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| Yes, black people in Memphis, Tennessee believe they built this pyramid too |
It's on a day like today that you look at a document, the US Constitution - revered by so many for reasons not so discernible anymore - and realize we now live under a tyranny far worse then any King George III could ever have created.
And that tyranny is all enforced in the name of the US Constitution.
What might I be referring too? [Suburbs study options after schools defeat:It's 'simply a delay, not a defeat', Memphis Commercial Appeal, 11-27-12]:
Suburban Shelby County residents had been preparing for swearing-in ceremonies for the municipal school board members they elected Nov. 6, but late Tuesday officials from Arlington, Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, Lakeland and Millington had dropped those plans and were reassessing their options.Why might the suburbs of Memphis be starting their own school district? Because back in 2011, the black voters in Memphis decided to dissolve the city school system and merge it with the county. Here's more on the fight that makes perfectly clear the racial aspects of the situation [Memphis Schools Push For Merger With Wealthier, Whiter District, Newsone.com, 2-22-2011]:
After months of challenges, court proceedings and three days of mediation last week failed to reach an accord between the outlying cities and county commission, city council and city of Memphis over municipal schools, U.S. Dist. Judge Samuel "Hardy" Mays ruled legislation allowing the suburbs to pursue municipal schools this year is unconstitutional.
Mays' ruling means that, for now, the suburbs' plans for starting their school systems in August 2013 are on hold. That includes August referendums where suburban voters overwhelmingly approved establishing the systems, and the Nov. 6 elections of school boards in each of the respective suburbs.
A bold bid by the struggling, majority-black Memphis City Schools system to force a merger with the majority-white, successful suburban district has fanned relatively routine fears over funding and student performance into accusations of full-blown racism.
The fight over the fate of 150,000 public school students has stirred long-festering emotions in Memphis and surrounding Shelby County, creating a drama that has spread beyond school board meetings to union rallies, the state Legislature and federal court.
The spark for the schools consolidation fight began smoldering on Election Day last November, when Republicans took control of the state Legislature and saw Republican Bill Haslam win the governor’s race. Shelby County’s Republican politicians finally saw their chance to forever block a merger by securing special school district status.
The special status would draw a boundary around the Shelby County school district, protecting its autonomy and tax base – and, according to Jones, taking $100 million a year from the already underfunded Memphis schools system.
“We’re already a divided community in terms of racial polarization,” said Tom Word, who is white and a parent of three children in Memphis public schools. “That would further exacerbate that division.”
Memphis school board member Martavius Jones launched the charter surrender effort to get out in front of any effort by Shelby County to fence off its schools from the city.
Memphis schools began integrating in 1961 without the violence other Southern cities endured. White parents instead left the city for the suburbs or put their children in private schools, effectively re-segregating education into a mostly black city system and a largely white suburban system.
The 2010-2011 budget for Memphis City Schools is about $890 million to cover 103,000 students, 85 percent of whom are black. For the 47,000-student Shelby County system, which is 38 percent black, it’s more than $363 million.
The New York Times noted on November 5, 2012, race is at the center of the looming war to create a new municipal school board that would be deemed "unconstitutional" on November 27 [Merger of Memphis and County School Districts Revives Race and Class Challenges]:
When thousands of white students abandoned the Memphis schools 38 years ago rather than attend classes with blacks under a desegregation plan fueled by busing, Joseph A. Clayton went with them. He quit his job as a public school principal to head an all-white private school and later won election to the board of the mostly white suburban district next door.Actually, the financial aspect of this story is about race too; why should white taxpayers in the suburbs of Memphis have to financially support the poor life decisions of black people and subsidize their fatherless children in K-12 education? Why can't their tax dollars be used to augment their children's education in the white suburban school district?
Now, as the overwhelmingly black Memphis school district is being dissolved into the majority-white Shelby County schools, Mr. Clayton is on the new combined 23-member school board overseeing the marriage. And he warns that the pattern of white flight could repeat itself, with the suburban towns trying to secede and start their own districts.
“There’s the same element of fear,” said Mr. Clayton, 79. “In the 1970s, it was a physical, personal fear. Today the fear is about the academic decline of the Shelby schools.”
“As far as racial trust goes,” Mr. Clayton, who is white, added, “I don’t think we’ve improved much since the 1970s.”
The merger — a result of actions by the Memphis school board and City Council, a March referendum and a federal court order — is the largest school district consolidation in American history and poses huge logistical challenges. Memphis teachers are unionized, Shelby County’s are not; the county owns its yellow buses, the city relies on a contractor; and the two districts use different textbooks and different systems to evaluate teachers.
Toughest of all may be bridging the chasms of race and class. Median family income in Memphis is $32,000 a year, compared with the suburban average of $92,000; 85 percent of students in Memphis are black, compared with 38 percent in Shelby County.
But Kenya Bradshaw, who was recently elected secretary of a separate 21-member commission set up to recommend policies for combining the new districts, sees the merger as a chance for Memphis “to re-envision its educational system.”
“I hope people can see that this is an opportunity to reflect on our history and not make the same mistakes,” said Ms. Bradshaw, an advocate for educational equity, who is black. “If people are leaving for reasons that they don’t want their children to be around children of color or children who are poor, then I say to them, ‘I bid you farewell.’ ”
Though race has become the elephant in the room, the process actually began last winter as a struggle over finances.
Shelby County includes Memphis and six incorporated suburbs to its north and east. Tax money from the entire county is distributed to the two districts based on student population. Memphis, with 103,000 students, compared with 47,000 in the county, gets more of the money, though the suburbs contribute more per capita.
Fearing that suburban politicians and Tennessee’s Republican-dominated legislature might alter this arrangement to allow more tax money to stay in the suburbs, Memphis voted in December to surrender the school charter. Multiple lawsuits ensued, and a federal judge ruled on Sept. 28 that the two districts would be governed by a unified board but would run separately for two years, and then would combine in 2013.
And why would white citizens of the thriving suburbs of Memphis be concerned with having their children attend the same schools as black kids? For the very reason that in 2008, the Memphis City Council decided to step in and stop A&E from filming its popular show The First 48 in the city [Memphis police cut ties with TV's 'First 48': Show sensationalizes city violence, council says, May 12, 2008, Memphis Commercial Appeal]:
The A&E police documentary that made TV stars of local homicide detectives appears to be DOA in Memphis.For more on Memphis, black crime, and the sorry state of Memphis City Schools please read: President Mein Obama visits Memphis: Will he propose the Michael Oher Act?
Police director Larry Godwin decided not to renew the department's deal with the company that produces "The First 48" after several City Council members voiced concerns that the show made the Bluff City look like Murder Central.
"I heard out-of-town people say Memphis was out of control," said City Council member Wanda Halbert. "We were exposing the world to the worst aspects of our city."
Memphis has high rates of crime, poverty, blight, and misery and low property values because of its high population of black people; the suburbs of Memphis have high property values and low rates of crime, poverty, and blight because of its high population of white people.
This story makes perfectly clear the role that white people, be they from the greatest generation; retirees; baby-boomers; generation x; generation y; millennial's; currently enrolled in K-12 private or public schools; newborn; in the womb; or still in the reproductive organs of a white mother or father and just a fun night or two away from being conceived... play in 2012 America and all that they're good for: providing the tax revenue so that it can be racially redistributed to allow for the proliferation of non-whites.
If you dare protest -- then that revered document, the US Constitution, will be applied as a vigorous reminder that white people have only two choices: death and taxes.
It's on a day like today, when the events of the past 22 months point to an incredibly unsettling truth, that any good will you had toward the United States of America fades away.
Completely.
White man and white woman: know your role, and shut your mouth.
Welcome to life in Black-Run America (BRA).
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