The Teabaggers are a bunch of white cranks who really are nostalgic for the “good” old days, huh. For people who are so careful about denying any racism in their ranks, I’d say that fighting for segregation doesn’t do much to convince people otherwise:
Tea party groups have succeeded in reversing nationally praised school integration policies in Raleigh, North Carolina, decrying the longstanding system as one of social engineering.
The Washington Post reports that tea party pressure has motivated Wake County School District’s largely Republican school board to abolish policies the newspaper describes as “one of the nation’s most celebrated integration efforts.”
“Say no to the social engineers!” was one of their slogans.
The Post hails the existing system as a “rarity,” noting that some of the county’s “best, most diverse schools are in the poorest sections of this capital city. And its suburban schools, rather than being exclusive enclaves, include children whose parents cannot afford a house in the neighborhood.”
The school board is instead considering a system in which poor children are relegated to low-income neighborhood schools, moving away from its current policies where most schools have students from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds.
Critics have sharply denounced the new plans as a form of segregation, noting that poorer children are often minorities and arguing that the new tea party-backed ideas will lead to a new cycle of poverty for the less fortunate.
Chief among them is the NAACP, which has slammed the effort as discriminatory and a new type of racial segregation, and has filed a civil rights complaint in an effort to protect hundreds of students from having to transfer out of their schools.
“So far, all the chatter we heard from tea partyers has not manifested in actually putting in place retrograde policies,” NAACP president Ben Jealous told the Post. “But this is one place where they have literally attempted to turn back the clock.”
For them, the past never dies, it’s not even past.
This is the thing about these people: they never quit until they bet what they want. And even when they get what they want, they stand guard over it. They put up watch towers and shoot any threat that pokes its head over the horizon.
This is why the liberals always end up losing, even if they win. If they get some kind of little victory they have a party and then go home, expecting it to take care of itself. But the others, even if they lose, they go back to the swamp and lurk, waiting for a weakness to go back and attack again.
Regarding your video clip – I’m from the area. It made the local news around here, but not the national media soundbites, that the vast majority of that crowd (about 80%) were not from Wake County and were not from Raleigh. Apparently, they were brought in from around the state by the NAACP. Were they even parents?
If local black or minority parents wanted their children to continue being bused, why didn’t they attend or ask the NAACP to provide them transporation (as I’m sure they’d have been happy to do)? The school board meeting place, time, and date were widely publicized a few weeks in advance.
The fact is that segregation is a complex issue for which busing may not be the best answer. It just still seems to be the knee-jerk answer.
To follow up on this, the reason the school board brought the idea of a change to busing is because it’s EXPENSIVE to bus kids. And by the way, parents like local schools and kids don’t like long bus rides. The school board felt the money could be better spent retaining teachers.
Some tea bagger nuts may have tried to make a name for themselves on this issue, but I’d put that idea down to media hype.