Mississippi middle school separates class elections by race

[roomthreeseventeen]

Holy cow.

You would think this was the Onion, but it's not.

 

[padams]

 

[FireDancer]

That is an odd throwback to Jim Crow. I find it pretty disturbing.

 

[mhsjax]

I had to read the article. I thought for sure that maybe you had temporarily lost you vision or maybe forgotten how to read. I mean how could this type of thing still be going on?

It is crap like this that gives people in the south a bad reputation.

 

[punkin]

Does this middle school feed into the high school that holds segregated proms? What year do these people think it is? 1952?

 

[Tinkh]

This is just ridiculous and sad.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Alrighty then.

So are they saying the race you must be in order to run?

 

[MM27]

Wow, I wonder what kind of explanation they are going to offer on this one.

 

[PatsMom]

Talk about affirmative action gone mad! The intent appears to be to make sure black students are represented (school is 72% white). Just totally unbelievable to me in this day and age that a school could have a racial requirement for a class officer!

 

[Magic Mom]

That's bizarre.

 

[I Am What I Am]

I read this and my jaw just dropped.

I just..ugh.

 

[vroomagain]

They told me that they "Go by the mother's race b/c with minorities the father isn't generally in the home."

 

[I Am What I Am]

They told me that they "Go by the mother's race b/c with minorities the father isn't generally in the home."

That's what really shocked/angered me.

 

[disneyjunkie]

crazy, crazy, crazy

 

[LukenDC]

I'm stunned that something like this could be happening in America in 2010.

 

[Deb in IA]

What I find most incredulous is that this was JUST NOW being discussed.

Have people just been OK with this all along?????

 

[SAHDad]

I'm stunned that something like this could be happening in America in 2010.

The sad part is that news like this doesn't surprise me at all. A few years back, I saw a quote along the lines of "In thirty years, we've gone from exclusion to exclusivity*." And it was said as proof of progress. We've somehow decided that, in the name of "fairness", we have to reserve certain places, to be filled only by the appropriate gender/ethnicity/whatever. We don't care about equality of opportunity it seems, but rather equality of results.


* I believe it was said by Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon with an official bib. Bobbi Gibb did it first though.

 

[MushyMushy]

I was reading this and thinking that there's got to be another explanation and that people were just misunderstanding -- like maybe this middle school is like my kid's middle school and they have different colored teams or something (like each grade is broken down into red/black teams... not sure why).

But I did a little more digging and found it on ABC: http://abcnews.go.com/US/miss-middl...udents-running-class/story?id=11498343&page=1



I just don't know what to say about this. It's heinous! Evil. Every single person who has had a hand in keeping this practice alive in this school district should be fired.

 

[DWGal210]

Just ridiculous. Horrible.

And the mother brought up a good point; what about the kids of mixed race? Go with the race of the mother?!?! Good lord!!

 

[FireDancer]

Just ridiculous. Horrible.

And the mother brought up a good point; what about the kids of mixed race? Go with the race of the mother?!?! Good lord!!

And what if the mother is of mixed race, then what? It is not only unacceptable for the year 2010 but isn't even really thought out very well.

Of course I also think telling people whom they can and can't marry is unacceptable for the year 2010 so I shouldn't be all that surprised that this kind of thing goes on.