John Hood makes excellent points today about three cases of confusing state and local politics.
I particularly relate to his confusion over Wake County school board politics.
And finally, I continue to be confused by the odd behavior of the state chapter of the NAACP and its leader, Rev. William Barber. When conservatives took control of the Wake County Board of Education in last fall’s elections, Barber and his allies became apoplectic at the possibility, now the certainty, that the district would abandon forced busing. They’ve gone as far as to stage acts of civil disobedience, complete with arrests at last week’s board meeting, all the while promising a constitutional lawsuit to overturn the board’s new neighborhood-schools policy.
Yet neither Barber nor any other liberal activist I know of has staged a sit-in protest in Charlotte, Durham, Winston-Salem, or any of the other North Carolina school districts that years ago adopted student-assignment policies identical or similar to the policy Wake County is about to adopt.
Why is Wake being singled out? Is it because its neighborhood-schools policy is being adopted resolutely by a conservative board rather than being adopted reluctantly by a liberal board bowing to public opinion and the clear direction of the federal courts? Is it, in other words, about politics rather than education?
