The Southern Poverty Law Center, which may ONCE have been interested in civil rights more than fund raising, has jumped into Durham’s racial-grievance waters with both feet. They have threatened the Durham Public Schools and charged it with discrimination against Hispanics.
Their examples sound as phony as the fake gay-bashing story at UNC this week. It’s the same M.O.: Dramatic charges are made, but no one is named. It’s the typical ploy of sleazy racial shakedown artists, and the SPLC is one of the sleaziest.
Among the claims is “limited access to language interpreters and inadequate translation.” Aside from the fact that we should never have been providing these at taxpayer cost in the first place, the SPLC also claims that “in many cases, these students have lived in Durham most of their lives.”
That’s my emphasis added there. If immigrants, legal or otherwise, had to learn the language to compete, they wouldn’t need translation services years after arrival. Anyone who works in public schools in North Carolina has seen this trend: 10 years ago parents of immigrant children demanded they learn English quickly, but the current crop of parents is content to have everything translated, from assignments, to announcements to PTA meetings. And why? Because we don’t expect them to have to learn the language.
The SPLC says, further, that “what was most heartbreaking was that students felt unwelcome at their schools.” Here’s a clue, SPLC. If kids learn the language quickly and don’t expect translations and interpreters, and if they try to assimilate, then maybe people won’t feel they shouldn’t be here. It’s a two-way street.
Before Durham Public Schools falls rear-end over tea kettle to react to the SPLC’s threats, they should do some digging into this group, which has made millions ginning up fear of a non-existent KKK threat to the American way of life.
I suggest they read the nine-day series by The Montgomery Advertiser (that’s the main paper in town, not a shopper, despite its name) that was a Pulitzer finalist in 1994 (sorry, no link, this was pre-internet). It exposed much of the sleazy operation of the SPLC, which was started by Morris Dees, whose expertise had been in (get ready) direct-mail fund raising before founding the SPLC.
Actions like this one against DPS are what they use to get the money to flow into their coffers from guilty white liberals who fall for their periodic attempts to drum up hysteria.
