There are plenty of things that should drive funding streams for our nation’s schools, but race is certainly not one of them.

On Monday, the Associated Press reported that Walter Reed Middle School, located in Los Angeles County, is receiving less funding because of their racial makeup. Under a decades-old court settlement aimed at desegregation, schools where 70% of students are non-white receive additional funding. As a result of the changing demographics, the school now falls below that threshold, and they will have to cut staff significantly. This shows another unintended consequence of supposedly well-meaning advocates and a disturbing double standard against whites.

As I discussed with the healthcare bill, even laws with the noblest of intentions have negative and unintended side effects. Obtaining more funding for underperforming schools sounds nice in theory. This would address supposed issues like structural racism that purportedly create underperforming minority majority schools. But the settlement relies upon the mistaken belief that funding is the cause of success, when success is a result of a confluence of factors ranging from cultural influences to personal behavior. The most important factor in a child’s education—the involvement of their parents—has no relation to the amount of money the government spends. This shows that our lawmakers often believe that spending money on a problem is the only solution to it.

Even then, more money for staff and extra programs aren’t necessarily bad items, as Walter Reed Middle School has some of the most diverse options and best programs in the valley. However, the funding formula becomes a problem when it ends up hurting school children and taking away the staff and programs after their school suddenly becomes too white.

More insidiously, it shows a disturbing trend of reverse racism. Civil rights advocates argue that the historical repression of certain groups means that efforts to help them at the expense of privileged groups are not racist. But punishing a middle school for being too white exposes that false idea. The concept of punishing school children because their school is too black would be rightly denounced, but somehow the opposite is okay for liberals.

College-aged snowflakes regularly demand their own dorms, (separate but equal I suppose), and OpsLens reported that Harvard will have a black only graduation. Judging a person based on the color of their skin is wrong no matter which color is being judged. It’s not appropriate to address long-standing grievances by penalizing other races. But under the current leftist ideology, it’s okay to punish school children because too many of them are a color that is presumed guilty and privileged under their progressive agenda.

See related OpsLens content below.

Harvard Students Plan Graduation Ceremony for Blacks Only

“In true Ivy League fashion, even the segregated graduation ceremony is only for those with a graduate degree.”

Black graduate students at Harvard spent the past year raising money for a graduation ceremony for blacks only, a first for the Ivy League school.  The students who plan to attend the blacks only ceremony will also participate in the all-inclusive main ceremony.  According to one student, the separate ceremony is important for the black community because of historical racism.

Harvard joins at least four other universities in the United States that currently hold black only graduation ceremonies.  The practice is controversial and draws fire from critics for segregating the ceremonies.  Rather than looking at the ceremony as segregation, students say it’s about community and fellowship.

Students claim that having a separate ceremony is about celebrating success and letting others know black students can graduate like everyone else. This idea is not really trailblazing in 2017, considering the amount of successful black professionals that are working in the United States today.  The United States has made leaps and bounds towards equality in a very short amount of time, yet it feels like actions such as this detract from that achievement.

Although Harvard boasts one of the “highest graduation rates for black students out of a list of 18 highly selective schools reviewed by The Journal of Blacks in Education (JBHE), some feel marginalized.” From learning materials to interactions with non-black students, Harvard is apparently a breeding ground for horrible conditions. I often read terms like “microaggression” and “white privilege” during the course of my social media scrolling.  I recently looked up the definition of microaggression to get a better understanding of what it means, and found that it is basically behavior that implies the question, “What do you mean ‘you people!’”

I belong to a mixture of two backgrounds that have been historically marginalized, decimated even.  I am lucky enough to have knowledge of my heritage as it was incorporated into my upbringing.  However, I was not raised to believe that I was any different from other groups of people.  This served me well when I enlisted in the Army and found myself in the most diverse setting I had ever seen.

While I am proud of my culture and heritage, I don’t want to exclude others in the course of my achievements.  Those next to me contributed to my success and we all shared it.  I don’t find microaggression in my everyday life.  I don’t understand wanting a separate celebration based on skin color.  I can’t imagine wanting anything less than the full honor of graduating with my fellow soldiers.

Harvard students reportedly raised $27,000 to pay for the ceremony and reception.  That’s a lot of money that could have gone toward making an actual difference “in the community” if these students were so inclined.  That’s what I find insulting about the argument made by one of the participants who wants to “change the trajectory for all of us.”  While these Harvard grads cry themselves a river over the $27,000 party they planned for themselves, they didn’t even bother including black undergrad students in the ceremony.  But I thought this was a celebration of the black community as a whole.  In true Ivy League fashion, even the segregated graduation ceremony is only for those with a graduate degree.

Original article by Angelina Newsom.