From the Lexington Herald-Leader’s editorial, noting that the defense of lunch-counter racial discrimination by Rand Paul is being teamed up with David Williams’ legislation to resegregate Kentucky’s schools:
State Senate President David Williams and his fellow Republican, Sen. Dan Seum, went into full pander mode last week, thereby removing any doubts election season has arrived in Kentucky.
Williams and Seum pre-filed legislation that would guarantee K-12 students the right to attend the public school nearest to their home.
Because the bill would open the way to resegregating the state’s schools, this was a rather blatant playing of the race card by two men who hope it will improve their chances in upcoming elections.
Seum faces a challenge in November in his Jefferson County district, where public unrest with the local busing plan flared anew after schools reopened last month. Williams has all but declared his entry in the 2011 gubernatorial field, and no doubt hopes to reap statewide benefit from his variation on former Republican President Richard Nixon’s infamous “Southern strategy.”
This is a cynical political ploy for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the hypocrisy of Republicans who preach against “Big Brother” government while auditioning for the role of Big Brother themselves.
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All Seum cares about is successfully putting November behind him. And Williams would be happy if the issue remains available for him to exploit in the governor’s race in an appeal to voters who would like to return Kentucky schools to the days of Jim Crow.
If was your six year old child riding the bus over an hour a day, making multiple bus changes; You might understand the intent of the legislation better.
If you considered the rights of others to be equal to yours you would find the legislation pernicious. Your daughter is only more precious to you. There is one of you and a 6,000,000 other Kentuckians. So – who died and left you in charge?
Bleu, I rode the bus for about an hour and twenty minutes a day in grade school, so I do understand that’s hard. But given that funding for schools is based on property tax, there’s no getting around the fact that without desegregation, you have whites only schools that are well funded, and blacks only schools that are not well funded. You have more resources of every sort for the white children, since they are in neighborhoods with the higher property values.
I don’t suggest that everyone who wants their children to go to a nearby school are racist. But the result of neighborhood schools is a resegregation of public schools, and that’s a really bad result.