I used to presume, a long, long time ago, that educated black folks ran the NAACP. That presumption was rebutted many years before they nominated an indicted child molester for an “image” award.
This morning I read this intriguing headline, “NAACP sues schools in Anne Arundel”, and I wondered what the problem was this time.
NAACP officials yesterday filed a class-action discrimination complaint against the Anne Arundel County school system, claiming blacks are disproportionately removed from classrooms and still separated from whites through advanced-placement classes.
“We believe African-American youths are referred to the [principal's] office more frequently and for racially motivated reasons, which results in greater suspensions and expulsions, as well as greater dropout rates,” said Gerald Stansbury, president of the county’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “Our youth are conspicuously absent from advance-placement classes, the gifted and talented programs, as well as the International Baccalaureate program.
The suit was filed yesterday, the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. What a coincidence!
It doesn’t take book-learning to know that the mere presence of a racial disparity isn’t proof of racism. If more black kids engage in disproportionately more suspension-worthy activities, it follows that they’d be suspended at disproportionately higher rates. The investigation begins by examining the types of behavior leading to suspensions, not pontificating in front of a judge.
As far as advanced-placement goes, the Civil Rights division of the Department of Education stated that “less than 1 percent of blacks qualified to participate in an advanced-placement Algebra 1 course at Annapolis High School in the 2001-02 and 2002-03 school years.”
If the school is predominately white, it follows that a greater proportion of white kids will be in advanced-placement classes. If less than 1 percent of blacks are fit to be in advanced-placement Algebra, it follows that fewer than 1 percent of them will be placed in advanced-placement Algebra. My five-year old niece could’ve figured that out.
But the NAACP wants to give the impression that “still separated from whites” is a deliberate move to segregate students by race. The segregation is based on academic qualifications, which, in this case, disparately impacts black students. How is that racist?
Those educated black folks at the NAACP do some of the dumbest things, like exposing their own inability to do simple arithmetic. I know what you’re thinking. “La Shawn, you’re missing the point. It’s racist to suspend black kids and keep them out of the smart classes in the first place.” You may have a point.
It’s probably a little bigoted of teachers to want an orderly classroom conducive to learning and to assume that students who haven’t mastered basic geometry, for example, probably won’t do well in advanced-placement Algebra.
Stansbury continues:
“We believe that the Anne Arundel County schools are limiting educational and employment opportunities for our youth.”
Placing them in classes for which they are not qualified just to satisfy liberals’ politically correct ideas of equality would be limiting their educational opportunity. When these kids flunk out, I suppose the NAACP will file another lawsuit: Black kids are disproportionately getting all the answers wrong because the tests are biased against black students.
The NAACP should focus its attention on the real problem: a culture that tolerates mediocrity. According to Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom, authors of No Excuses, black kids spend more than twice as many hours a day watching television as whites. When students were surveyed about the lowest grade they could receive without getting into trouble with their parents, Asians said A-, whites said B-, and blacks and Hispanics said C-.
Why kids of any color are allowed to sit in front of an idiot box for hours on end (especially on a school night) is a mystery to me, but black kids’ performance problems stem more from parental uninvolvement and a culture of anti-intellectualism (to borrow the idea from the “uncool” John McWhorter) than a racist school system. A lawsuit is useless against apathy.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. The NAACP is an embarassing laughingstock ran by people whose outdated, 1960s-style of grievance-shopping is a joke, and everybody knows it. May their lawsuit fail.
