Can institutionalizing racism to solve a ‘racism’ problem really work?

The Minneapolis, Minnesota, school system has a big problem. According to Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson and the Justice Department, the vast majority of its 2,300 teachers are racists.

To solve this problem, Johnson says the district must implement racism against white and Asian students. It is part of President Barack Obama and the Justice Department’s new protocols to combat racism.

But does it really make sense to try to solve a perceived racism problem in teachers by institutionalizing racism against innocent students? Does using racism to solve any kind of problem make sense?

Here’s what is happening: Black students in Minneapolis schools are 10 times more likely than white and Asian students to be suspended.

According to the Justice Department and Bernadeia Johnson, there is no explanation for this except blatant racism. The stats, they say, prove it: Black students are suspended at rates far higher than their proportional population. Ergo the statistical analysis shows that teachers are racists even though Asian students are suspended at lower rates than whites. Further evidence provided by the Justice Department is the fact that investigators found examples in schools across America where a black student was treated more harshly than a white student for a similar infraction.

“This is at a crisis level,” said Liz Keenan, a special education programs director in neighboring St. Paul. “We can’t keep ignoring the fact that racially driven practices are occurring every day in school systems that are not benefiting our kids of color. … We can’t keep saying we didn’t know when we have the data right in front of us.”

The Justice Department says that either the school district remedies the situation or it will be targeted for legal prosecution.

Thus Bernadeia Johnson’s announcement on November 7 that black students will no longer be suspended or expelled for the same violations as whites and Asians. Instead, any proposed suspension will be personally reviewed by her and she will decide if the student really should be expelled. “This will begin with a 25 percent reduction in disproportionality by the end of this school year; 50 percent by 2016; 75 percent by 2017; and 100 percent by 2018,” she said. This will be done by keeping black students in the classes where they belong.

How absolutely ridiculous.

If someone came right out and clearly said that for every white child disciplined the school needed to discipline a black child based on their relative populations, people would think it was a horrible joke.

Yet that is exactly what the Justice Department and the Minneapolis school district is implementing—racial quotas on discipline.

If you are not convinced of the ludicrousness of this policy, consider what it would be like if we carried this kind of thinking to the justice system. Forty-three percent of inmates are black even though they only make up 13 percent of the population. That means blacks are six times more likely to go to jail than whites. Is that evidence of racism? If it is, should it be fixed by not prosecuting black criminals? Maybe there are certain crimes that black people should be allowed to commit? Or maybe they should be given a quota of free passes before being prosecuted.

Most people would reject that solution, and rightly so—because it doesn’t solve the problem. Turning a blind eye to crime doesn’t make it go away. People realize that for society to properly function there needs to be one law for all and that law needs to be enforced.

Yet many people seem to be OK with selectively applying the law to white and Asian students only. Bernadeia Johnson argues that suspending black students from schools lowers their graduation rates, and predisposes them to a life of crime, increasing the chance that they will go to jail. She sincerely thinks allowing students to get away with infractions will help them.

Sadly, she is actually making it more likely these students will have problems later in life.

Consider: Does removing students from the consequences of their actions make them more or less likely to think they are special and that the law doesn’t apply to them? Would it make them more or less likely to refuse to get out of the road and walk on the sidewalk when asked by an officer? Would it make them more or less likely to think they can rob a convenience store without consequences? That they can shoplift and then accuse law enforcement officers of trying to “Michael Brown” them when simply asked to produce a receipt (see video).

Man accuses police officer of trying to “Michael Brown” him when asked to produce a receipt.

Many people are up in arms about the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Thousands of people have protested, rioted, burned buildings and looted stores over their deaths. But both Michael Brown and Eric Garner would be alive today if they just complied with police officer’s directions. Had they not felt that the law didn’t apply to them (by robbing a store and refusing to stop street-vending cigarettes) they would both be alive.

All they had to say was “Yes sir” and follow instructions.

Does teaching students that the law doesn’t apply to them make them more or less likely to be the next Michael Brown or Eric Garner?

Disturbingly, increasing numbers of America’s intellectuals seem to think that there should be two laws for blacks and whites. For instance, in 2008, President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Sotomayor controversially believes that when determining what a crime is and the penalty for it, a judge should take into consideration the race and cultural background of the offender. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” she famously said.

Seriously? Judges should take race into consideration when determining what a crime is and the penalty?

I thought that was the definition of racism? Treating people differently because of their race.

Look where this thinking has taken us. Now we have school superintendents taking race into consideration when determining what constitutes a suspendable offense.

Implementing racism will never solve a racism problem.

But it can make it worse.

Seventy-three percent of all black children are born into broken families.

What do you think it will do in those schools when students see kids from different races being treated differently by the superintendent by virtue of being part of a special race? And the kids will notice.

If we want to solve the problem in America’s schools, we need to get to the cause of the problem.

If President Obama and the Justice Department want to deal in statistics, here is one they should consider: Seventy-three percent of all black children are born into broken families.

Read that again. That is horrific.

In many cases these single-parent homes really function like zero-parent homes. Dad is out of the picture and mom is at work trying to financially support the family. And even when mom is around, she is dealing with more children, from more fathers, than her white or Asian counterpart. Is it really such a mystery that children in black households have more behavioral and academic problems? The two people who are supposed to teach and love them the most simply aren’t there.

As Charles Murray says in his book Coming Apart—The State of White America:

No matter what the outcome being examined—the quality of the mother-infant relationship … aggression, delinquency, and hyperactivity … delinquency in adolescence, criminality as adults, illness and injury in childhood, early mortality, sexual decision making in adolescence, school problems and dropping out, emotional health or any other measure of how well or poorly children do in life—the family structure that produces the best outcomes for children, on average, are two biological parents who remain married. … I know of no other set of important findings that are as broadly accepted by social scientists who follow the technical literature, liberal as well as conservative, and yet are so resolutely ignored by network news programs, editorial writers for the major newspapers, and politicians of both major political parties.

Meanwhile, the number of children of all races living in broken homes relentlessly increases every year.

So instead of arguing that tests like the S.A.T. and standardized testing in general are racist because black students perform worse on them than whites or Asians, we need to focus on fixing families.

Instead of trying to force universities to reject qualified white students in favor of unqualified black students just to meet race-based enrollment quotas, why not actually help black students succeed in schools by addressing our pandemic of broken families?

If we don’t, the racial insanity will continue until it tears this country apart. Two years ago, Virginia and Washington, D.C., announced racial targets for how many students must pass in order for schools to remain in good standing. In Virginia, for example, only 45 percent of black students in each school must pass standardized math tests while 68 percent of whites and 82 percent of Asians must do the same. How is this fair?

Racism doesn’t fix anything.

Maybe there are some few racists among Minneapolis teachers—but even if there are, that is not the main problem in that school district. The greater problem by far is the actual reason why so many black students are struggling in school. More than three out of four come from broken families.

Broken homes, broken students, broken schools—broken lives—it really is as simple as that.

Until America’s families are fixed, all of America’s students will continue to suffer. Pretending that behavior problems don’t exist and are simply in the imaginations of a bunch of racist teachers will only make things worse.

Racism—no matter the goal—is never a solution to any problem.

Watch this situation closely because the Bible’s prophecies speak plainly of racial discord gripping America in our day. They are explained in editor in chief Gerald Flurry’s recent Trumpet article “Where America’s Race Riots Are Leading.”

Understand: God does not take sides in the race issue. He condemns the hatred of any person because of their color. The truth of the Bible is that God’s plan includes all people. God “will have all men [and women] to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). You can read about this plan in Herbert W. Armstrong’s book Mystery of the Ages.