WSJ December 22, 2018
Notable & Quotable: School Discipline
‘A student who perceives that his race is an excuse for bad conduct will be handicapped for life.’
141 words
From “Back to Discipline” by Heather Mac Donald in City Journal, Dec. 19, 2018:
Excusing insubordination and aggression in the name of racial equity is not a civil rights accomplishment. The third-party victims of such behavior are themselves disproportionately minority . . . .
But the alleged beneficiary of a racial double standard in conduct is also a victim. Schools are usually the last chance to civilize children if their family has failed to do so. They accomplish that civilizing mission through the application of a color-blind behavioral code, neutrally enforced, that communicates to students that their behavioral choices have consequences. A student who perceives that his race is an excuse for bad conduct will be handicapped for life. Pace the race advocates, it is this disparate-impact-induced state of affairs—not the supposed implicit racism of teachers and principals—that constitutes an actual school-to-prison pipeline.■
