Omaha Schools Split Along Race Lines

[deadparrot]

LINCOLN, Neb. - In a move decried by some as state-sponsored segregation, the Legislature voted Thursday to divide the Omaha school system into three districts — one mostly black, one predominantly white and one largely Hispanic.

Supporters, including the bill's sponsor and the Legislature's lone black senator, said the plan would give minorities control over their own school board and ensure that their children are not shortchanged in favor of white youngsters.

Republican Gov. Dave Heineman was expected to sign the measure into law.

Omaha Sen. Pat Bourne decried the bill, saying, "We will go down in history as one of the first states in 20 years to set race relations back."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060413/ap_on_re_us/omaha_schools

[kurth]

1. The Brazilification of America

[Blue_Tires]

15. exactly n/t

[laheina]

2. funny that separate but equal never really turns out that way.

I think that they could have found a better solution to any problems that they may have had.

[marmar]

4. Never...

and I can predict which two will get screwed.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. The black school district and the black school district?

:shrug:

[marmar]

6. I was actually thinking the black one and the hispanic one...

Close enough...

[dipsydoodle]

3. Sounds to be

an appalling idea. Just my 2 cents.

[Hardrada]

7. I'm glad to have no family and friends

in Nebraska anymore.

[Omaha Steve]

8. I live in Omaha (the soon to be Hispanic section)

I can't tell you how bad this is. Nebraska looks back wards to everybody else because we are back wards and one of the reddest of the red states. We are still an 1860's cow town in newer clothes. Try watching the 60's documentary film "Time for Burning" on DVD. It features the black State Senator that did this.



http://www.deepdiscountdvd.com/dvd.cfm?itemid=NVG009752&promotion=y

[DeaconBlues]

9. Ernie Chambers?

He's usually the only one in the Neb. Legislature to make any sense. I can't understand this. Doesn't he realize that someway, somehow, they are going to figure out a way to short change the minority districts? Idiot position.

[speedingbullet]

20. Ernie Chambers

Segregation seems like the last thing Ernie Chambers would support. I'm wondering if this is some sort of 'bait and switch' for him. Maybe he's looking for a test case to see how far the new Supremes are going to let things go? I think there will be interesting developments, stay tuned.

[Dave Sund]

22. That's what I was thinking, too.

However, his co-sponsor on the amendment was another liberal independent, Ron Raikes. And they both have argued that minority districts can better take care of themselves. I think if Chambers was truly using this as a test case, he'd let everyone know about it. He's not one to keep things to himself, either.

[jwirr]

23. I talked with my sister who taught for a while in Omaha. Ernie

knows that there is already separation (by three areas in Omaha) this way each school would get a school board that cared about their own people. As it stands now there is a white only school board. At least he got them talking about the quality of schools in non-white areas of Omaha.

[Dave Sund]

25. And I can sort of see his point

But I disagree with him for a few reasons:

1) The school board will have no control over funding. That's the job of the "learning community."
2) It does absolutely nothing to solve the larger inequalities between the suburban white schools and the inner-city schools.
3) Dividing districts along racial boundaries is grossly unconstitutional.

[deadparrot]

10. Don't worry.

I live in a state that's trying to make Christianity the official religion.

Most people understand that there's a huge different between stupid state policy and the people within said state. :hi:

[depakid]

17. And yet you had Dem Senators for 25 straight years

before Hagel and ES&S stole the 1996 election....

and unlike Ben Nelson, Bob Kerrey wasn't exactly a worthless DINO.

[JI7]

28. a lot of conservatives never got over de-segregation

many of them actually claim that things were going along ok and improving but forced segregation ruined everything.

i have a hard time not going after them personally when i hear this crap from them. but that's how a lot of them view things. they feel they are the victims whose lives were hurt with desegregation.

[HuffleClaw]

11. isn't this patently illegal ?

what is in the water there?

[Rex]

12. Time to rollback to the Good Ol' Days

NOT. I swear if this country starts going back to segregation times I am packing up all my animals and leaving! That will be it for me.

[Dave Sund]

13. It's a ridiculously bad idea...

Proposed by the only two independent senators in the unicameral. Both of them are fairly liberal (Chambers a lot moreso than Raikes). I've been talking about this for a week now, and I'm still as lost as ever. It's a bad idea, and the courts will definitely overturn it. With the number of people who came out in the last week saying this was a monumentally bad piece of legislation, I'm shocked that 31 people saw fit to vote for its approval. They thought it was better to make a bad law than no law at all.

[pdurod1]

14. This is embarassing...

We've gone back 50 years in one day. I live in Bourne's area, one of the last somewhat liberal areas left in Nebraska. I wish Iowa would annex omaha out to about 72nd street.

[Dave Sund]

16. I'm still baffled

That two of the most liberal members of the Senate, the only two independents, were the ones behind this idea. (Even if Raikes was on the side of the suburban schools in this matter, he's still more liberal than most of the unicameral). If they didn't sound so incredibly sincere about it, I'd be guessing that it was their intent to make sure this law never gets through the courts.

[Igel]

19. It sounded like a bad idea to me, too.

Still doesn't quite sit well, but if the articles I've seen are accurate, it won't change much.

The real question is the relation of the tax base to school funding: under the 4 scenarios, do the minority-majority school districts get more money or less? Is there some sort of revenue-sharing provision in state law saying that poor districts get money from rich disticts? If so, this would make sense, making not unreasonable assumptions. Minority districts tend to be poor; if the minority and majority schools are mixed, it may be the mega-district gets little outside funding, but as mostly-minority districts they may get more funding.

In any event, it's not quite the same separate-but-equal as before. It used to be one district, with the white schoolboard making sure the races were separate, and charged with maintaining 'equal'. The argument here is that this way they'll have minority-majority schoolboards, and minorities can best look after their own interests. I'm far from buying the argument.

It's not primarily the funding; it's the parents and the kids.

[Dave Sund]

21. The bill sets up a "learning community"

Between the two counties that make up the Omaha MSA. There's no provision to guarantee that the poor districts get the money. In fact, this is the opposite of what the Omaha schools wanted, control over all the schools within their city limits. What the state has instead done has diminished the influence of OPS and minority students by making them share funding with 10 other school districts. The OPS breakup just makes sure that the students stay exactly where they are. There is a provision in the bill that calls for an integration task force. That amendment was passed before the Chambers amendment. But let's just say I don't trust a task force to come up with anything that will save this bill.

[Igel]

24. Interesting.

I was just going from an article yesterday, and the same info rehashed today.

The article didn't make it sound as bad as it is. Tx.

[norml]

34. It was the more liberal Democrats who voted for it, and the more...

"conservative" Republicans who voted against it.

I would think more people here would get a clue from that.

It's also part of the whole school consolidation fight that's been going on.

Why should it be only hicks from the sticks, and suburban bedroom communities that get to have smaller school districts?

[shanti]

18. back to the bad old days

this is sick...:(

[liberalpragmatist]

26. NYT: Law to Segregate Omaha Schools Divides Nebraska

By SAM DILLON
Published: April 15, 2006

OMAHA, April 14 — Ernie Chambers is Nebraska's only African-American state senator, a man who has fought for causes including the abolition of capital punishment and the end of apartheid in South Africa. A magazine writer once described him as the "angriest black man in Nebraska."

He was also a driving force behind a measure passed by the Legislature on Thursday and signed into law by the governor that calls for dividing the Omaha public schools into three racially identifiable districts, one largely black, one white and one mostly Hispanic.

The law, which opponents are calling state-sponsored segregation, has thrown Nebraska into an uproar, prompting fierce debate about the value of integration versus what Mr. Chambers calls a desire by blacks to control a school district in which their children are a majority.

Civil rights scholars call the legislation the most blatant recent effort in the nation to create segregated school systems or, as in Omaha, to resegregate districts that had been integrated by court order. Omaha ran a mandatory busing program from 1976 to 1999.

<cont.>

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/15/us/15omaha.html?hp&ex=1145160000&en=c7750a12dc28149b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[JI7]

27. isn't this unconstitutional ?

[depakid]

33. Does it matter?

21st Century America no longer respects its laws and traditions.

Anything goes- from South Dakota, to Nebraska, to pretty much anywhere in the South- to Washington DC.

[norml]

29. No! No! No! You're Getting the Omaha School District Story All Wrong!

Actually it's a victory for that poorer blacker district.

Now the right wing radio clowns have picked up on it as an opportunity to bash "Those who would divide us by race and class".

This started out as a fight to keep an annexed wealthy white suburban community out of the Omaha school district.

There's been a lot of rural opposition to school consolidation.

They say their communities are better served by smaller school districts.

State Senator Ernie Chambers put forward the proposition that maybe all the communities would be better served by smaller school districts.

Right wing radio clowns bash any mention of race or class as "Waging race and class warfare".

Don't buy their lie.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Law to Segregate Omaha Schools Divides Nebraska

By SAM DILLON
Published: April 15, 2006

OMAHA, April 14 — Ernie Chambers is Nebraska's only African-American state senator, a man who has fought for causes including the abolition of capital punishment and the end of apartheid in South Africa. A magazine writer once described him as the "angriest black man in Nebraska."

Kent Sievers/Omaha World-Herald

Ernie Chambers, the only African-American in the Nebraska Legislature, was a major force behind a law enacted this week that calls for dividing the Omaha school district into three districts defined largely by race.
He was also a driving force behind a measure passed by the Legislature on Thursday and signed into law by the governor that calls for dividing the Omaha public schools into three racially identifiable districts, one largely black, one white and one mostly Hispanic.

The law, which opponents are calling state-sponsored segregation, has thrown Nebraska into an uproar, prompting fierce debate about the value of integration versus what Mr. Chambers calls a desire by blacks to control a school district in which their children are a majority.

Civil rights scholars call the legislation the most blatant recent effort in the nation to create segregated school systems or, as in Omaha, to resegregate districts that had been integrated by court order. Omaha ran a mandatory busing program from 1976 to 1999.

"These efforts to resegregate schools by race keep popping up in various parts of the country," said Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard, adding that such programs skate near or across the line of what is constitutionally permissible. "I hear about something like this every few months, but usually when districts hear the legal realities from civil rights lawyers, they tend to back off their plans."


snip


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/15/us/15omaha.html?hp&ex=1145073600&en=5967d6e8f52a9362&ei=5094&partner=homepage

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x938165

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x938644

[Dave Sund]

30. I disagree with him

It sets a dangerous precedent. If this is found constitutional, I worry about what other cities will do to exploit it.

[fortyfeetunder]

31. We'll be "The Future is Backward"

Mr Chambers obviously forgot how many lives were sacrificed before "separate but equal" was struck down in Brown vs. Board of Education.

I agree there is no doubt if the Omaha example is accepted as constitutional, then urban school districts from coast to coast will now be vulnerable to what I see as racial gerrymandering.

Couple that with the underfunded No Child Left Behind, we are now on the treacherous road to no schools except to those who can afford to be educated.

[Pale Blue Dot]

32. This could be an excellent way to disenfranchise voters

I don't know about Nebraska, but in the states I've lived in, voting districts are set up within school districts. If the right wanted to systematically disenfranchise voters (much as it did in 200 and 2004), this gives them a great opportunity.

And to respond to norml's post, 31 members of the Nebraska Senate voted for this bill; 30 conservatives and Ernie Chambers. I think Mr. Chambers was extremely misguided.