First, the title of this thread is a question, not an accusation.

Now, here is an excerpt from a Washington Post editorial titled "Justice Department bids to trap poor, black children in ineffective schools":



In a commentary posted by Real Clear Politics, Dr. Thomas Sowell writes the following:

misguided

The Democrat Party has always been a party against minorities. They push policies and laws that hurt African Americans and other minorities and have since the party was formed!

Many have studied the welfare state and found the effects detrimental to the families it "supposed" to have helped.

Begin Quote"

"The rise of the welfare state in the 1960s contributed greatly to the demise of the black family as a stable institution. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among African Americans today is 73%, three times higher than it was prior to the War on Poverty. Children raised in fatherless homes are far more likely to grow up poor and to eventually engage in criminal behavior, than their peers who are raised in two-parent homes. In 2010, blacks (approximately 13% of the U.S. population) accounted for 48.7% of all arrests for homicide, 31.8% of arrests for forcible rape, 33.5% of arrests for aggravated assault, and 55% of arrests for robbery. Also as of 2010, the black poverty rate was 27.4% (about 3 times higher than the white rate), meaning that 11.5 million blacks in the U.S. were living in poverty.


When President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 launched the so-called War on Poverty, which enacted an unprecedented amount of antipoverty legislation and added many new layers to the American welfare state, he explained that his objective was to reduce dependency, �break the cycle of poverty,� and make �taxpayers out of tax eaters.� Johnson further claimed that his programs would bring to an end the �conditions that breed despair and violence,� those being �ignorance, discrimination, slums, poverty, disease, not enough jobs.� Of particular concern to Johnson was the disproportionately high rate of black poverty. In a famous June 1965 speech, the president suggested that the problems plaguing black Americans could not be solved by self-help: �You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line in a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,'� said Johnson.

Thus began an unprecedented commitment of federal funds to a wide range of measures aimed at redistributing wealth in the United States.[1] From 1965 to 2008, nearly $16 trillion of taxpayer money (in constant 2008 dollars) was spent on means-tested welfare programs for the poor.

The economic milieu in which the War on Poverty arose is noteworthy. As of 1965, the number of Americans living below the official poverty line had been declining continuously since the beginning of the decade and was only about half of what it had been fifteen years earlier. Between 1950 and 1965, the proportion of people whose earnings put them below the poverty level, had decreased by more than 30%. The black poverty rate had been cut nearly in half between 1940 and 1960. In various skilled trades during the period of 1936-59, the incomes of blacks relative to whites had more than doubled. Further, the representation of blacks in professional and other high-level occupations grew more quickly during the five years preceding the launch of the War on Poverty than during the five years thereafter.

Despite these trends, the welfare state expanded dramatically after LBJ's statement. Between the mid-Sixties and the mid-Seventies, the dollar value of public housing quintupled and the amount spent on food stamps rose more than tenfold. From 1965 to 1969, government-provided benefits increased by a factor of 8; by 1974 such benefits were an astounding 20 times higher than they had been in 1965. Also as of 1974, federal spending on social-welfare programs amounted to 16% of America�s Gross National Product, a far cry from the 8% figure of 1960. By 1977 the number of people receiving public assistance had more than doubled since 1960.


The most devastating by-product of the mushrooming welfare state was the corrosive effect it had (along with powerful cultural phenomena such as the feminist and Black Power movements) on American family life, particularly in the black community.
 As provisions in welfare laws offered ever-increasing economic incentives for shunning marriage and avoiding the formation of two-parent families, illegitimacy rates rose dramatically..."

Read more at http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1672

The power to educate is the power to rule, just as the power to print a nations currency is the power to control its population and policies

Sometimes I feel like the democrats invented the word empathy just so they could hide behind it as they push policies that hurt the very people they pretend to represent!�Their rhetoric is mind boggling�This doesn't say a whole lot for the Republicans who let them get away with it either�Go John, go Mitt �Democrats run on minority issues!�Republicans know this yet their opposition to it leaves much to be desired�.Minorities should stop listening to speeches and start reading policies�Democrats have virtually killed free enterprise with unnecessary health and sanitation regs, licensing requirements, environmental roadblocks�.Minorities need the very jobs democrats are destroying in the name of caring and compassion�Look closer at the politicians who push these policies and in nearly every instance the road will lead to financial incentives�.

Democrats keep blacks down by teaching them they need affirmative action and freebies�They send a message of inferiority by implying need in order to secure the black vote�Democrats will hold power over African Americans for as long as they are able to convince them they are victims�Working to make people dependent on government is not caring or compassionate...

"As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.� ~ Adolf Hitler

Public education is not education ... it is schooling.


A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body." - John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"

"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." - Joseph Stalin

"It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion." - Joseph Goebbels

It's not nice to confuse the liberals with facts you two! Their minds are already made up for them!

this statement could be an accurate representation of any group one considers themselves belonging to on here

I don't see much of anyone posting whose mind isn't made up with the 'facts' they choose to believe

And how would you propose we educate the population? If the public schools are so bad, how about fixing them, instead of merely cutting their budgets? If you don't like what they teach, you can petition the Boards of Education. As far as I know, each state opens discussion on curriculum to public comment and debate nearly every year. That's why South Carolina still teaches "Intelligent Design" and things like that.

Otherwise, your arguments are a bunch of quaint platitudes.

would be nice to actually see what the suit is about instead of what some pundit decides they think it is about



that it gives 'too many' sounds like an illogical basis for a suit

digging deeper it seems the suit is because of desegregation laws in certain districts, and the tendency for the minority at these schools to receive the vouchers,, in conflict with desegregation laws


I think the answer should have been about making schools better, I don't know that integration has helped anyone where public school is concerned, but was a bandaid that didn't work,, and that better PUBLIC Education should have been more the focus instead of alternatives to bad education

although I understand the desire to integrate, I don't think history is proving that to be a solution that does much good at the elementary level

I WISH the focus was more on improving education in the public schools, but until then, I Think the kids should get the best possible schooling however they need to,,,

You sure they're not old-fashioned clich�s?

Gov't mandates on education for public schools receiving gov't funds don't leave much room for public input on curriculum, even if those funds are from taxes paid by the people

that's the issue, a 'public' school must represent the public, which is diverse pool of people with diverse interests

private schools alleviate the 'generalized' education taxpyers end up demanding for public schools

and leaves the curriculum and requirement more in the hands of the SPECIFIC INDIVIDUALS sending their children to the school...

What part of corruption, unions, and special interest lobbyists don't you get really?

No,no. He definitely knows quaint platitudes

Democrats don't want Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas or Condoleezza Rices.

They want Al Sharptons..

They want uneducated servants that they can manipulate.

Yeppers