Blaming "White Privilege" For Black Behavior

Nobody likes discipling students. It’s unpleasant, but behavioral limits have to be defined and enforced. If that’s put off too long a teacher loses control of a classroom. Teachers can mete out consequences but sometimes students defy them, often with the support of parent(s). At that point, the teacher needs backup from an administrator, usually in the form of student suspension. That’s unpleasant for the administrator too, but if they back down under pressure and leave the teachers hanging, the whole school breaks down. I’ve seen it happen. When unacceptable behavior is not confronted it escalates. 

The same dynamic applies to a city. Police must enforce behavioral limits defined by government. If the police are not backed up by government, the whole city breaks down. America is watching that unfold across the country. Why? Because two Obama-appointed Attorneys General have injected race into the dynamic, both in our schools and in our cities.

Holder's "School-To-Prison Pipeline"

Last month, Theo Olson, a teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota was suspended because he described the above process on Facebook. Black Lives Matter, a group of racial agitators funded by George Soros, called him a racist even though Olson didn’t mention race in his post. Black Lives Matter met with the superintendent who then suspended Olson.

Attorney General Eric Holder engineered this whole mess. When teenaged thug Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Holder sent dozens of Justice Department employees to Ferguson to teach city officials about “White Privilege,” as if that were to blame for Brown getting shot. Then George Soros and other rich leftists sent millions to create Black Lives Matter, which they continue to fund generously.

To keep stoking the fire, Attorney General Holder then blamed white teachers for what he called a “school-to-prison pipeline.” According to Holder, white teachers overreact when black students misbehave causing more blacks to be suspended than whites. Then President Obama issued an Executive Order mandating racial quotas for school suspensions. Teachers around the country now get “White Privilege” instruction, including St. Paul, Minnesota.

On his Facebook page, Theo Olson posted: “Anyone care to explain to me the school-to-prison pipeline my colleagues and I have somehow created, or perpetuated, or not done enough to interrupt? Because if you can’t prove it, and campaigns you’ve waged to deconstruct adult authority in my building by enabling student misconduct, you seriously owe us real teachers an apology. Actually, an apology won’t cut it.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch

For daring to question the race-baiting policies of Holder and Obama on his private social media account, Olson got booted from his classroom. What about Olson’s First Amendment rights? Does feigned indignation from Black Lives Matter negate them? In St. Paul it does, apparently.

And it’s getting worse. Last week, Holder’s successor, Obama appointee Loretta Lynch, warned she will be applying the same policies to 6500 municipal courts across the country because they enforce the law too much on black violators. According to the New York Post: “A strongly worded ‘guidance’ letter, written by [Lynch’s] civil rights team, warns that a local court policy of enforcing warrants for failure to pay court fines and fees can have an adverse ‘disparate impact’ on African-Americans, who are fined and/or arrested for outstanding warrants at ‘disproportionate’ rates versus whites.

And why would it have a “disparate impact”? The Post article explains: “Federal data also show that blacks tend to break both felony and misdemeanor laws at a disproportionate rate. Even if applied evenly across all races and in neutral, color-blind fashion, such policies could be found by [Attorney General Lynch] to be discriminatory… This is the same dubious legal threat the administration is using to force the nation’s public schools to back off suspending unruly — even violent — black students.”

We can expect this latest Obama Administration initiative to work out as well as the others have. So far it’s just a warning from Lynch, but can we expect another executive order to follow as Obama did with our schools? Obama said he would use his phone and his pen as much as possible, so get ready.

It’s a good thing I’m not teaching in the public schools anymore or I’d likely be in Theo Olson’s shoes. I wouldn’t, however, meekly submit. Neither should he.