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A new article on segregated high school proms in the Deep South — which are still going on today — reveals a lot about the myths and realities of racism in America.
The article, from today’s New York Times Magazine, concentrates on Montgomery County High School, a small school in a southern Georgia community that’s about two-thirds white. The school itself didn’t integrate until 1971, and its proms have been segregated ever since.
Or rather, its white prom has been segregated. The students refer to the proms as “the black-folks prom” and “the white-folks prom,” but the black-folks prom is open to anyone, and it’s not uncommon for a few white students to show up. As with historical segregation, the point of the whites-only prom is less to keep the races separate than maintain whites-only space.
Another important fact about the proms is that it’s mostly white parents, not white students, who are behind the segregation. As one student told the Times, white parents tell their kids, “if you’re going with the black people, I’m not going to pay for it.”
At the same time, though, the article doesn’t let the white students off the hook. As one black student notes, “half of those girls, when they get home, they’re gonna text a black boy.” That’s white privilege right there — participating in a exclusionary racist institution one moment, re-engaging with your black friends the next, and in many cases not even noticing the transition from one to the other.
May 26 update: The AP is reporting that Obama has picked Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. I’ve got a new post up this morning exploring her views on race and gender in the judiciary.
In August 2007 Judge Sonia Sotomayor sat on a panel that ruled on an appeal in a high school free speech case, Doninger v. Niehoff.
The ruling in that case has come under heavy criticism from some civil libertarians, but though it’s not good, I’m not convinced it’s as bad as some people have made out. Here’s the deal:
Avery Doninger was a member of the student council of Lewis Mills High School in Connecticut. In the spring of 2007, the student council and the LMHS administration butted heads over a school concert called Jamfest, which administrators were not allowing to go forward on its originally scheduled date.
At one point in the dispute Doninger put up a blogpost saying that the principal had canceled the concert because she was “pissed off” about student pressure. Doninger called the administration “douchebags” for canceling Jamfest, and urged students to complain to the principal and “piss her off more.”
According to the principal, however, the concert had never been canceled, and in fact the day after Doninger put up her post, students and administrators reached an agreement to reschedule it.
The principal learned of Doninger’s blogpost two weeks after it went up, and punished Doninger for posting it by not allowing her to run for Senior Class Secretary. She gave four reasons: Doninger had not followed proper procedures for resolving disagreements with the administration, the post’s language had been “vulgar,” claims in the post had been inaccurate, and the exhortation to other students to “piss her off more” had been inappropriate.
Doninger ran as a write-in candidate in the election, and won, but was not allowed to take office. She and her parents then challenged that decision in court, asking for an injunction that would allow her to be seated as class secretary.
A federal district court denied that request, saying that Doninger did not have a strong enough likelihood of winning her case at trial. In making that ruling, the court accepted the principal’s account of several factual matters, rejecting Doninger’s claims.
This is where Sotomayor enters the picture, sitting as a member of a three-judge appeals court panel.
Update: Here’s my review and analysis of the case., and here’s my take on Sotomayor’s perspective on race and gender in the judiciary.
Back in January I reported on the case of a high school student who was barred from running for student government after she referred to school administrators as “douchebags” on a LiveJournal blog.
Now comes word that federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, widely believed to be on Obama’s Supreme Court shortlist, issued a ruling in that case a year ago — and it wasn’t a good one.
According to media studies prof Paul Levinson, Sotomayor was part of a panel that ruled against the student on the grounds that high schools have a responsibility to instill “shared values,” including a “proper respect for authority,” in students.
Ouch.
I haven’t had a chance to read that court’s ruling in full yet, but I’ll update this post when I do.
A group of Florida high school students is waging war against a local curfew.
The law — which bars under-18s from downtown West Palm Beach after 10 o’clock on weeknights and eleven on weekends — is, they say, unconscionable age discrimination. But that’s not all.
The law exempts married young people, but not those who are out with parental permission. On the contrary, it imposes fines on parents who “knowingly permit or by insufficient control allow” their children to break the curfew. “Insufficient control” is apparently nowhere defined — is a parent whose 17-year-old is in college expected to exercise “sufficient control” to keep him or her indoors at night?
The most bizarre — and, in a bizarre way, comforting — provision of the two-year-old law is one which exempts young people who are “attending or traveling directly to or from an activity that involves the exercise of rights protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution” from the curfew.
That’s right. The curfew as written only applies to those young people who don’t intend to speak while they’re out on the town. If you’re going to be exercising your freedom of speech (or assembly, or religion, or the press, or, you know, petitioning the government for redress of grievances), you’re golden. If you’re heading out to sit by your grandmother who’s in a coma, though, you’re getting a ticket.
(Only not really. The city is mostly just using the law as a mechanism for rousting young people rather than going through the hassle of ticketing them — as of the end of March it had issued a thousand warnings but only five citations.)
It’s ridiculous, is what it is, and the National Youth Rights Association of Southeast Florida is doing something about it.
NYRASEFL leaders Zach Goodman and Jeffrey Nadel (both 16) spent a big chunk of the spring explaining to the mayor and city commission just how farkakte the law is, but didn’t get anywhere. Then in late March they retained local civil rights attorney Barry Silver, who managed to get a law that criminalized feeding the homeless (yes, really) overturned last year. But so far he hasn’t had any luck either.
So on the evening of May 1, they took to the streets, letting the city know when and where they would defy the curfew.
During the protest they were tailed by two officers on Segways, but otherwise left alone. Their presence does seem to have gotten under the cops’ skin, though, as police ticketed several teens who were waiting for their parents outside a nearby movie theater as the protest was going on.
NYRASEFL intends to make one final effort to convince the city commission to repeal the curfew law before filing suit against the city. We’ll keep you informed as the story develops.
Update: As Justin Graham notes in comments, NYRASEFL is on Twitter, too.
Note: I’m still digging on this story. Follow me on Twitter to keep up with new info as I get it.
The tremendous Pam Spaulding writes at Pandagon about an administrator at a Kentucky high school who allegedly told teachers to prohibit gay and lesbian students from leaving class to use school bathrooms after two female students were caught kissing in the girls’ restroom.
What she doesn’t mention, though, is that fifteen students held a public protest against the ban in front of the school on Friday.
I’m repulsed by the administrator’s actions here, of course, if the story is true. But I also find it fascinating that high school administrators in Franklin County, Kentucky would assume that teachers would know who their gay and lesbian students were.
And I’m thrilled that these students — gay, straight, both, or neither — were willing to stand up publicly against such nonsense.
1:00 pm update: I’ve found an article on the incident from the Frankfort, Kentucky State Journal. In it, the principal of Franklin County High School says “we would never send out an e-mail that had anything to do with sexual orientations,” which is almost, but not quite, a denial that such an email actually was sent. Assistant principal Karen Buzard, who allegedly sent the email, was unavailable for comment.
The State Journal article also included the above photo from the protest, along with some new details — the protesting students painted “Gay Pride” and rainbows on their faces, and held signs that said “Honk if you’re gay” and “We have a right to pee.”
3:00 pm update: Several anonymous commenters at the State Journal website claim that Buzard’s email restricted the bathroom privileges of specific students, not all gays and lesbians. I have reached out to school officials for comment, but have not yet had a response.
It’s also worth mentioning that if school officials did restrict bathroom privileges of gays and lesbians as a group, what they did is likely legal, as Kentucky has no LGBT civil rights law.
May 4 update: I’ve just received an email from Harrie Buecker, superintendent of the Franklin County Public School system. She says the district is “continuing our investigation” of the email incident. More as I get it.
May 5 update: The principal of Franklin County High School has posted a statement on the school’s website saying that no email was ever sent “barring any specific group of students from using the restrooms.” According to the statement, teachers were told that “certain students should not be allowed to leave the classroom during class because they had been in violation of school rules,” but “all students have time between classes to use the facilities.”
studentactivism.net 
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