One interesting thing about the current liberal media is how often they feel it’s a really good idea to insult their base of nice white lady public schoolteachers as being evil horrible racists.
For example, from the Washington Post:
Arming teachers would put black and Latino kids in dangerAnd much more in this vein.For students of color, guns in classrooms could be deadly.
By Stacey Patton February 27, 2018
Stacey Patton is an assistant professor of multimedia journalism at Morgan State University and the author of “Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America.”
President Trump wants to arm teachers to prevent, or reduce the carnage from, future school shootings like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., this month. …
But putting guns into the hands of schoolteachers would be extraordinarily dangerous for black and Latino students, who are already often forced to try to learn in hostile environments where they’re treated as threats.
How long would it be, if Trump’s plan became reality, before a teacher shoots a black student and then invokes the “I feared for my life” defense we continually hear from police officers who misinterpret young black people’s behavior with deadly consequences?
A mountain of data on persistent racial biases and disparities in education and on police presence in schools — as well as a recent increase in racial harassment in schools — makes it clear that kids of color won’t be safe if their teachers are carrying weapons.
Those children are the ones who always feel the brunt of policing inside and outside of schools. Most high-profile mass shootings have been committed by white men, but metal detectors, school police and armed guards are disproportionately placed in public schools with majority black and other nonwhite students, along with locked gates, random sweeps, and a host of other surveillance and security measures to maintain control in their schools. Research shows that such practices foster hostile environments that have contributed to racial disparities in school suspensions, expulsions and arrests leading to the “school-to-prison pipeline,” by pushing more students of color out of school and into the juvenile justice system.
One report last year found that “school resource officers, who essentially function as law enforcement personnel, are more likely to be deployed on campuses with large numbers of black students.” A 2014 Department of Education publication reported that black students were disproportionately likely to be referred to school resource officers or arrested — they made up 16 percent of total enrollment but 27 percent of students referred to resource officers and 31 percent of students arrested in school-related matters. White students, who were 51 percent of the total, accounted for only 41 percent of resource officer referrals and 39 percent of arrests. Another study found that “implicit bias” on the part of teachers often means young black males in schools are seen as “irresponsible, dishonest and dangerous.” Considering that about four of every five teachers in U.S. public schools are white, there’s ample reason to worry about how that bias would play out with guns involved.
Already, we have a disturbing number of examples of white teachers mistreating black students. For example, Patricia Cummings, a middle school teacher in the Bronx borough of New York, made her seventh-grade students lie on the floor while she stepped on one student’s back to illustrate the trauma of the Middle Passage of the slave trade during Black History Month.
By the way, if this white Broward County shooter had not happened to have a Spanish surname, wouldn’t he have been more likely to have gotten on a list that would have slowed his efforts to acquire a gun?
