Race is a factor in CMS operations. Period. All the hand-wringing by the UPoR on the topic sets up a tired but effective predicate.

First understand that race was a factor in CMS keeping West side schools under-capacity while spending three to four times as much per student in many of those schools. The capacity set-up was a hangover from a previous predicate: Vote for CMS bonds suburbs or we’ll bus your kids across town to schools where we have the space. The lavish spending was required in order for CMS to prove that it was not discriminating — that and CMS knew that suburban parents and PTAs could be counted on to pickup the slack so long as CMS paid the light and water bill and damn little else.

But see where this approach put CMS when the inevitable budget squeeze came — with a clutch of high-cost, low-capacity, low-performing schools. On the West side, serving lower income kids. Aha, you say. CMS has really screwed up. Not really.

Remember that Pete Gorman is an avowed fan of how the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Libraries handled its budget squeeze, by immediately shutting down libraries and pleading poverty. What Gorman has done is tell the public that CMS needs more money to keep schools open. At the same time the UPoR and the usual non-profit suspects have quickly glommed on the prove you are not a racist angle.

What is the tried and true method for any legal entity, community, public body, or going concern to prove to itself and its critics that it is not racist? Money. Homeowners in Mecklenburg County are being told that if you want to keep your neighborhood school and if you want to prove that you are not a racist, it is going to cost you. It is going to cost you with 2011 property tax reval that raises your property tax 10 to 20 percent. For your schools. For your good name. If you are paying $2000 a year in property tax, add another $200; $3000 add another $300, or so on.

Call it the I Am Not a Racist Tax.

Update: I guess it is official: The front page of the UPoR uses Mark Vitner to declare that the New Normal has come to Charlotte. Boom times are over — and not coming back.