OPINION:
Liberals have panicked since America’s top tribunal decided last month, 6-3, that racial preferences in college admissions are unconstitutional.
“The Supreme Court ruling has put a giant roadblock in our country’s march toward racial justice,” complained Democratic Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York.
Former first lady Michelle Obama moaned: “Today, my heart breaks for any young person out there who’s wondering what their future holds — and what kinds of chances will be open to them.”
Such condescension is, itself, racist. Assuming that minority children need racial preferences declares being Black or Hispanic a handicap. Many minority applicants can enter universities, elite and otherwise, on their merits. To dispute this is to say that their skin color alone reflects insufficient brains to gain race-neutral acceptance to college. Thinking so little of Black and brown kids is racist.
That said, the “systemic racism” scarecrow does not target millions of minority children. Rather, these kids endure systemic ignorance — namely, government schools that leave their minds empty while incinerating tax dollars.
Given their massive disservice to Black and brown boys and girls, these “schools” might as well be run by David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. In reality, these kids are oppressed in disproportionately Black, Democratic-run cities. Bull Connor could only fantasize about the devastation that these leftists heap on their own people:
• According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, eighth graders in government schools in Albuquerque, New Mexico, last year were 21% proficient in reading and 17% in mathematics. In Baltimore: 15% reading and 8% math. Cleveland: 10% reading; 7% math. Detroit: 5% reading; 4% math.
Democrats cannot blame MAGA Republicans. In those locales, they are rarer than black rhinos.
• At least 18 of Chicago’s government schools have zero ninth through 12th graders proficient in reading or math — not even one.
• Poverty alone does not explain this chalkboard bungle. As the Illinois-based Wirepoints think tank reported, in 2017, Chicago Public Schools spent $15,822 per student. By 2023, that figure was $29,206 — up 84.6%. Simultaneously, Black students’ reading proficiency jumped off the Willis Tower, from 18% to 10% — 44%.
In Chicago, you spend more. But remember: You get less!
If Black and brown kids — who previously would have reached college via their melanin — must now rely on their merits, then America damn well better prepare them. The Supreme Court decision boosts the urgency for school choice, educational excellence, high expectations, and a rejection of mediocrity and its advocates: teachers unions.
Parents, students and voters must demand that per-pupil taxpayer dollars follow students to the best schools available — public, private, secular, parochial, and at home. K-12 schools should compete for those dollars, just as universities wrestle for parental savings and students’ Pell Grants and college loans.
Radical teachers must abandon their obsession with stoking racial division and stirring students’ sexual feelings. Instead, the entire focus must be reading, writing, and computing in service to postsecondary readiness.
And students uninterested in college should prime themselves for vocational school, in which there is much promise and no dishonor.
Tutors, mentors and after-school programs should help. Consider the Harlem Educational Activities Fund. This model nonprofit spurns excuses. Its motto: “Every child can learn.”
Among the low-income, minority students who join this college-preparatory and cultural-enrichment initiative, 100% graduate from high school, and 83% earn baccalaureates within six years, versus an average 42% for Hispanics and 37% for Blacks nationwide.
Also, some Black kids denounce as race traitors other Black students who do their homework, participate in class, and speak proper English. This “acting White” syndrome must be excised from black culture like a brain tumor.
These children don’t act White. They act right.
The Supreme Court did Black and Hispanic students a massive favor by forcing them to rely on how they think, not how they look. Democrats need to understand this, stop whining, and join this noble task.
If not, Republicans must pulverize them at the polls and then lead this vital mission.
• Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor. Michael Malarkey contributed research to this opinion piece.
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