How School Privatization Was Hatched By Racist 1950s Southern Segregationists

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/speakeasy/brucewilson/how-school-privatization-was-hatched-racist-1950s-southern-segregationists

"A wildly racist, pro-segregation school privatization "nuclear option" of the 1950s that was designed to protect Georgia's racially segregated schools has recrudesced, to be recycled and repackaged - with the help of Michelle Rhee and her supporters (such as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg) - as a panacea for all that's said to be ailing America's schools."

As I explore in a new Talk To Action report, embattled school privatization advocate Michelle Rhee, head of StudentsFirst and subject of the hagiographic documentary "Waiting For Superman", claims that "education is the civil rights issue of our time" -- But privatization schemes promoted by StudentsFirst and its Tea Party-aligned 2012 "Educator of the Year" were originally conceived by racist white Southern politicians as a plan to thwart the desegregation of racially separate schools mandated by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision.

The neo-voucher school privatization schemes now running in almost 1/4 of the states in the Union and which are lustily backed by Rhee's StudentsFirst organization are horrible for so many reasons, it's hard to know where to begin.

First, as an article in the October 2013 issue of Rolling Stone The Hidden War Against Gay Teens examines, the neo-voucher programs now operating in twelve U.S. states that divert private and corporate taxpayer dollars away from state coffers to instead pay for students to attend private schools (many of which are religious schools) are now supporting a new form of segregationism that targets LGBTI students. As Rolling Stone's Alex Morris crisply explains,

"Georgia, along with 11 other states (Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida, Rhode Island, Iowa, Indiana, Oklahoma, Virginia, New Hampshire, Louisiana and, most recently, Alabama), has adopted laws – sometimes referred to as "neovouchers" – to grant dollar-for-dollar tax credits to people who donate money to provide children with scholarships to private schools. In theory, such a plan has the potential to help a lot of students, but in practice, especially in deeply religious places like Georgia, it has also meant that millions of dollars have been redirected from public funds to privately run Student Scholarship Organizations, which can then funnel the money to schools with strict anti-gay policies. Because the money goes straight to the SSO and never actually enters the public coffers, it's free and clear of being considered a "public fund" – allowing church and state to technically be kept separate. All of which may sound fishy, but consider this: It's fully legal because the laws make it so. And, as the school-choice movement gains ground, it's certain that other states will soon pass similar legislation."

[LuvNewcastle]

1. Good article. This is some sickening, scary shit.

It amazes me how afraid fundies are of gay people. We're a rather small minority of the population, but they think we're trying to take over the world. It says a lot about them that they think being gay is so tempting that they're afraid their kids are going to be recruited by us.

In the Miss. Delta where there's a black majority, any white person with any money at all sends their kids to private school. The public schools up there are about 99% black because of this. People in north Miss. have been trying to get a voucher system started here, and with all the teabaggers in our legislature now, they might succeed. They've started some charter schools already, so I suspect we're going to have to deal with the whole segregation problem all over again down here.

Teabaggers are really fucking the South up right now. I always thought it couldn't get any worse, but boy was I wrong. I don't know what's going to have to happen to stop them, but something's got to give, and soon.

One other thing I wanted to say was I'd never seen the word 'recrudesce' before, but the author used it twice in the article. I had to look it up, and I was just going to tell people it means 'to recur,' for those who didn't know. Also, I'd never seen "LGBTI" before. Anyone know what the "I" stands for?

[xchrom]

3. 'I' stands for intersex -- people born with physical characteristics of both genders. nt

[LuvNewcastle]

4. I see. Thanks xchrom!

[bemildred]

2. Yep, it's the same old shit, not even changed much to disguise it. nt

[jsr]

5. Excellent article.