A St. Louis activist has gone viral for lecturing the St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) school board about the district’s poor black performance.
Activist Chester Asher lectured the board on July 11th specifically about the poor academic performance of the district’s 80 percent+ black student population.
“Asher claims that only 10% of students in SLPS are able to read at grade level, while just 3% of students are proficient in math,” according to local station WHAM.
“We will not stand here while you engage in faux deliberation or remain silent while you pave the way for incarceration. You applaud yourselves while allowing our schools to pile black bodies on top of piles of black bodies, because that is the result of an educational system that does not educate,” he said.
“Your sham, citywide plan sheds no light and provides no direction. Our state test scores are a yearly reminder of your dereliction, and the outcomes for our children and communities require your criminal conviction,” he added.
Listen to some of what he said below:
Activist slams St. Louis school board for paving ‘the way for incarceration’ through poor education of Black students.
‘The outcomes for our children and communities require your criminal conviction.’ pic.twitter.com/jc752U1Foi
— Crisis in the Classroom (@CITClassroom) July 19, 2023
The remark about a “citywide plan” referred to “a five-year project meant to, among other things, advance equity and improve academic achievement,” according to WHAM.
Earlier this year, SLPS reportedly received nearly $21 million for the project.
Continuing his lecture, Asher reportedly listed several SLPS schools such as Jefferson Elementary School and Washington Montessori Elementary School and then referred to them as “the slave owners that welcome our children each morning.”
He also suggested that “thoughts and ideas of low expectations” stem from those names, leading to a “deadly state” for black students and their families.
“Because if you cannot read the application, how can you apply for a better job?” he asked rhetorically.
His concerns echo a growing sentiment that the public school system is failing to properly educate all students, but especially so black students.
Part of the problem is the focus on so-called “equity.” It’s a left-wing term that refers to a system that guarantees equal outcomes versus equal opportunities:
Equity in practice amounts to crippling more qualified individuals in order to artificially keep everyone at the same level pic.twitter.com/FdETWREt0Z
— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) July 18, 2023
The problem with this strategy is it winds up hurting black students instead of helping them. Take disciplinary action, for instance.
Instead of doling out the correct disciplinary action for infractions, the equity-minded school administrator says that black students should not be disciplined equally because that’s racist.
Why is it racist? Because black children are disciplined more often on average than white children. And so to equalize things, the equity-minded administrator says no to black discipline.
It’s part of the left’s disparate impact argument.
“Disparate-impact analysis holds that if a facially-neutral policy negatively affects blacks and Hispanics at a higher rate than whites and Asians, it is discriminatory. Noticing the behavioral differences that lead to those disparate effects is forbidden,” according to Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute.
“In the area of school discipline, disparate-impact analysis results in the conclusion that racially neutral rules must nevertheless contain bias, since black students nationally are suspended at nearly three times the rate of white students. In 2014, the Obama administration relied on this methodology to announce that schools that suspended or expelled black students at higher rates than white students were violating anti-discrimination laws,” she wrote in 2018 for City Journal.
After Obama implemented his “racial equity” in discipline guidance, punishing schools that disciplined too many Black kids, Virginia disorderly complaints went up 45 percent.
Unfortunately, Black kids were cited in 62 percent of such complaints.
Equity created this problem. pic.twitter.com/JtyxPd3zuq
— Kenny Xu (@kennymxu) July 13, 2023
Note what Mac Donald wrote about how “[n]oticing the behavioral differences that lead to those disparate effects is forbidden.”
To be more exact, noticing bad behavior by black students is verboten. But this decision to whitewash bad behavior by black students is EXACTLY what’s exacerbating the problem. It’s leading the kids to believe the bad behavior is OK. But in the real world, not only is the behavior not OK — it’s potentially punishable with prison time.
Whitewashing bad behavior is also affecting the victims of said behavior.
“The third-party victims of such behavior are themselves disproportionately minority—whether fellow classmates who cannot learn, or law-abiding residents of high-crime neighborhoods who have to worry about taking their children safely to school without being carjacked or caught in a drive-by shooting,” Mac Donald notes.
Equity is a lose-lose bargain, and it shows.
“It is virtually impossible to discipline a student. I know we are losing a generation of kids of color as a result of allowing them to run wild,” Mac Donald quotes a Los Angeles teacher who was disciplined for disciplining her black students.
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V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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