Until Friday, it was standard practice in Nettleton, Mississippi's Middle School-- though illegal-- to segregate student body elections. This practice was enforced by documents that articulated the race requirement for specific offices (e.g., president, vice president, etc.) and went so far as to set aside 12 leadership positions for white students and four positions for African-American students. For years, the policy went unchallenged, virtually unnoticed by the district, which proudly displays, on its homepage the motto, "teaching today what matters tomorrow." Given what has now been exposed to the nation, this begs the question, what, exactly, were they trying to teach?
This blatant attempt to preserve segregation was an institutionalized assertion of a mythical white superiority-- where students of color would never have an opportunity to lead the student body, or even have an equal chance to compete-- an especially disappointing situation given that the prinicpal of the Nettleton Middle School is an African-American.
"These policies have been in place for the last 30 years as an attempt to resist scholl integration," said attorney Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP MIssissippi State Conference. "As long as no parents complained, no changes were made."
Thankfully, a parent did have the courage to challenge the system, utlimately shaming the school district into reversing its racial policy. That child was from a bi-racial background.
I have attached the image of the now infamous 'Nettleton memo' attached to this blog, you will have to expand the width to view perhaps!!
Posted By:
Saturday, August 28th 2010 at 1:36PM
You can also
click
here to view all posts by this author...
