Nettleton, Mississippi Abolishes Racial Quotas for Middle Schoolers

Which race gets to run for office this year?

In a rather curious story of racism (yes, this time for real) and politics we have the story of a school in Nettleton, Mississippi that this year was forbidding black students from running for class president.  Reaction was overwhelmingly negative and the school has since rescinded its policy, in place for more than 30 years.

But the ABC News story doesn’t tell the entire truth:

After 30 years of barring black students from running for class president, a Mississippi public middle school, reversed a Jim Crow era policy today and announced students of all races would be allowed to run for student government.

Students at Nettleton Middle School looking to run for class president, previously needed to maintain a B average, obtain 10 signatures from their classmates – and be white.

The truth of the matter is that this year black students could not run for class president but next year they could.  The story came to national attention after the parents of a student complained that their daughter could not run for “reporter” because she was not black.

Over 70% of the students at the public school are white but, ironically, the rule was put into place to ensure black students would get elected to the positions of president, vice president, secretary-treasurer, and reporter for grades 6,7, and 8.  Every year whites have a chance to run for one of the positions and the next year it switches to blacks.  50% of the school’s administrators are black and 20% of the school’s board members are black.  There had not been a problem until this year.

The school also has black and white homecoming queens.

The irony of this story is that the school’s policy was established, in large part, due to pressure from the Federal government to ensure equality of the races.  According to a statement put out by the school:

It is the belief of the current administration that these procedures were implemented to help ensure minority representation and involvement in the student body. It is felt the intent of these election procedures was to ensure African-American representation in each student office category through an annual rotation basis.

Future student elections will be monitored to help ensure that this change in process and procedure does not adversely affect minority representation in student elections.

While one school district eliminates quotas, here is what then candidate Obama said back in 2008:

I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when it is properly structured, so that it is not just a quota, but acknowledging or taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties communities of color have experienced and continue to experience.

Obama said he did not want to see wealthier African-American children getting more breaks than poor white children.

And from a 2007 interview Obama said this:

When properly structured, affirmative action programs can open up opportunities to qualified minorities—and can do so without diminishing opportunities for white students. Given the dearth of black and Latino Ph.D. candidates in mathematics and the sciences, for example, a scholarship program for minorities interested in getting advanced degrees in these fields won’t keep white students out of such programs but can broaden the pool of talent that we need to prosper in the new economy.

We shouldn’t ignore that race continues to matter:  To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in the socioeconomic disparities that we often observe turns a blind eye to both our history and our experience—and relieves us of the responsibility to make things right.

In the case of the Nettleton, people are horrified to learn that a 6th grader can’t run for office because of their race and yet our half-black president (who obviously faced discrimination because he won the presidential election) believes the same thing he only couches his language in shades of gray and yet we don’t hear the same calls to end discrimination.

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