Racial Quota Punishment

2512878_origIf anyone still has any doubt about the utter cynicism of the Obama administration, a recent agreement between the federal government and the Minneapolis Public Schools should open their eyes.

Under the Obama administration, both the Department of Education and the Department of Justice have been leaning on public schools around the country to reduce what they call the “disproportionate” numbers of black male students who are punished for various offenses in schools.

Under an implicit threat of losing their federal subsidies, the Minneapolis Public Schools have agreed to reduce the disparity in punishment of black students by 25 percent by the end of this school year, and then by 50 percent, 75 percent and finally 100 percent in each of the following years. In other words, there are now racial quota limits for punishment in the Minneapolis schools.

If we stop and think — as old-fashioned as that may seem — there is not the slightest reason to expect black males to commit the same number of offenses as Asian females or any other set of students.

When different groups of human beings have behaved differently in all sorts of ways, in countries around the world, for thousands of years of recorded history, why would we accept as dogma that the only reason one set of students gets punished more than others is because the people who are doing the punishing are picking on them?

Politically — which is the way the Obama administration looks at everything — any time they can depict blacks as victims, and depict themselves as their rescuers, that means an opportunity to get out the black vote for Democrats.

On the surface, this may look like a favor to blacks. But only on the surface.

Anyone with common sense knows that letting a kid get away with bad behavior is an open invitation to worse behavior in the future. Punishing a kid for misbehavior in school when he is 10 years old may reduce the chances that he will have to be sent to prison when he is 20 years old.

Other schools in other cities, which have also caved under pressure from the federal government, and agreed to lighten up on black kids who misbehave, have reported an increase in misbehavior, including violence.

Who would have thought otherwise?

Letting kids who are behavior problems in schools grow up to become hoodlums and then criminals is no favor to them or to the black community. Moreover, it takes no more than a small fraction of troublemakers in a class to make it impossible to give that class a decent education. And for many poor people, whether black or white, education is their one big chance to escape poverty.

The people in the Obama administration who are pushing this counterproductive policy are not stupid. They are political, which is worse. They know what they are doing and they are willing to sacrifice young blacks to do it.

This punishment issue made me think back to the 8th grade, when I was punished by being kept after school, more often than any other kid in the class — black, white, Hispanic or whatever. I was bored in school and did various pranks to liven things up.

One day, after school, as I sat alone among the empty chairs in the classroom, the teacher said, sarcastically: “Well, here we are again, Sowell, just the two of us!”

“Good grief, Miss Sharoff,” I said. “If we keep staying in after school together all the time, people will begin to talk.”

“We will just have to live with the scandal,” she said, without even looking up from the papers she was correcting.

Thank heaven there was no Obama administration to exempt me from punishment. Who knows how I might have ended up?

Years ago, there was a study of a working class community where there were black, Hispanic and Italian kids, and where many of the cops were Italian. When a black or Hispanic kid broke the law, the police took him down to the station and booked him. But, if an Italian kid did the same thing, they reacted differently.

The Italian cop would take the Italian kid out into an alley and rough him up. Then he would take him home to his family, tell them what had happened and leave him there — where the kid could expect another beating, instead of the wrist-slap punishment of the law. Those cops understood the realities of life that politicians ignore. And they were doing a favor to their own.

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  • truebearing

    Beautifully written. This sums it all up so efficiently. Black leftists are consigning young blacks to a life of prison, violence, poverty, and an early death…and they couldn’t care less.

    The injustice to black kids is immense, but so is the injustice to every other kid forced to go to a school with no way of controlling bad behavior. Everyone loses in this scenario except the evil scum that are willing to consume endless numbers of human lives as fuel for their ideological steamroller.

    • Bamaguje

      Black kids already lag behind in educational achievement.
      Obama’s dumbing down of disciplining disruptive Back kids will only worsen that ugly situation.
      He is a traitor to his own race… for those who consider him “Black.”

      • Lightbringer

        He is a traitor to his own race for those who consider him “human”, too.

  • http://johnnyangeladvocacygroup.net JohnnyAngel Advocacy Group

    Obviously Tom Sowell is correct….again. Until the majority of the black population recognizes or stops rationalizing behavior as the problem away, ONLY more problems will arise. The fact that Obama & his minions trade on this destructive policy is beyond shameful, it’s criminal !! Leading these kids to jail and a continuing life of poverty or worse should be trumpeted by the so-called “rescuers” of the Left, Hollywood and the Rap music industry as completely destructive to young black males and hence, black females. Where are the women’s “care” groups ? Where are the Rev. Wrights of the world ? NOWHERE and that’s the crime !!

  • kasandra

    Dr. Sowell nails it again. So if black students commit a disproportionate amount of misconduct relative to their percentage of the school population, and get punished accordingly, it’s racism. What a brave new world. I’m sure none of the people responsible for this policy attended racially integrated public schools.

    • Lightbringer

      More to the point, the children of the people responsible for this and other idiotic policies do not have to sit in classrooms with troublemakers.

    • A Disqus User

      When we have: Africa for Africans, Asia for Asians, White Countries for EVERYBODY, what do we have over periods of time?

      We have fewer and fewer White children

      When we mix more and more non-Whites with fewer and fewer Whites in the same living space?

      In time, White extinction. Its genocide because this doesn’t happen by
      chance. It is being forced upon Whites just like a rapist does not take
      no for an answer

      How is this not White geNOcide?

      Anti-racist is a code for anti-white

      • cxt

        I suspect you need more tin-foil to crush up into your hat.

        Clearly the EM waves are getting through.

        • http://stopwhitegenocide.com/ Bruce Wayne

          Buzz off, anti-White!

  • Joe Esposito

    Thank you Mr Sowell for letting your readers know how millions of uneducated, illiterate immigrants from Italy can go from laborers to Doctors, lawyers, and governors in less than 3 generations. Hard work, tough love and discipline was the formula. Proud to be an American with Italian roots..

    • Bamaguje

      If only the Al-Sharptons, Eric Holders, Obamas and other blame-Whitey charlatans could get the message.

  • Paul of Alexandria

    The hallmark of the Progressive: intentions, feelings,perceptions are all; reality doesn’t matter. They don’t care about finding ways to persuade blacks and minorities to fit into society better. They only care about perceived equality.

  • ArentIpretty

    The left wants to keep the black community in a perpetual state of decay. Once anyone succeeds and has something to lose, they are no longer under the delusion of the left.

    • UCSPanther

      You see it on Indian Reserves as well. Anyone who wants to make something of their lives often have to leave, and those who do often do not have very flattering things to say about the culture there.

      One can say that it is no different with ghettos…

  • notme123

    so does this mean they can beat up their teachers, like shown on H-Y the other night. and they should be allowed to commit not so serious crimes, like the order given to police in Ferguson. What next……

  • marlene

    There is no “disparity.” More black students commit more offenses than whites in any given geographical area, not only where blacks are in the majority where it’s even more widespread, but even in areas where they have a considerable presence. No, this is about giving unconstitutional privileges to black students by taking away the constitutional rights of white students. Our constitution does NOT grant privileges. It grants equal rights for ALL or NO rights for any. If the foolishly ignorant school could have minimized the number of black offenses, they would have. Instead, they have sold us out to the tyranny of the federal government for the money. This isn’t even ideological – it’s blackmail. The federal government has perverted our constitutiion and abused its powers in order to benefit some at the expense of others. This is what turns us against each other and this is what their agenda is all about. The state legislators MUST nullify this travesty. They have the duty, obligation and authority of their State constitution to intervene to make sure this repugnant action does not occur in our schools. Congress also has the constitutional power, under Article 1, Section 1 and the 25th Amendment to put an end to obama’s racial executive edicts. If not, it will begin to occur in every institution in our country. What kind of message are they giving to our future generation? It’s ugly, really ugly.

  • DennisMets

    all this does is tell blakcs it is ok to be bad

    • Bamaguje

      Being a good student is “acting White.”
      This is the same disturbing message of Ferguson… truant Blacks are never to be held accountable.
      So a black thug who assaults a police officer and gets killed becomes a hero… a martyr.

  • DennisMets

    this is not the solution and any idiot with a brain should see this, if there are teachers out there that are racist and giving unfair punishment to blacks they should be dealt with and the problem resolved giving blacks a free pass only lets them be more violent towards they hated whites

  • cxt

    Interesting point—not all “help” and “favors” look like it at the time.

  • reyol

    The civilian security force, just as powerful, just as well funded as the military mentioned at least twice when Obama was a presidential candidate – I wonder who is supposed to man this force? The undisciplined black youths? The non-English speaking Central American kids? The overweight, out-of-shape union workers? I’m just curious because it’s time for Obama to make his move. What kind of security force did he have in mind? Who among his supporters have the discipline to accomplish anything except for the campaign workers? They are undermining discipline so their supporters will only be capable of mob action along the lines of Ferguson / OWS.

  • tagalog

    In a school with very few black pupils, I would hate the be one of the black kids. If the school is a “proportionality” school, those poor black kids are going to get punished a LOT in order to insure proportionality. Likewise in reverse in a school with a small number of white pupils.

    I suppose at some point in this little play some legislator will receive complaints and propose legislation to segregate the schools. What will the U.S. Supreme Court do then? Reverse Brown v. Board of Education?

  • De Doc

    Sowell’s common sense approach ain’t that common these days!