re: Obama on school discipline

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Especially when the resulting disparity lies on racial lines - that pretty much means you can exclude racism as a factor.

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No, but correlation does not equate to causation.

If statistics show that blacks commit a disproportionate share of violent crime, but we also overlay that with blacks are disproportionately the victims of violent crime, there should be no racist intent inferred from prosecuting those crimes.

Now, if black criminals were being targeted, yet black victims were being ignored - while whites were getting a pass for the same things blacks were getting locked up for - and I'm not denying there can be individual incidents of this - there should be no surprise that black kids present more discipline problems (as a group) than white kids (or Asian kids, etc.)

Now - having said that - we have few options. I would prefer to identify the troublemakers early - redirect them into an increasingly restrictive environment so they can only impede their own education (or at worst, a few other miscreats) - while we facilitate those who desire an education and are educatable - rather than to continue to allow the bad apples to spoil the barrel.

And I don't think this has to be racist - however, it will look so, because the redirected kids will (I predict) be disproportionately African American. What will be ignored by the race hustlers is that my plan will save more African Americans from this environment than we will let slip between the cracks. It's politically impossible, but that makes it neither wrong, nor ineffective.