Reporter: ‘Our Neighborhood Schools’ Code for ‘White’
The assumptions some folks on the left make never cease to amaze. For instance, if whites leave loud, dirty, and expensive cities for quieter, cleaner, and cheaper suburbs, they’re racists. If they remove their children from mediocre government schools and send them to better government schools, they’re racists. If taxpayers in low-crime areas oppose Section 8 housing in their neighborhood, they’re racists.
Are racial minorities racist when they do the same thing?
Hartford Courant reporter Rick Green implies that Republicans are sending coded messages to “white folks like” him. The Republican Board of Education, which opposes government discrimination and preferential treatment, is targeting like-minded voters. The board’s goal is to appeal to parents of any color who oppose racial bean-counting and sending their kids to schools across town to satisfy someone’s idea of skin deep-only diversity.
Green quotes two men who support and oppose such practices. Supporter John Brittain, who led a desegregation case, said “our neighborhood schools” is code aimed directly at white people.
The Center for Equal Opportunity’s Roger Clegg commented on the post:
“Well, if children are assigned to schools on the basis of race, that IS racial discrimination (and the Supreme Court did strike down such racial balancing in the Seattle and Louisville cases). And if ‘neighborhood schools’ is a ‘code word’ for the preservation of whiteness, what phrase would be better to convey the fact that many (most) parents prefer that their kids go to nearby schools? I suspect that whatever phrase is chosen, those who want racial balancing will criticize it as code-worded racism.”
What irritates me about white liberals like Green is their assumption that all racial minorities support so-called desegregation efforts and have no problem sending their children across town. One commenter writes:
“I love it when idiots like Brittain claim real words/phrases are code words for sinister purposes…As a minority, I want my children to go to our neighborhood schools. The idea my children might be shipped across town so that white students can see what a Mexican kid looks like is disgusting to me.”
More like him, please.
The racial balancing issue has more to do with misplaced white guilt and coercion than concern for minority kids. It is my fervent wish that more minority parents speak out against such condescending practices. In the U.S., people have a right to live wherever they wish and for whatever reason. If this right results in taxpayers of a certain color flocking to districts with better schools, so be it.
The government has no business barring children from certain schools based on the color of their skin. Local lawmakers (and judges) should (re)read Brown v. Board of Education.
