Raleigh, NC - Four activists were arrested during a Wake County Board of Education meeting, June 15, as the struggle to stop the resegregation of Wake County schools intensifies. The civil disobedience action was carried out to protest a 5-4 vote by Wake County's majority conservative board to end Wake's busing program. The demonstrators locked arms and sang We Shall Overcome during the meeting. They were arrested when they did not stop.
North Carolina NAACP President Reverend William Barber was one of those arrested, along with Reverend Nancy Petty of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, activist Mary Williams and Timothy Tyson, a researcher at Duke Divinity School.
Wake County's new all-white school board majority, which came to power thanks to funding from right-wing foundations in the state, voted to terminate a pro-diversity busing policy in favor of keeping students in schools in their neighborhoods. This will lead to segregated schools and low quality, poorly-funded schools in communities of oppressed nationalities. Protesters have been waging a sharp struggle against this policy for months. On March 23, 70 students and youth marched on the board's meeting to demand an end to racism and resegregation efforts.
A statement from the North Carolina NAACP on the June 15 civil disobedience action said in part, “We are willing to break a lesser law and accept our punishment in order to protect the larger law embodied in the federal and state constitutions and to defend the children of our community... If it is necessary that we be locked up to resist policies that will lock down our children in resegregated, high-poverty and unconstitutional schools, so be it.”
The NAACP has played a leading role in opposing the resegregation scheme, along with a broad united front of progressive organizations and peoples in North Carolina. In a statement in March, the NAACP noted that the attempts at resegregation represent “a clear call to our community - Black, White, Latino, Asian - to employ all the moral, political, and legal means at our disposal to stop it before it’s too late.”
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Complete press release from NAACP
Why We Choose to Break the Law in Nonviolent Resistance and Moral Witness against the Re-Segregation of the Wake County Public Schools
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President, North Carolina NAACP and
Member of National NAACP Board of Directors
Rev. Nancy Petty, Senior Pastor, Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, Raleigh
Mrs. Mary D. Williams, Wake County Human Services and mother of three
Dr. Timothy B. Tyson, Senior Research Scholar, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Duke Divinity School, and UNC Chapel Hill
June 15, 2010
The decision of the anti-diversity members of the Wake County School Board to destroy the socio-economic diversity policy is morally wrong. Their intentional actions lead toward the re-segregation of our schools in violation of the Constitutions of both the United States and North Carolina. This ill-considered decision seeks to wipe away in six months what it took more than a century of tears, sweat and blood to accomplish. Many Americans risked and sometimes sacrificed their lives in order to fulfill the spirit of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and to move this community, state and country forward. The anti-diversity members of the school board wipe their feet on the labors of our ancestors by equating their own actions with those of the NAACP and the U.S. Supreme Court in that landmark victory for justice. Today we register our legitimate discontent. And like hundreds who have gone before us here in Wake County, we are willing to break a lesser law and accept our punishment, in order to protect the larger law embodied in the federal and state constitutions and to defend the children of our community. If it is necessary that we be locked up to resist policies that will lock down our children in re-segregated, high-poverty, and unconstitutional schools, so be it.
We are brothers and sisters in the Spirit, coming together to make a spiritual witness in a nonviolent act of conscience, in the service of our God and His children. We have come to this place in a spirit of prayer, study and sacrifice. We hope to be heard in the spirit of love that brings us here and to promote a deeper public understanding that all of the children are our children, equal in the eyes of God and worthy of the best school system that we can provide. Our reasons for this nonviolent act of conscience include:
1. The destruction of the nationally acclaimed diversity policy of the Wake County public school system is morally wrong. It cannot be accomplished without greatly increasing the number of high-poverty schools in the system and leading us back toward segregation. This will undermine the education of all students, hurt the life chances of many, and harm the whole community. The relationship between racial re-segregation, poverty concentration, and reduced student and school performance in North Carolina is clear. Virtually all of the 44 lowest performing high schools are segregated: 40 of the 44 are racially isolated, predominantly non-white schools, most by very high percentages. Many are segregated schools within diverse communities, in which student assignment policies are directly responsible for economic and racial isolation. In these schools, it is much harder to keep experienced and effective teachers and administrators, which increases the disparities between rich and poor. The diversity policy is not a cure-all, and the system has inequities and problems that it does not address, but abandoning it will make things much worse. To protect our schools and the children they exist to serve, the destruction of the diversity policy must be stopped.
This catastrophe goes beyond Wake County and has dire implications for the entire state. In 1996, 7.3 per cent of our schools were more than 80 per cent non-white. By 2006, the figure had doubled to 15.4 per cent. Today school boards across the state are abandoning, ignoring, or deliberately undermining policies designed to address segregation. These actions, often motivated by narrow partisan politics, violate the rights of students to a sound basic education under the state Constitution, undercut the state's commitment to quality education, and contravene the U.S. Constitution. This is a public emergency.
2. We have asked the school board to rescind their decision to abandon the diversity policy. The school board refuses to hear us or anyone else who opposes their destructive decisions. We have sought redress by asking for a 45-minute presentation by the NAACP, an organization with a century of experience and widely recognized standing on issues of education, race and inequality. The current 5-4 Republican majority has refused to undertake any research or hear any information about the consequences of their policies, apart from two minutes per person in public meetings, which is not sufficient to explain these issues; the majority has also often implemented ticket policies that make it difficult for many to gain access to meetings, and further has described our serious request as only wanting a circus.
3. The school board's anti-diversity caucus has persisted in pitting school diversity against school excellence, as if diverse schools could not be excellent or excellent schools could not be diverse. This is empty demagoguery, unsupported by research or realities in public education.
4. Spokespersons for the anti-diversity caucus persistently compare their destructions of the socio-economic diversity policy to the victory of the NAACP in the Brown v. Board decision. They implicitly compare themselves to Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, and the thousands of ordinary citizens, black and white, whose courage and sacrifice made the Brown decision possible; people who endured racist terrorism, economic reprisals, jail sentences, and even sacrificed their lives. This obscene demagoguery, whether deliberately vicious or merely ignorant, wipes its feet upon the risks and sacrifices of our ancestors and mocks the very idea of education.
5. In the best American traditions, from Henry David Thoreau to Ella Baker to Martin Luther King, Jr., we recognize the necessary place of civil disobedience: breaking a small and unjust law in order to protect a larger and broadly significant law, honoring the very spirit of law by yielding to punishment in order to meet the necessity of an urgent moral crisis. We seek to make a moral and spiritual witness that we feel is urgent, necessary, and right.
A Future Where Adults Misunderstand Other Cultures
(http://www.wcpss.net/Board/boeinfo.html)
Community -Based Schools
A School Board at the center of the state must set an example for how persons can respect each other. By the Board discouraging diversity, children of this area are not having this done.
A great education for all children is the goal. This broad-based decision shows a tremendous lack of discernment and creativity. While other growing cities have faced the same overcrowding battle. I thought ours would think first, look at the history of other areas, and realize that busing does not cause bad grades.
If busing or cultural diversity causes any particular distraction to learning, I am confident transportation departments and educators can rise to the issues as when I was a child in the 1970s. Issues of a child being a schooled a few miles from home can be dealt with far more easily (and on an individual basis) than having a future where adults misunderstand other cultures.
The experiences of the Board members that have worked with desperate youth have led them to believe that separating the children from other cultures will improve their grades. Mr. Tedesco said there is some study that supports this. Yet no valid research data has been presented to the parents. A large upheaval has occurred in our once calm community. Social diversity is the subject that is being removed from the education curriculum without even a voice or vote from the people.
Cultural diversity in the classroom is a great education. Educators that can facilitate learning among all children is the key to good grades, not separation from others.
Some Board members may have simply had bad experiences with integration growing up. The resources available then on the psychology of diversity were limited. Their educators may have not been well equipped to prevent misunderstandings, fighting, trauma, etc. Being a School Board member, I hope they will advance beyond the past and equip themselves with that knowledge. Then employ educators with the same ability.
The School Board can seek external assistance. There are numerous experts at our local universities that can advise the Board on how cultures learn to respect one another. Some of the subjects areas to contact are: inter-cultural development, interracial relations, diversity education, and inter-cultural communication. But the first step is having people from different cultures be in the same room.
Once the federal government steps in to file a discrimination suit against the county, the Board may begin to listen and realize the grades can improve with some internal focus (tutoring, home schooling, etc.) not external sorting.
The new Community-Based
The new Community-Based Schools policy is a broad based decision which is not multi-faceted enough to prevent re-segregation of schools.
Current Student Assignment Process
http://www.wcpss.net/growth-management/student-assign-process.html
New Policy is to begin transitioning July 2010 and first school year of implementation is 2012
http://www.wcpss.net/Board/transition-plan/transition-plan-graphic.pdf
http://www.wcpss.net/Board/transition-plan/transition-plan-draft.pdf
http://www.wcpss.net/growth-management/student-assign-process-summary-en...
http://www.wcpss.net/demographics/reports/book09/II-BOE.pdf
resegregation
Come on, have we stepped back into jimcrow or has it been here all the time and now raising it's head?
lack of cultural and economic diversity
In http://www.wcpss.net/growth-management/student-assign-process-summary-en...,
'Simple choice' is not a reason why a school transfer can be made. That is seen as going against the Growth Management Plan/Community-Based Assignment.
Encouraging education
I love the new board. I am thrilled I voted for them. I am overjoyed at the abandoning of a policy that discourages community schools and parental involvement, in favor of a diversity policy that is completely obsolete and buses kids to inferior performing schools against their will.
It is unbelievable how all the "pro-diversity" folks can turn what is a basic issue fundamental, common-sense idea about what makes education work (community-based and high parental involvement) into one about race and diversity.
The misinformation and scare tactics being thrown around by the pro-diversity crowd, and the insane ideas that this new policy will funnel money from supposed "poor" schools to "rich" schools, and somehow lead to resegregated schools, are downright offensive and sickening to me. That somehow, if you believe community-based schools are the best model, you are somehow a racist. Wake up people, you live in the dark ages! The only thing perpetuating racism are insane ideas like this and the victim-syndrome you all perpetuate to make yourselves feel important.
Ideas like "Social diversity is the subject that is being removed from the education curriculum without even a voice or vote from the people" are a spit-in-the-face to all of us who showed up at the polls to vote this board, and their agenda, into office.
We all know from the publically available budget that the primary driver of funds allocation is student population at any given school, and all schools in Wake County, regardless of where it is located, are funded using the same forumulas. There is no favoritism here, and to say anything otherwise is a downright lie.
It is unbelievable that the pro-diversity folks are playing the race card to further their agenda. Frankly, a policy that differentiates students on anything other than their geographic location is exteremely discrimantory and offensive to me.
I am hoping under this new policy we can start returning our school system to a state where students aren't constantly economically evaluated, constantly reassigned, and bussed all over creation, and simply taught what they need to be taught. I am thrilled after decades of reassignment headaches, that students may have the opportunity to attend schools close to their home where they have the best support from their local community, and encourage parental involvement.
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