Something less racist from Al Thompson.  Doesn’t he see the connection between the Jena 6 and this bit?  Guess not – E-K.

Blacks Disciplined More Often in Schools

 What would you find if you looked locally?  

 The Chicago Tribune  finds (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070924discipline,0,22104.story?coll=chi_tab01_layout) :

In the average New Jersey public school, African-American students are

almost 60 times as likely as white students to be expelled for serious

disciplinary infractions.

In Minnesota, black students are suspended 6 times as often as whites.

In Iowa, blacks make up just 5 percent of the statewide public school

enrollment but account for 22 percent of the students who get suspended.

 The story continues:

 In every state but Idaho, a  Tribune  analysis of the data shows, black

students are being suspended in numbers greater than would be expected

from their proportion of the student population. In 21 states�Illinois

among them�that disproportionality is so pronounced that the percentage

of black suspensions is more than double their percentage of the

student body. And on average across the nation, black students are

suspended and expelled at nearly three times the rate of white students.

No other ethnic group is disciplined at such a high rate, the federal

data show. Hispanic students are suspended and expelled in almost

direct proportion to their populations, while white and Asian students

are disciplined far less.

Yet black students are no more likely to misbehave than other students

from the same social and economic environments, research studies have

found.

 Don't miss this bit of context:

 "There simply isn't any support for the notion that, given the same set

of circumstances, African-American kids act out to a greater degree

than other kids," said Russell Skiba (http://site.educ.indiana.edu/ProfilePlaceHolder/tabid/6210/Default.aspx?u=skiba) , a professor of educational

psychology at Indiana University whose research focuses on race and

discipline issues in public schools. "In fact, the data indicate that

African-American students are punished more severely for the same

offense, so clearly something else is going on. We can call it

structural inequity or we can call it institutional racism."

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