Who’s Mirroring Jim Crow?
“Forcing poor blacks to attend the … worst schools strikes me as something out of the Jim Crow South.”
Louisiana’s school voucher program is being pursued by Eric Holder’s Justice Department on grounds that it “frustrates and impedes the desegregation process.” The Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley responds: “Around 90 percent of the recipients are black, and 86 percent of them otherwise would be assigned to public schools that received a D or F grade from the state. In its lawsuit, the Obama administration argued that allowing children to leave these awful schools could make the public school system less white in composition and thus hamper school desegregation efforts. In other words, the Justice Department’s position is that the racial balance of a school is more important than whether anyone is learning. Forcing poor blacks to attend the state’s worst schools strikes me as something out of the Jim Crow South.”