A judge has ordered a Mississippi school district to comply with a 40-year-old desegregation order, one that the school district got around by allowing white students to transfer to a majority white school or group them within a smaller number of classrooms at other schools, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Lawyers from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division contacted the district in 2007.
One of the more frustrating aspects of discussions about race since Obama's election is the persistent, pernicious idea that this kind of racism is firmly rooted in history and is up for revision. I have some sympathy for school students who don't get a firm grasp of the most shameful aspects of our nation's history in school, but I have little for adults who continue to believe that things like purposeful or de facto desegregation were confined to the South and have mostly ended.
The sad part is how little attention this seems to be getting so far.
-- Monica Potts
