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Imagine 'Puter's surprise when he came upon this nugget of information. Florida's Department of Education is enshrining differing goals for different groups of public school students. Nothing shocking so far. However, Florida decided the best way to group students was by the students' race.
Even better, Florida determined that Black students under its tutelage are not capable of achieving at a rate anywhere near approaching the goals set for Asians and Whites. Even more awesomer, Florida thinks it will be able to get its students with disabilities to perform better than its Black students in reading by 2017.
Here are the actual 2017 goals Florida proposes (see page 11 of 24), grouped by reading and mathematics, lowest goal to highest goal by percentage:
Reading:
72%: Economically Disadvantaged
72%: English Language Learners
74%: Black/African American
78%: Students With Disabilities
81%: Hispanics
82%: American Indian
88%: White
90% Asian
Mathematics:
72%: Students With Disabilities
74%: English Language Learners
74%: Black/African American
78%: Economically Disadvantaged
80%: Hispanics
81%: American Indian
86%: White
92% Asian
Florida's goals read like Klan propaganda from the 1930s in the Panhandle. Can't you see a bunch of bigoted crackers having this conversation over the back fence:
Those Orientals sure are good at math. Whites are pretty smart, too. Then come the Redskins and Mexicans. Last come the Black folks. Heck, we even expect the retarded children to do better than the Blacks in reading.*
But it's not bigoted crackers having the conversation in 1930s Florida. It's bleeding heart liberals in the government's educational bureaucracy spouting the same nonsense. But don't worry. Liberal bureaucrats would only ever consider race for the best interest of those unfortunate non-white people. Except Asians, who really don't count as minorities anyway under prevailing bureaucratic "wisdom."
Predictably, the Florida Department of Education blames a pre-existing achievement gap for its varied race-based achievement goals. 'Puter takes no position on whether or not such a pre-existing achievement gap exists. 'Puter's betting it does, and that in an America without centuries of slavery and decades of liberal race polarization strategies, these goals would be relatively uncontroversial, as they are based on the current state of affairs and require real progress for each group.
But that's not the America we live in. We live in an America where government standards based on race alone are suspect, requiring the government actor to prove the state has a permissible governmental purpose and that the use of race be necessary to the achievement of that purpose.
So, the trick for Florida is to pretend that there's really no achievement gap between Blacks and Whites (not to mention Asians), yet to fashion a system that recognizes this existing racial gap and remedies it, without in any manner mentioning race.
America needs to be done with its fixation on race as the end all, be all. No one born in America after 1964 has lived in a country where racial discrimination by the government, and in large measure by its citizens, is tolerated by law. Americans born after 1980 are so have never lived in an America where racism is socially acceptable.
America needs to be free to consider race where reflective of actual, existing conditions, but to ignore race where incorporated in leftist redistribution schemes (e.g., reparations, meting out university educations to the less qualified, etc.).
'Puter would like to live in an America where we judge one another on the content of our character (and our abilities), not on the color of our skin. Liberals remain dedicated to preventing such a day from ever arriving.
*Seriously, how disheartening must it be for Blacks to read that the State of Florida expects Black children to underperform special education students? The soft bigotry of low expectations rears its ugly head yet again.
