School application questions that irritate me
Bookworm on Aug 10 2011 at 4:32 pm | Filed under: Education
It’s the start of another school year, and I’m filling out forms again. This year, many of the forms are on-line, which is mostly a blessing. The “curse” part, though, is that the forms do not allow for any flexibility in answering a question that invariably irritates me, which is the one that forces us to identify our students as “white” or “other.” I find these racial questions offensive and un-American, insofar as they are weirdly reminiscent of the “white”/”non-white” signs that used to be an integral part of the Jim Crow South. The computer, however, prevents me from either opting out of answering or giving a more flexible answer if I want to complete the application and get my kid into the school:
What I can opt out of, however, is letting our American military anywhere near my little darlings. God forbid they should be tainted by the defenders of our liberties:
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Become a crank like me and write your superintendent a letter similar to mine:
Re: Student Race and Ethnicity Questionnaire
To Whom It May Concern:
I object in principle to this exercise in racialist groupthink. I refuse to participate in a racial spoils system.
We don’t live in the Old South, where the “one drop rule” was invoked to define who was an African-American, or some other minority. What’s next, the adoption of Jim Crow terms for “quadroon” or “octoroon”? Where do you think the Apartheid regime learned its trade? You call this progress?
The “science” behind such arbitrary classifications is bogus. The social philosophy behind it is abhorrent.
Feel free to conduct DNA tests if you seek results for medical research. Or hire a qualified sociologist to devise a proper study for social policy purposes. But lay off this pernicious, bureaucratic nonsense.
What happened to Martin Luther King’s dream that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”?
Sincerely, an unhyphenated American,
FEDERALLY REQUIRED! Tell them to cross check the last census.
Down here in the “new” South Africa, we have something similar; I have to classify my children according to their race in order to comply with quotas – if there are too many white kids in a school it loses its government grant. Problem is, my adopted daughter could be either Coloured (a term for all those of mixed race) or African, as her parents are unknown. If she’s classified African, her marks will be increased more than if she were merely Coloured. Her university entrance will be made easier and she’ll benefit more from affirmative action – Coloureds getting lower points on the “previously disadvantaged” rating. My white kids, born well after the demise of Apartheid are actively discriminated against due to their skin colour. Welcome to the “rainbow nation” where Apartheid is, supposedly, a thing of the past.
[...] attend public schoolBookworm on Aug 11 2011 at 7:03 am | Filed under: Education, RaceKidkaroo, in a comment to my earlier post about the federal requirement that I racially classify my children, explains [...]
I’ve run into this a couple of times now (thanks to mulitple military-required moves), and I refuse to fill out the computerized forms that schools initially direct you to. I go to the school office and ask for paper forms, and when I get to the question of *race* for my daughter, I write in “HUMAN” — as that is the only *race* to which any of us really belong.
Buuutttt, then, I’m a non-conformist like that.
0>:~}
On a related note, here in Denver, where they start school on August 18th (!?) they’re providing a free breakfast to all students. This was a pilot program at my son’s elementary school last year and it looks like it’s here to stay. I’m compelled to note that his school does not appear to have students who are neglected to the point that their parents can’t secure them a daily breakfast without government assistance. This is Colorado (the healthiest state), so most parents I see during drop-off & pick-up times are clad in running or yoga gear. Not many of Michelle’s pet project fatties in sight, parents or kids.
In fact, my son’s school has pioneered a Healthy Food initiative that includes school lunches that are prepared on site (as opposed to mass-produced and then delivered), a raw vegetable bar, and rules that prohibit unhealthy foods at classroom parties. Further, kids are told to donate a copy of their favorite book to the school as a way to celebrate their birthday, since any family-provided sweets, such as cupcakes or cookies, are not allowed.
Oh, and DPS will probably be providing free flu shots on site this fall. They sent a survey to parents in June to determine if there would be sufficient participation (along with a 5$ bill as an incentive to return it). So I guess DPS also believes I am incapable of getting my son to the Pediatrician’s for his annual flu shot, in addition to not being able to feed him breakfast.
gpc31: What happened to Martin Luther King’s dream that “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”?
Martin Luther King: “Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entering the starting line in a race 300 years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.”
>>”…On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entering the starting line in a race 300 years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.”>>
Do you think that he meant that blacks are mentally incapable of performing at the same level as caucasians?
>>a raw vegetable bar>>
A carrot? Did you know that carrots were commonly white until fairly recent times (meaning the last 100 years or so)?
Well…I guess corn would meet the requirement.
Probably not parsnips.
Wonder if the teachers lead by example… Wanna bet?
suek: Do you think that he meant that blacks are mentally incapable of performing at the same level as caucasians?
It means quite the opposite.
Explain, please.
He says that granting equality is good, but not enough – that blacks are starting from way behind the white man, and it’s impossible to expect the black to equal or surpass the white man.
Or?
What do _you_ think he meant?
Martin Luther King: “Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entering the starting line in a race 300 years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.”
We’ve been over this quote before. The problem with using it as an argument is that it lacks context. Dr. King said this in the early 1960s when Jim Crow and northern segregation had taken a generations-long toll on black Americans. Subsequent legislation, as well as as Nixon’s affirmative-action initiative were what eventually made the starting line the same for most blacks.
The better analogy—which I offered many threads ago and which was not successfully challenged or refuted—is that the starting line is now even, but some participants arrive at it deliberately ill prepared. (We’ve had extensive discussions of the pathologies in the black community, many of them abetted by Democratic policies, which Zach simply refuses to address.) It’s nice to quote an American icon, but it’s not a good analogy when it applies to a situation that existed two generations ago but does not now.
Resistance is futile. Non-conformists shall be assimilated for conformation.
suek: Do you think that he meant that blacks are mentally incapable of performing at the same level as caucasians?
If both runners are just as fast, but one has been given a great and unfair lead, then the other runner will never catch up.
suek: He says that granting equality is good, but not enough – that blacks are starting from way behind the white man, and it’s impossible to expect the black to equal or surpass the white man.
If you have a footrace, and one person has been given an unfair lead, you don’t continue the race with the false start and consider it fair.
Charles Martel: Dr. King said this in the early 1960s when Jim Crow and northern segregation had taken a generations-long toll on black Americans. Subsequent legislation, as well as as Nixon’s affirmative-action initiative were what eventually made the starting line the same for most blacks.
Most people realize the statement was from the civil rights era. Your point about equalizing the starting line is arguable, but you have to start with whether or not affirmative action is ever justified, before you can have a reasonable discussion as to whether it is justified today.
When we started on this forum, the very idea of affirmative action was anathema to many regardless of the circumstance. Even that can be argued, but not by ignoring the reasons for the call for equalization.
There he goes with that “most people” stuff again. Anyone here actually think he knows most of anyone, anywhere, anywhen?
If both runners are just as fast, but one has been given a great and unfair lead, then the other runner will never catch up.
Never is a long time.
There was this show about high school kendo in Japan. After a devastating loss, one girl wanted to quit kendo because she said that no matter how hard she worked, her opponent would simply work just as hard and the gap would never close, thus it would be pointless to continue to do kendo. Her training partner, the one that gave her special training before the tournament, told her that she can’t decide that so easily. That giving now would simply be wasting the time she spent with her before the tournament. That if she wants to quit, win and then quit rather than quit after losing two measly times.
Those girls are a lot more gusty and tough than the people who talk about keeping people in the poor mentality. The poor are poor because they are always looking to be saved, while the rich or the ascenders want to pave their own way in society, with or without anyone else’s help.
More millionaires were created during the Great Depression than at any other time in US history. Ever wonder why? Because someone figured out how to get rich while everyone else was being “poor”. Those people didn’t say to themselves, “well, it’s a depression so I can’t get anything done given this gap”.
The Left, however, wants to keep you a slave. So they want to beat into you the slave mentality. And if you want to be poor and forever a slave to the Left’s machinations, never a master of your own fate, you just keep on obeying the Left. It’s not that hard.
Zachriel: Most people realize the statement was from the civil rights era.
Ymarsakar: There he goes with that “most people” stuff again.
Sorry. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 while in Memphis in support of a public union strike. You can read more about him here:
http://www.thekingcenter.org/
SADIE: Never is a long time.
It’s a standard word-problem. Two runners running equally fast will remain just as far apart forever. However, in real life, the first runner may get lazy and slow down. The turtle and the hare. Or the second runner may be a bit faster and catch up after a few hundred years. Or, as King noted, the second runner may perform some impossible feat. Nevertheless, when most people run races, the runners start at the same point.
Ymarsakar: More millionaires were created during the Great Depression than at any other time in US history. Ever wonder why?
There was less wealth, but what wealth there was was concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.
Ymarsakar: The Left, however, wants to keep you a slave.
Therefore Martin Luther King was a slavemaster.
That is the very problem with black-and-white thinking: it leads to inconsistent conclusions. Not everything falls into simplistic boxes.
Of course, there is that argument made by some that black people could never catch up on their own and that this required government intervention. How demeaning! There are too many examples of people that came out of slavery and excelled in life to accept this premise at face value.
For example, Frederick Douglas, Elijah McCoy, Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver…all black people that excelled on their own merits without any government help. It was Booker T. Washington that argued that only by the merits of their personal accomplishments would black people ever be freed and able to look white people in the eye as equals.
Booker T. Washington’s views, which epitomizes the views and successes of conservative blacks, were countered by those of W.E.B. Dubois. Dubois argued that only by agitating for government welfare could blacks ever be justified and recompensed for the slavery of their ancestors. In the end, Dubois won the argument within the black community. Well, that sure worked out well, didn’t it?
Hey, I’ve got a question: can anyone answer why Thurgood Marshall, venerated first black judge to sit on the Supreme Court, despised Martin Luther King and that for what he stood?
Children all start out at the same point, do they not? So if they (blacks and whites) attend the same schools – why and how do whites have an “unfair” head start?
Suek: Children all start out at the same point, do they not? So if they (blacks and whites) attend the same schools – why and how do whites have an “unfair” head start?
When that question is asked of local politicians they respond by saying that due to historical reasons race based discrimination is still needed. Speaking as someone who has lived in Africa all my life and who speaks several indigenous languages fluently, I’m willing to go as far as to say that in the case of many Africans it’s due in no small measure to a deep-seated feeling of inferiority, mixed with a worldview based largely on racial solidarity and tribal bonds. For too many people, here and abroad, oppression only becomes unacceptable when the perpetrator is of a lighter hue than the oppressed. It all goes back to the racism of low expectations.
You know the answer, don’t you? Take those babies away from their their “disadvantaged” parents, and put them in “advantaged” homes to be raised. Voila. 300 year head start eliminated.
Unfortunately, that would go over like a lead balloon.
But I bet it would work. (after the civil [uncivil?] war)
The Left are the slave masters. Don’t get confused now.
suek, in the 1980s when Tom Bradley was mayor of Los Angeles and the crack cocaine epidemic was getting underway, he said something aloud that a white man would have been tarred and feathered for saying. He was speaking about the growing number of black children being raised in toxic environments, amid a culture of welfare, degenerating public schools, drugs and sexual libertinism: “We should take these children away from their parents and put them in orphanages where they can be raised decently.”
There was the usual knee-jerk hue and cry, not so much at the odious notion of forcibly wresting children from clueless parents, but at the very notion ghetto culture could be criticized, even by a black man. If the topic had not been so tragic, the commentary surrounding it would have been hilarious.
Charles: As a small child in Weimar Germany, my father lived in a toxic environment: a Dickensian ghetto, a single mother, a home over a brothel, rampant inflation . . . the whole megillah. By the time he was six, his mother had completely lost control of him. She put him in a Jewish orphanage. He wasn’t that happy there, but it was better than the alternative, something he willingly conceded. It gave him a stable family (the other children), a moral upbringing, and a superb education. My father was one of the most erudite men I’ve ever met.
But Book…
>>By the time he was six, his mother had completely lost control of him. She put him in a Jewish orphanage. >>
His mother – despite whatever failings she might have had – did the best thing for _him_. Not what she might have thought was the best thing for _her_, but for _him_. She could have just let him run wild.
That alone speaks volumes.
One of the things I keep hearing is black people investing in martial arts or Asian culture or love of Bruce Lee.
And the first thing that came to mind was “the Black Code forbids blacks from loving or even liking white culture, so what’s left other than African barbarianism or Asian mysticism”?
Speaking of toxic…
I was driving home and listening to the local station (the one the gives the news in under 30 seconds and lots of traffic reports).
Speaking of traffic reports ….
City of Philadelphia congratulated itself on handing out 1,000,000 condoms since April – the goal is $2.5 million by the end of the year. How’s that for gender traffic!
Speaking of gender (sex) ….
The news went on to report that the city has an alarming rise in STD’s and AIDS in school-aged students who are black and Spanish-speaking.
Speaking of Stupid Sex and Toxicity…..
As they say, not everything falls into simplistic boxes UNLESS … 25 years later after the HIV/AIDS epidemic, lots of bucks, tons of information and no shortage of stories both local and national fall on deaf ears and stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr: “Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man is entering the starting line in a race 300 years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.”
Danny Lemieux: Of course, there is that argument made by some that black people could never catch up on their own and that this required government intervention. How demeaning!
King was a demeaner!
Danny Lemieux: It was Booker T. Washington that argued that only by the merits of their personal accomplishments would black people ever be freed and able to look white people in the eye as equals.
There were two basic currents in the black community. Washington thought that accommodation to the white power structure, while trying to develop black communities was the best way forward, and that confrontation would just provoke more racism. Dubois campaigned for greater political representation as a bulwark to civil rights, and that confrontation with racism would highlight its pernicious effects. They were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
King, of course, took the confrontational approach as segregation only became more and more entrenched, and confrontation exposed to the world the evils of Jim Crow. He is remembered for leading the movement that ended segregation, and allowing the South to finally overcome its past, and rise as an economic powerhouse.
Danny Lemieux: can anyone answer why Thurgood Marshall, venerated first black judge to sit on the Supreme Court, despised Martin Luther King and that for what he stood?
Marshall didn’t despise King, called him “Brother King,” but disagreed with his confrontational tactics, especially civil disobedience, and thought that “all that walking” did little to address the real concerns of civil rights. Concerns about breaking the law are answered by King in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/resources/article/annotated_letter_from_birmingham/
suek: Children all start out at the same point, do they not? So if they (blacks and whites) attend the same schools – why and how do whites have an “unfair” head start?
There was a period of busing to enforce integration, but it only entailed resentment and was politically unsustainable. There is de facto segregation in the U.S. with poor, minority districts being underfunded.
kidkaroo: For too many people, here and abroad, oppression only becomes unacceptable when the perpetrator is of a lighter hue than the oppressed.
In the United States, many are still fighting the Civil War. South African apartheid only ended a few years ago. Whether it makes sense or not, people and institutions change only slowly.
suek: You know the answer, don’t you? Take those babies away from their their “disadvantaged” parents, and put them in “advantaged” homes to be raised. Voila. 300 year head start eliminated.
They did that to American Indians and the Australian Aborigines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit-Proof_Fence_(film)
>>There was a period of busing to enforce integration, but it only entailed resentment and was politically unsustainable. There is de facto segregation in the U.S. with poor, minority districts being underfunded. >>
Really. You are amazingly ignorant of facts.
Ever heard of charter schools, by the way?
suek: Really. You are amazingly ignorant of facts.
The proportion of black students in majority-white schools stands at “a level lower than in any year since 1968.”
Orfield & Lee, Why Segregation Matters: Poverty and Educational Inequality, Harvard University Press 2005.
It’s kind of interesting that, because schools in wealthy districts have more funding, then, by a leap of logic, schools in poor districts are “underfunded”. Nobody seems to have any idea of what “properly funded” means or whatever funding has to do with quality education. Catholic schools do very well with only a fraction of the funding of public schools.
I love it when people quote movies as their authoritative sources. Next time we discuss American Indians, maybe I will reference “Dances with Wolves” as my authoritative source on the way things really happened during the 1800s Indian Wars.
Danny, “Rabbit Proof Fence” (an excellently made film) was later exposed by competent Australian historians as a hoax. The meme about poor Aborigine children being torn away from their loving parents was invented in the 1970s by revisionist historians when the national angst over Abo-white settler relations was ripe for some gimmicking.
Your point about Catholic schools is a good one. A favorite rejoinder is those schools get to skim the cream if the crop and are not bound by the [non-existent] disciplinary practices of the public schools. Not very logical or persuasive, but you hear it a lot.
Danny Lemieux: It’s kind of interesting that, because schools in wealthy districts have more funding, then, by a leap of logic, schools in poor districts are “underfunded”.
A few things that educational systems should have: school buildings that aren’t falling apart, computers in classrooms, textbooks, standard classroom supplies, enough trained teachers.
Danny Lemieux: I love it when people quote movies as their authoritative sources.
The movie was based on a true story. Do you think the story was unique? As the point was to provide background on children taken from their families, it was relevant. This is from the government of Australia.
http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/sorry-day-stolen-generations
Danny, school systems are basically an enormous kick back scheme. They have special deals with electronics, computers, and textbooks.
Remember, every year colleges spend 100-300 dollars to buy a “new edition” of the same book.
Why? Because… somebody is making money then.
Oh wait, it’s not colleges that spend that money. It’s colleges forcing individual students to spend that money, if they want to get into the class.
Oooo. This was called extortion back in the day, btw.
So, Charles M, let me throw this out as chum for the bottom-feeding carp: why is it that Catholic Schools do so well in areas in which public schools do so poorly?
Apropos Catholic schools, this might interest everyone:
http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_2_catholic-schools.html
Danny, there are several reasons:
1. Catholic schools are not racist. They expect the same level of civil behavior from minority students as they do from whites. The imposition of discipline is a godesend for minority students who are trapped in unstable environments, whether at home or in a disintegrated community that disdains education and therefore has no problem allowing its children to disrupt it in the public schools.
2. Catholic schools expect either parental involvement (insist that kids do their homework assignments; attend parent-teacher conferences) or at least parental acquiescence to whatever the school needs to maintain an orderly environment—even if that means tossing Little Johnny out on his ass because he doesn’t know how to behave.
3. Catholic schools charge tutition. When you have to pay for something, you take it more seriously than when it’s “free” (i.e. paid for on your behalf by property owners and wealthier citizens).
4. Catholic schools teach academics. Children are expected to master basic skills—and experience says the overwhelming majority of children can by a certain age or grade level. Therefore the schools are not afraid to demand effort from children, and because they are not racist (see No. 1 above) they get a good performance from minority kids. Also, because some Catholic schools retain a strong bias toward classical learning, many students are exposed early to the West’s best literature and philosophy and don’t have to wait until college to hear Aquinas or the story of Xenophon mentioned for the first time in their lives.
In the public schools’ defense, they are forced to retain delinquents and punks because pushing them out of all-day babysitting makes them either a.) victims of racism or b.) one more problem the cops would rather not deal with. (Also, warm bodies on campus means more bucks for the school district, which is a self-perpetuating bureaucratic enterprise.) Not that the public schools can’t push back—in districts where strong principals are backed by the school board, it is possible to thwart or expel troublemakers (especially if the pirncipals are not white or Asian).
I have no problem with the idea of “second-chance” campuses where problem kids have one last chance to succeed in school. It would probably help if such schools taught useful trade skills, including simple concepts like showing up on time and dressing like an adult.
I should add a couple of other things:
1. The teachers are not unionized, which means the incompetent ones can be fired without going through an expensive song and dance.
2. The left is effectively sealed off from the schools, which means it cannot force quotas, feminism, queer theory, victimization or any other intellect-killing philosophies on the kids.
It’s why they will force Catholic schools to close. The left