Want to see a great example of a racially-based political agenda masquerading as an ethical principle? You need look no further than Illinois, where segregation is back. While equal treatment under the law (and in the schools) is now old and busted, in Illinois’ Evanston Township High School, segregation is the new hotness.
Civil rights lawyers have come out against an Illinois high school’s program to racially segregate the school’s math and English classes in an attempt to boost black students’ scores.
The attorneys add that the program at Evanston Township High School – which is a majority minority school with just 44 percent white students – may also be illegal.
Evanston offers Algebra 2, pre-calculus, AP calculus and an English seminar in what’s called AXLE – Advancing Excellence, Lifting Everyone – and GANAS – from a Spanish expression meaning ‘giving it all you got’ – for black and Latino students.
For black and Latino students? Let’s leave aside for the moment that this school is funded by the government and, therefore, supposedly bound by the principle of equal treatment under the law (we’ll come back to that). Let’s just look at the practical implementation of this for the moment. Let’s also leave out for the moment that “Latino” isn’t really a race but a cultural distinction; people who can accurately be described as Latino can have a wide range of racial backgrounds.
First: How are we defining “black and Latino?” Does the old Reconstruction/Jim Crow-era “one-drop rule” apply? Or does a kid have to have a certain percentage of black or Latino background to qualify for these special classes? How much time are the teachers in these classes spending kowtowing to a racial political agenda? How are these teachers chosen for these classes?
Second: In what way are these classes different from the classes that students of pallor attend? Are the standards lower? If so, that’s condescending and insulting. If not, what’s the point of these classes?
Third and finally, and this would be very interesting to know: Are any school board members enrolling their kids in these programs? The kids that aren’t already in a private school, which so often seems to be the case with leftist education officials?
Back to the legal aspects — the school district has to know that what they are doing is not only wrong but unconstitutional:
‘There is no way that could possibly pass legal muster if someone sued,’ civil rights law expert David Bernstein told the Free Beacon, adding that it was ‘blatantly unconstitutional.’
The programs, which students can sign-up for voluntarily, began with a pilot in 2019, though the school has yet to release any outcomes or statistics on whether they have any affect.
So in four years, the school district has not released any outcomes or statistics? I have no way of knowing for sure, but I would bet a sawbuck that the reason they have not yet released any results is because the results aren’t good. But why should the results matter? Regardless of the results, this entire program is racist, illegal, unethical, and wrong.
This policy, while wrong, unethical, racist, and illegal, is not only a solution searching desperately for a problem; it is the exact opposite of an ethical stance. Ethical principles are consistent; if discrimination based on race (or some other arbitrary identifier, e.g., “Latino”) is wrong, then it’s always wrong, in every surrounding, in every circumstance, in every setting. Setting up classes like this, no matter how they may or may not differ in content, is wrong. If racial hypersensitivity is ever to be overcome, programs like this are precisely the wrong way to go about it.
