Okay, I’ve had a large glass of wine tonight and I’m up late reading the NY Times. Am I seeing things or does this article actually say that the Omaha, NE school districts have been resegregated to white, black and hispanic and that the measure has been signed into law by the governor.
The law, which opponents are calling state-sponsored segregation, has thrown Nebraska into an uproar, prompting fierce debate about the value of integration versus what Mr. Chambers [Nebraska’s only black state senator] calls a desire by blacks to control a school district in which their children are a majority.
Civil rights scholars call the legislation the most blatant recent effort in the nation to create segregated school systems or, as in Omaha, to resegregated districts that had been integrated by court order. Omaha ran a mandatory busing program from 1976 to 1999.
Yes, this can be seen as blacks and hispanics taking back control over their school districts in a predominantly white city. But I see this with national reprecussions where it will be used as a tool to resegregate.
Remember in 1948 when Strom Thurmond was nominated by the States Right Democratic Party standing on the platform that:
We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race…
The same Thurmond who gave a rousing speech during that 1948 campaign stating
I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.
The same Thurmond who spoke for over twenty-four hours in the longest filibuster [the old school way of just blowing hot air] ever on the Senate floor to try to derail the Civil Rights Act. Who will use this Omaha school districting to be our generation’s Strom Thurmond? Will it be Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel?
And as a side note, did anyone know that former Nebraska Cornhuskers football coach Tom Osborne is a Republican Congressman from NE-03?
I feel like I am going back in time 40 yrs these days.
‘Nuff said.
A bizarre story..it seems the majority only listen to an angry blackman when it leads to a stupid ending.
I think that wine’s hitting ya… it’s resegraGATED not resegraged 😉
I’ve seen Strom’s speech before and I still don’t get why the swimming pool was such a big deal. Or churches. I guess the churches is even more difficult to understand than the rest.
As for me personally, I like home schooling 😉
Pax
Cooties, Soj. As for the churches – NIMBYism. MY heaven can’t possibly accept that kind of people.
Lots of people’s versions of heaven don’t even include dogs, not to mention other people.
CANNOT SPELL. Drives me nuts.
But yeah, this is what they want. Keep pulling their money out of neighborhoods, using the property tax system to bolster white supremacy, using the real estate industry to enforce redlining, and all in all, resisting what is the law of the land. Then they’ll acquiesce out of frustration and anger to your point-of-view.
damn you wine! corrected.
In DeKalb county, next to the city of Atlanta, the rising black middle-class flocked together in new subdivisions on the south side. On the north side of the county, older neighborhoods remained more rather than less white. So there were lots of buses running back and forth to balance classrooms. The schools on the more affluent southside were newer and better staffed. The black parents were tired of their children spending hours on buses, wanted neighborhood schools that were more convenient for them, went to court and got neo-segregation. At the time, I just gasped at the irony of it all.
Thanks for the info. I wonder where else this is happening or has already happened.
Here’s a blog that includes information about one of its supporters.
http://www.prometheus6.org/node/12467
Jonathan Kozol’s new book, “The Shame of the Nation”, deals with the resegregation of schools nationally.
Even in NYC where the population is very diverse, individual schools tend to be ethnically uniform.
Ernie Chambers is a very smart guy and he may feel it is better to gain control of some of the schools and admit to the fact that the segregation is not going to be solved, rather than having the issue ignored and the power of the minorities diluted by having a central administration. I think it shows a mixture of desperation and pragmatism.
I don’t think it will stand up to a court challenge, however. This may be the intent, as a way to draw attention to the present unfair system.
I think it will stand up to a Supreme Court challenge, and this type of law will be used as a tool to turn the clock back 50 years. You already know that Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito will vote for. They only need one more Justice who decides that its okay in this case because the minorities want it. One more Bush appointee and the entire Warren/Brennan legacy will be wiped away. The only positive I see is that Bush probably doesn’t have enough political capital left to get any nominee through the process, let alone an extremist.