School resegregation

I don't think it is a stretch to assume that the vast majority of parents feel that their children should be allowed to attend close, safe, healthy, successful, neighborhood schools. They don't think about any federally-imposed busing or desegregation orders.

Even if parents don't think about issues of desegregation, school districts must. In most cities, inner city growth patterns and NCLB are forcing school districts to take a careful look at what it will take to bring equality to education.

NAACP Says North Carolina School District Shows Return To Jim Crow
Post by Associated Press in Nation on Dec 3, 2010 at 5:58 pm
RALEIGH, N.C. – The country’s most prominent civil rights group has come to Raleigh to draw attention to what it calls a growing erosion of the gains made since a 1954 Supreme Court decision made segregated schools illegal.

Using Wake County’s ongoing debate over school diversity as a backdrop, the NAACP is holding a national conference on education in Raleigh to argue that schools around the country are, in essence, returning to Jim Crow-era patterns of segregation.

“Resegregation is on the rise,” said the Rev. William Barber, chairman of the state NAACP chapter. “The rates now are worse than in the 1970s.”

Wake County has been the scene of acrimonious dispute since the school board voted to scrap a decade-old policy that used busing to achieve socio-economic balance in public schools. The NAACP and other groups have staged protests and marches and filed a federal civil rights complaint. Barber is among several who have been arrested in demonstrations against the end of the policy.

“School boards across this country are rolling back the clock to the time before Brown vs. Board of Education,” NAACP national president Benjamin Todd Jealous said in a statement. Jealous was scheduled to address to the conference Friday.

But that sentiment is out of touch with both the reality of public education and recent Supreme Court rulings, according to Roger Clegg, president of the Falls Church, Va.-based Center for Equal Opportunity.

A 2007 decision by the court found that school districts can’t pursue integration policies by using students’ race as a basis, which Clegg argues is what busing for diversity amounts to.

“Even if you think there’s something desirable about having a politically correct racial and ethnic mix, it doesn’t justify the enormous costs of engaging in racial discrimination,” he said.

Clegg also challenges the claim that schools are becoming more segregated, arguing that falling percentages of white students matches the declining number of whites in the population overall.

The term “segregation” doesn’t refer to demographic change, but to legal policies explicitly designed to keep people of different races separated from each other, Clegg said.

“If you use that definition, not only is there no resegregation in the United States, there is not a single segregated school in the United States,” he said. Source

Related articles:
Racial Tensions Roil NC School Board; 19 Arrests
New School Board Has N.C. Worried About “Resegregation”

An open letter to the President of the NAACP

In order for the organization to survive, it will be necessary to attract younger members... you are failing miserably.

Dear Mr. NAACP President:

As a 23 year-old black male living in America, I suppose I am part of the key demographic that you and the NAACP wish to bring into the fold and breed as the next generation of civil rights activists. In order for the organization to survive, it will be necessary to attract younger members. I’d like to tell you this now: you are failing miserably.

You have to understand, even to those of us who are students of history and are familiar with the role the NAACP has played in dismantling the system of racism that is part of the foundation of this country, you’re still sort of a joke. I’m a part of generation that grew up using the NAACP as a punchline. There have been many instances where I and my peers, at the slightest hint of anything racial, have exclaimed “I’m calling the NAACP!” in jest. The humor derived from the idea that the NAACP never actually did anything and our minor skirmish was just the type of inane melodrama the NAACP could handle. We were kidding; [with the mishandling of Shirley Sherrod] you all have taken the “truth in humor” anecdote to new levels.

I’d like to offer a bit of advice, from the perspective of someone you want to attract as a dues paying member: shut it down. The NAACP needs to stay away from the media for a while. Take a vacation. Say it’s for personal reasons. Let a few months go by then reappear like Kanye West with a brand new attitude and mammoth-sized theme music declaring the NAACP is back and ready to do right.

While you're away, evaluate what you believe racism is and adopt an official stance on what issues the organization will and will not choose to address. Hopefully, you will include on the “don’t” list things that, well, aren’t racist [and on the "do" list things that are].

You have some soul-searching to do and you need a little time away from the intense lights of the news cameras and scathing ink of the newspapers (not to mention new media, where you guys are getting crushed). Take a year. Maybe longer. We won’t forget you; in fact, we may start to miss you. We may long for the days where you made our jokes that much easier, and hope that you’ll be around the next time a Mel Gibson rant has us up in arms.

But when you reappear, those things won’t matter to you. You’ll be more prudent in your activism. You’ll earn our respect. Source

Just a suggestion.
Best regards,
Mychal Denzel Smith