Lack of School Discipline: Politically Correct Victimization of Poor and Black Students

We are not used to anybody in Milwaukee electronic media having the time or the resources to do real investigative journalism, so we are really impressed with this:



The politically correct liberals and the black activists who pander to them (like former Attorney General Eric Holder) like to pretend that black students are the victims of racist and excessively harsh school discipline.

The Departments of Justice and Education have explicitly embraced a “disparate impact” standard for judging racial discrimination. If any policy affects white and blacks to a different degree, that is presumed to be evidence of discrimination. The implicit assumption, in this case, is that black students and white students misbehave in equal numbers. But this is absurd. As Heather Mac Donald explains:

The feds have reached their conclusions, however, without answering the obvious question: Are black students suspended more often because they misbehave more? [Secretary of Education] Arne Duncan, of all people, should be aware of inner-city students’ self-discipline problems, having headed the Chicago school system before becoming secretary of education. Chicago’s minority youth murder one another with abandon. Since 2008, more than 530 people under the age of 21 have been killed in the city, mostly by their peers, according to the Chicago Reporter; virtually all the perpetrators were black or Hispanic. In 2009, the widely publicized beating death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert by his fellow students sent Duncan hurrying back to the Windy City, accompanied by Attorney General Eric Holder, to try to contain the fallout in advance of Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics (see “Chicago’s Real Crime Story,” Winter 2010). Between September 2011 and February 2012, 25 times more black Chicago students than white ones were arrested at school, mostly for battery; black students outnumbered whites by four to one. . . . So when Duncan lamented, upon the release of the 2012 discipline report, that “some of the worst [discipline] discrepancies are in my hometown of Chicago,” one could only ask: What does he expect?

Nationally, the picture is no better. The homicide rate among males between the ages of 14 and 17 is nearly ten times higher for blacks than for whites and Hispanics combined. Such data make no impact on the Obama administration and its orbiting advocates, who apparently believe that the lack of self-control and socialization that results in this disproportionate criminal violence does not manifest itself in classroom comportment as well.

In this, as in so many things, the white liberals and affluent black race hustlers have the huge luxury of avoiding the chaos their racial policies create. Ensconced in affluent suburbs, or in trendy urban neighborhoods with their kids in selective public schools, magnet schools or private schools, they can feel really good about their quest for racial justice. Other people’s kids (mostly poor and black) have to suffer the chaos.

The story is not new, even in the Wisconsin context, but such a good radio documentary is a surprise.

Which brings us to Producer Dan O’Donnell. He has been, for a while, second banana to Mark Belling at WISN radio, filling in occasionally and doing the news. While he may not be a candidate to displace the very talented Belling as an on-air personality (nor any other of Milwaukee’s excellent radio talkers), we expect this documentary to gain him some attention. Is there some media organization (perhaps a TV station in a larger market) that wants somebody to do long-form documentaries and investigative pieces?

We would not be surprised to see Dan O’Donnell moving up.