Why I Love the NAACP

I have been meaning to blog about this all week, but forgot.

Let’s recap.

–We have a school district.  Until recently, it was headed up by Pedro Garcia, whose goal in superintending seemed to be to throw everything against a wall and see what stuck.  He kind of really sucked.

–But he’s claiming now that he was run out of town because he opposed the resegregation of the school district and the Board would not stand for that.

–We have a school board heavily influenced by the chamber of commerce.

–The chamber of commerce would like to have a school system that would attract people to Nashville.

–Most everyone who can pull their kids out of the public school system does.

–Busing sucks.

–But I can walk to Pearl Cohn High School from where I’m sitting right now and the kids who live around here will be going down to Hillsboro.  Mysteriously.  And by bus.

–The Board knew that the rezoning would create one school–Pearl Cohn–which would hold mostly poor black kids.

–In order to smooth feathers in the community, the Board promised to put $6 million dollars annually towards making Pearl Cohn a non-shitty school.

–BTW, the State has taken over the Davidson County Schools, so it remains undetermined how much the Board can actually act on any of its promises.

Okay, so here’s why I love the NAACP.

In a scene that seemed straight out of the civil rights era, the NAACP has just demanded that the school board reconsider its rezoning plan and, in the meantime, take $6 million from its reserve funds and spend it immediately to begin improving Pearl-Cohn schools.

I am not a poker player, but I believe this is called “calling one’s bluff.”