historically black colleges.
"This could have served as an opportunity to expose this school system to potential future minority teachers, and to expose Asheboro school students to positive role models of all races," Fennell said.
Fennell complained that the $18 fee charged for Asheboro High School's Blue Comet Cheerleading Clinic to be held later this month could exclude low-income students from participating in cheerleading. The principal told him that no student would be excluded because of an inability to pay the fee, but Fennell said he was concerned that students who couldn't afford it would be too embarrassed to admit it.
"This certainly seems to contradict the concept of an inclusive process," he said.
It's really hard to participate when your pregnant or raising young kids, even with their grandmother.
Excuse me, most high school and college age Black women are not pregnant and don't have children. I didn't back then (and don't now).
If they do away with this, I hope they do away with homecoming queen and all that; most schools in the South now have complete black homecoming courts because the blacks all ban together and vote BLACK, but somehow that's not racist.
It is high time we started marginalizing these groups and rendering them irrelevant. This mentality is way out of control. It seems to me that we have been pushed too far and it is time to start pushing back.
Just a matter of time. They are already working on getting standardized tests dumbed down sufficiently to "balance" college enrollment and the appearance of success. Next will be to require that the grading system be neutralized to the same end.
As to white representation in predominantly black schools, haven't you realized yet that the same rules do not apply to them? I mean, they can even get away with having an all black prom so that their blackness and cultural traditions can be celebrated. What do you think would happen if WE tried to do that? The NAACP, Jesse Jackass and the ACLU would be on us like flies on horse sh*t.
And the thing is that they are insulting their own people by their actions because they are essentially telling them that they are indeed too stupid to excel in a white world but that's okay because we will see to it that you don't have to.
Things sure have changed since I was in high school. All you needed then was to be able to jump pretty well, shout loud and live in the right part of town. I think you had to buy your own uniform, but the school provided the pom poms and megaphones.
....and at least one hispanic lesbian in a wheel chair.
Sounds like they've learned well from the liberals/democrats.
Yeah. It would be a real bummer if these "low-income students" had to give up their cell phones, pagers, $150 manicures and the twice-a-week visits to the hair salons that they all seem to be able to manage financially. |
You forgot something.
"And make sure that exactly the right percent of blacks get picked for the squad... regardless of qualification of the judges or talent of the competitors. ....That's only fair, just do it."
/ sarcasm off
Well, the reply was copied in a totally different thread, but I thought I'd bring it out here.
You're totally wrong - the school's duty is simply to teach. It is up to the student as to whether they perform adequately so as to be acceptable to other honored positions. The school has no duty to meet quotas. Fairness involves opportunity perhaps, but the school doesn't need to spend additional resources on some students due to their race.
But I can remember a time.
I was teaching drawing in a community college, in what you'd call an "urban setting,." I had about 14 students, most were 18-20 year olds. All save one were mothers. The exceptional one, the one with promise, was pregnant by the end of the semester.
It was heartbreaking.
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