REAL RACISM (CONT.)

This latest installment of real racism involves a high school in Virginia, which apparently thinks that handing academic achievements to students who have not earned them, based on their skin color and ancestry – thus depriving other students of academic achievements because they are the wrong skin color or ancestry – makes sense.

Does it?

The following is excerpted from Todd Starnes’ article for foxnews.com:

A Virginia high school sent a disturbing letter to parents and students announcing they would be selecting students for Advanced Placement and honors classes at least partly based on skin color.

Martin Luther King, Jr. must be turning over in his grave.

A parent forwarded me a copy of the letter sent from John Handley High School in Winchester.

“Through our collective work, advanced classes such as AP and Honors will have proportional representation,” read the letter. “Proportional representation is 40% White, 35% Hispanic, 12% African American, 10% mixed race.”

The letter went on to explain that public schools across the country “continue to see outcomes that are disproportionate by race and social class.”

“American demographic trends indicate that America will be a majority minority nation in the next 25 years,” the letter read. “Therefore, the new work of American public schools is to develop systems to address disparate outcomes.”

Interesting –  I thought the work of American public schools was to teach kids how to read, write, multiply and divide.

And in case you have trouble believing this could possibly happen, here, from another Starnes article, is a piece of the actual letter with the racial proportions written out:

Translation:  the geniuses running John Handley High School have decided to reward – and punish – students based specifically on their race and ethnicity.

Some questions for you:

-How would you feel if your child was academically an AP student, but denied entry into the AP class because his/her skin was the wrong color?  Would you be pleased that the academic status your child earned was taken away because of race?

-How would you feel if your child was put in an AP class because his/her skin was the right color?  Would you be pleased that your child was put into the class for this reason?  Would you expect other students in that class to see your child as an equal?  Would you expect your child to do as well as those students?  And who would you blame if he/she didn’t?   Would you expect the AP standards to be lowered or your child’s grade to be raised, to make up the difference?

-And how would you feel if your Black or Latino child did earn entry into the AP class, but other Black and Latino students were just handed it?  Would you expect people to wonder if your child was given a seat at that class he/she did not earn?  Would you blame them if they did?

Could this be stupider?  Could this be more racist?

The bottom line here is that John Handley High School is telling Black and Latino children, in so many words, that they do not have to achieve what White children achieve because, well, because they’re Black and Latino.

If the school  is out to tell its Black and Latino students it considers them inferior/in need of lower standards than White students, I doubt there’s a better way to do it.

Real Racism.  It comes in all forms from all sources.  No group is immune to it or from it.  Certainly not the faculty of a high school which operates on the premise that the way to bring us together is to separate us by race and ethnicity.