The Tucson Unified School District board of governors has approved … a race-based system of discipline.

Offenses by students will be judged, and penalties meted out, depending on the student’s hue.

…

TUSD principals and disciplinarians … are being asked to set two standards of behavior for their students.

Some behavior will be met with strict penalties; some will not. It all depends on the color of the student’s skin.

It is an invitation to chaos.

The students of the Tucson Public School District certainly deserve more.

They deserve a chance to excel academically.

Instead, they get this. Genuine apartheid.

Does this make any sense to anybody outside the Tucson Public School District board of governors? Are the flaws of such a policy not immediately apparent? They are literally going to teach children the consequences of behavior are based on skin color. What a wonderful unifying message of diversity.

Maybe I’m the crazy one here; but, it occurs to me, if you are genuinely interested in promoting the idea that everyone is equal and deserving of the same respect, rights, and opportunities, one prerequisite you absolutely positively can not do without is a universal standard of discipline. A kid can sit through as many social studies classes about emancipation, civil rights, and women’s sufferage as you can concoct to inflict upon him; but, if he knows his getting caught passing a note will earn two days of detention to Juan’s one, you’re gonna lose him. Chances are, if he didn’t have a problem with Mexicans before, he’s gonna have one now.

These people are out of their minds. The author is right; it’s apartheid! It’s genuine, officially sanctioned, stamped and approved racial segregation and discrimination. How does an advocate of such a policy not see that? What would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. say if he were alive to see this? Speaking of King and civil rights, isn’t this a blatant violation of the law?

From the Fourteenth Amendment:

No State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

How do you look a kid in the eye and teach him about the Constitution under a two-tiered structure of discipline based on race?