Obama Administration to Teachers: You're All Racist

Heather Mac Donald's article in City Journal examines the discipline problem in schools. Because the Department of Education uses the disparate impact standard, any disproportionate incidence of discipline is thought to be the result of racism. This from the group that self-congratulates for their uncanny ability to sniff out nuance. Mac Donald writes:

Under disparate-impact theory, even if a school applies its discipline code fairly and in a color-blind fashion, it can still be liable for civil rights violations if minorities are disproportionately affected and it cannot demonstrate the absolute necessity of its disciplinary practices.

But when a black teacher said that the “achievement gap / suspension gap is a black issue. My community must take the lead in correcting our children’s behavior,” he was predictably dismissed by Victoria Davis, an education advocate with St. Paul’s NAACP chapter, who said, “People who think like that are like the people who believe that [black people] are . . . less than civil or human."

The reality is that she is treating the students as inferiors. She apparently doesn't think they are capable of rising to the same standards as their white peers. It is the soft bigotry of lower standards.

Mac Donald continues:

That rhetoric is irresponsible and dangerous, only serving to alienate blacks in general further from society and black students in particular from those institutions that are their best hope for success.

It cannot be that culture plays a role in this discipline problem. We know that to suggest such a thing would constitute a gaffe. So if not culture, then what? The old standby: racism. Of course this all assumes "that teachers and school administrators are a racist bunch." This is a little odd since:

Teachers also constitute one of the most liberal occupation groups, as a visit to any education school will confirm. Yet if we’re to believe the Obama administration, when they enter the classroom or become administrators, these eager proponents of white-privilege theory suddenly become retributive bigots, favoring fractious white students over pacific black students.

When you want see racism everywhere, you see it everywhere. Even your supporters can be thrown under the bus by besmirching their reputations and dignity in the pursuit of the racism meme.

The bigger question is why would teachers vote for the party that calls them a bunch of racists? Could it be the ever increasing compensation and benefits bestowed by the unions? And if that is the case - that they are looking out for their own interests by choosing money, compensation and benefits over all else including their dignity - doesn't that make them just as greedy as those nasty Wall Street fat cats?

Shouldn't the teacher's unions stick up for their rank and file? Shouldn't they defend their member's good name and speak truth to the powers that are smearing them with the despicable charge of racism? That the rank and file do not force the leadership to do so suggests that they are more interested in padding their pocketbooks than pursuing truth. And in the end it doesn't matter what the administration says about teachers, the teachers will lend their support.

Greed trumps personal dignity.

BTW, no word on how the obvious sexism is to be corrected: