Fifty-five years after Brown v. Board, Mississippi county schools ordered to stop school segregation

[Mass]

My son is studying the Civil Right Movement in HS. I guess this will be a good reminder for him that you should never consider a fight as closed.

:eyes:
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/13/mississippi-segregation/

Fifty-five years after Brown v. Board, Mississippi county schools ordered to stop school segregation.
Today, a federal court ordered a county in Walthall County in Mississippi to “stop segregating its schools by grouping African American students into all-black classrooms and allowing white students to transfer to the county’s only majority-white school.” From the Justice Department’s press release:

“More than 55 years after Brown v. Board of Education, it is unacceptable for school districts to act in a way that encourages or tolerates the resegregation of public schools,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “We will take action so that school districts subject to federal desegregation orders comply with their obligation to eliminate vestiges of separate black and white schools.”

According to the motion, the district’s practice of permitting hundreds of students — the vast majority whom are white — to attend schools outside their assigned residential attendance zone without restriction prompted a disproportionate number of white students to attend a single school in the district, leaving a number of other schools disproportionately black.

Indeed, evidence in the case suggested that the community regarded certain schools in the district as “white schools” or “black schools.” The United States also asserted that officials in certain district schools grouped, or “clustered,” white students together in particular classrooms, resulting in large numbers of all-black classes at every grade level in those schools.

After being confirmed as attorney general, Eric Holder said that he would make sure the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division return to its traditional role of pushing “high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly.” During the Bush administration, officials — who were hired for their “strong conservative credentials” rather than their civil rights experience — “discouraged such tactics.”

[Orrex]

1. What we need is a month specifically to remember the glory days of the Confederacy

I wish I could say that this story surprises me. Sickens, yes. Surprises? Not so much.

[political_Dem]

2. It doesn't surprise me in the least.

That's why a person cannot sweep the negative residue from the Confederacy under the rug. The moment it is "conveniently forgotten" to put a more benign, rosy picture in place, one allows covert racism to flourish like a malignant cancer.

You cannot even look the other way when things this heinous rise to the surface.

But of course, we must treat those confederate traitors as recognized heroes. And we must be forced to forget what their caustic actions have caused on not only Black folks, but all people of color. :sarcasm:

[DearAbby]

3. K&R

[pampango]

4. From the WaPo link in the story: "white students would have represented 31 percent of students, up

from 22 percent".

"Overall, Walthall County's six schools serve about 2,500 students, 64 percent of them black and 35 percent white." (Whereas the county population is majority white - 54/45, so a lot of white families are avoiding the public schools there.)

""District administrators group, or 'cluster,' disproportionate numbers of white students into designated classrooms . . . resulting in significant numbers of segregated, all-black classrooms at each grade level," the judge wrote, summarizing the Justice Department lawyers' case. The court also ordered Tylertown schools to stop using race in classroom assignments "in a manner that results in racial segregation of students," adopting instead random, computer-generated assignments in most cases.

The Walthall County School District did not file a response to the case, Lee wrote in approving the government's desegregation plan."

"According to county data requested by the U.S. Justice Department in 2007, Walthall County schools allowed transfers that made the racial composition of Salem's student body "fifteen percent more white" in the 2007-08 school year, or 66 percent instead of 51 percent. If the transferred students stayed at Tylertown schools, white students would have represented 31 percent of students, up from 22 percent."

Sounds like the Salem school would be 51/49 white/black (rather than the actual 66/33), if they just used residential attendance zones, and the Tylertown schools would be 69/31 black/white (rather than the actual 77/22). That is certainly a problem, but the bigger issue seems to me to be the segregation of students within each school so that classes are effectively all-white or all-black.)

[Brewman_Jax]

5. The past isn't dead

it isn't even past, like Faulkner said. We need a confederate history month to remember? Why? it's obvious that too many haven't forgotten. Those of us that aren't white are reminded of it--all the fucking time. :(

[slackmaster]

6. My cousin and his wife raised three sons in Topeka, and have an interesting perspective on it

Their boys were subjected to forced integration, which the family saw as ironic. Both parents are 1/8 Cherokee, therefore so are their sons, making them eligible for some benefits. But they were forced to go to schools way across town because they were treated as "white" by the school district.

The real kicker from my cousin's point of view is that the reason Brown went to court in the first place was that the plaintiffs wanted their daughter to go to a school very close to her home, but she was denied admission because it was a white-only school.