Children running for class officer posts at a Mississippi public school are only allowed to compete for certain positions based on their race, according to a memo handed out last week to students.
The Nettleton Middle School elections are divided between offices pegged for black and white students, according to the memo, which was provided to TSG by a parent. The document was handed out to every student in the school’s sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, and it details the race requirements for each of four class officer spots (president, vice president, secretary-treasurer, and reporter).
Of the 12 offices for which students compete, eight are earmarked for white students (including the three class president spots), while four are termed “black” seats. Middle school administrators have not returned TSG phone calls, so it is unclear how this policy was established, or whether the number of offices apportioned for each race changes annually. Additionally, it is unknown how children who are not black or white would run for student government offices.
Students seeking class office were directed to return their election applications, complete with the petition signatures of 10 classmates, to science teacher Jenny Payne by August 24. The Nettleton middle school has about 400 students, and about 72 percent are white, according to a source familiar with the school board’s operation. The majority of the remaining students are black.
The city of Nettleton has a population of 2013 and is located 15 miles south of Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis Presley. The middle school’s policy was first reported this week by Suzy Richardson, who operates Mixed and Happy, a blog about mixed-race families.
Suzy Richardson is to the point over at her blog – as we all should be. Email the presidential-wanna-be governor of Mississippi, Hayley Barbour – governor@governor.state.ms.us – and tell him to get his butt on the phone to the racist fools running the schools in Nettleton.
Suggest they join up with the United States of America.
A 24-year old teacher did this, I bet.
Upon clicking through, the Superintendent is reviewing the process. 24-year old is about to lose job…
So…
The 28% of the students who are black are guaranteed 33% of the positions.
Funny (but not surprising) that Eideard would think this to be racist.
A good right-winger would consider it to be affirmative action.
Bad either way.
(What exactly does the 6th grade vice-president do anyway?)
Has anyone considered that white/black refers to something other than race? While I’m happy to grab the torches and pitchforks, I’d like to be sure first.
We’re talking about Mississippi here.
If it was California, Mass, Vermont or some other civilized state it would be more of a shock.
If “historically” the blacks never ran or won office then any affirmative action for them would be racially warm and fuzzy?
Numbers never tell the important part of any story.
History.
Just curious:
If the proportions had been reversed, with the class president spots reserved for blacks – would that also be considered racism? Or is that affirmative action?
This is either:
A) a Hoax
B) out of context
C) …no…no way this can be real…
It has been the general practice at the 50/50 white/black high school I attended that homecoming queen (who is elected by the football team) is black one year and white the next. This has been going on for at least the last 35 years and has never been a problem.
The attendants and there are 4 are evenly split white and black so every year 3/5ths of the court is either white or black and generally everyone knows that the first attendant is pretty much the co-homecoming queen.
“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I think our class president in Texas was black. He happened to get more votes than the white person running that year.
Ridiculous that we are still using skin color to determine race when skin color isn’t even the first thing we look at when determining race. For instance, Asians have whiter skin than whites, but we are taught that they have yellow skin.
Ridiculous that we are still using race to separate people into groups. We should concentrate on teach individual’s character. “Race, however, has no official biological taxonomic significance — all humans belong to the same hominid subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens. Nor is there scientific basis for any racial or ethnic hierarchy.” -Wikipedia on Race
Besides, whoever got elected based on those conditions would only get the job because of race, not because they are the best.
As read on another site;
Why do 20 % of americans call Obama a muslim?
Because they can’t call him a nigger.
#10 asked, “Do you guys have a better way of doing it?”
Yes, pick the best person for the job regardless of skin color.
@3 LotsaLuck
“The 28% of the students who are black are guaranteed 33% of the positions. Funny (but not surprising) that Eideard would think this to be racist.”
Kinda missing the point like all racists aren’t ya? First of all, white or black it’s racists regardless (yes, even if blacks are ‘given’ more jobs). But the point is black people are ALLOWED to be President of the class…only white people can even run for that. So like in much of our history, sure there are jobs for blacks, just mind your place and sit in the back of the bus, but we’ll give you plenty (of lower) jobs.
Why were we GIVING jobs to white people anyway? They don’t like handouts and quotas. Most of the jobs are reserved for white only with a roughly equal % going to blacks. It would be anti-white racist IF some jobs were for blacks only and ALL of the rest were open to “free market” competition, but they were, most of the jobs were GIVEN to whites only.
Mississippi wants to continue back to the 17th Century. I heard that Hayley Barbour wants to make slavery legal again there. He believes it would bring businesses back to his state.
Somebody’s idea of ‘progressive’ in action.
The way that it worked was that the positions alternated between white and black every year, in order to give equal opportunity. So the VP would be black this year, but white next year, then back to black, and so on.
Good intentions, bad bad bad execution.
I guess they have no asian or hispanic students in that district.
The system has been stopped effective today after an emergency school board meeting.
#11 Correct.
And I WISH that americans get out of the 19th century soon and stop saying the amount of melanin is a race.
I’m SO tired of it.
Cursor_
http://jezebel.com/5623924/mississippi-school-reverses-its-race+specific-election-policy
#14 “Why were we GIVING jobs to white people anyway? They don’t like handouts and quotas.”
They are all the same, right?
Think about it.
I can’t even bring myself to read further into this, other than to notice the same percentages as #3. Smells like the left’s version of the Glenn Beck gets Van Jones fired silliness.
This is the kind of political correctness that has spoiled our society.
Thanks for the article.
For confused foreigners: to engender enthusiasm in the democratic election process schools perform play elections for student representatives. Children vote for other children who they do not particularly like or admire, to a school presidential office without power or henchmen. Coup d’etat, followed by executions of elected representatives, takes place in second school term.
#5, Really? Aren’t you a loyal Democrat? The party that has a strict policy of maintaining strict racial and minority quotas for all of its convention representatives, so it can brag about how “diverse” it is?
>superintendent Russell Taylor acknowledged that the school system is “growing in ethnic diversity and that the classifications of Caucasian and African-American no longer reflect our entire student body.” Future elections, he added, “will be monitored to help ensure that this change in process and procedure does not adversely affect minority representation in student elections.
So does this response satisfy you?
The best of these stories was I believe a Detroit school that had a Miss Africa pageant and the last year is was ever held was the year the only African born girl in the school had won, of course she was ethnically ‘white’ so that made it wrong.
But wait — Glenn Beck’s chalkboard proved that there is no more racism against blacks in America — only against whites.
I love that the right-wing idiots on this board actually think you ought not have colorblind elections.
“Hey, how can we let redheads be president and vice-president when only .03% of the school has red hair?”
The idiocy of the right wing is truly astonishing. Is there any length they won’t go to deny their pathological racism?
Well this IS Mississippi we are talking about here..
I’ve been there, so I’m not that surprised. I did find more mixed couples there on the last trip so there is still some hope for them.
#27
Racism, the raison d’être of the righteous democrat. It fuels their politics of division.
If your mixed race, can you run for all posts, or none?
>> chuck said, on August 27th, 2010 at 10:07 am
>> If the proportions had been reversed, with the class president spots reserved for blacks – would that also be considered racism? Or is that affirmative action?
You really don’t understand the whole point of affirmative action, do you?
It’s not about quotas — it about leveling the playing field which has been grossly stacked against minorities.