Obama's Name Will NOT Be On Chicago School--Not For The Reason You Think!

UNREAL: Chicago Won’t Name School After Obama – Wait Until You See Why!

IN NEWS, OPINION, POLITICS / BY SEAN BROWN / ON SEPTEMBER 19, 2014 AT 10:39 AM /

Mayor Rahm Emmanuel thought it was a great idea to dedicate a new school to his former boss and longtime friend President Obama; however, residents disagreed, and the mayor has changed his mind.

One would think that in Chicago a school named after Obama would be a hit, and it is. It’s not that it was going to be named after the first half black president that’s the problem, it’s the fact that it was to be built in an affluent area of the city where mostly white people live. (Face-palm!)

“Over the last few months, my team has listened to questions and concerns from the community, ranging from location of the building to the naming of the school. We take that community input seriously, which is why – as we continue to look for a thoughtful way to honor President Obama – we will look for other possible names for this future school,” Emanuel said in a statement.

The community he’s speaking of is the black community, who expressed outraged that the school would be built to honor the President in a “wealthy, predominantly white part of the Near North Side,” according to the Chicago Tribune.

You thought white people were the only racists?

“What’s more, families living in the swaths of Chicago where students don’t reside near elite high schools, chafed at the fact the new school would be built little more than a mile from the top-tier Walter Payton College Preparatory High School,” the Tribune wrote.

That sounds pretty anti-white to me. Then again, maybe it’s my “white privilege” getting in the way again.

Adding to the pressure from the black community was “powerful” South Side Ald. Carrie Austin, who represents a part of the Roseland neighborhood where Obama worked as a community organizer.

“If they’re going to name a school after President Obama they should put it somewhere else,” Austin said Thursday. “Either in Roseland, where he got his start, or in the Hyde Park area, where he lived and has a home. To put it (on the near North Side), that just doesn’t look right.” (Face-palm!)

Because it’s just not “right” to dedicate a school to someone unless it’s in the neighborhood where they either grew up or worked? If that’s the standard, then a lot of cities might want to start thinking about name changes.

And of course, weighing in on the matter was a worker from Safe Passage, who said that racial demographics should be the deciding factor when choosing the location of the school.

“He was the first black president. It should be in a more or less minority community,” Elaine Jones said. “It just gets to be about the politics. For many of the people deciding, the kids really don’t matter.”

So it’s really all about race, got it.

Imagine, if you will, white conservatives showing similar outrage if someone tried to dedicate a school to George W. Bush in a minority community and saying it should be built in an affluent neighborhood. The mere suggestion will likely get me labeled as racist.

It would be funny to watch the double standard when it comes to racism and identity politics if it wasn’t so damaging to our nation. The very people who run around and scream racism at every opportunity rely on race as a determining factor in many of their decisions, just like with this school.

That, my friends, is the definition of racism.

Author’s note: I don’t particularly care if they name a school after the President or not; however, I do care about the double standard when it comes to racism in America. If we’re ever to get past the racial divide, then we must first stop allowing selective racism and hold everyone to the same standards. To say that a school shouldn’t be named after Obama in a neighborhood full of “rich, white people” is no different than those same white people saying they don’t want black children attending the school, except one train of thought is accepted and the other would get people killed. 

Schools Over The Top On Weapons! Now Screwdrivers And Hammers Are Verboten!

JUDGE SAYS ORDINARY TOOLS ACTUALLY ARE 'WEAPONS'

Affirms punishment against teacher who brought wrenches for visual aid

Published: 24 hours ago

 BOB UNRUH About | Email | Archive

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Ordinary tools, such as pliers, screwdrivers and wrenches, are “weapons” and so a Chicago school was correct to punish a teacher who brought them to class for a visual aid, according to a new court decision.

The ruling from a federal court in Illinois technically dismissed a lawsuit brought on behalf of teacher Douglas Bartlett. He had been suspended without pay for four days “on the grounds that his use of the tools as visual aids endangered his students, despite the fact that all potentially hazardous items were kept out of the students’ reach.”

WND reported a year ago when the case was filed – and the school’s actions were called political correctness run amok.

At the time, John Whitehead, of the Rutherford Institute, which brought the case on behalf of Bartlett, said, “Education truly suffers when school administrators exhibit such poor judgment and common sense, especially when it comes to their zealous misapplication of misguided zero tolerance policies. However, what makes this case stand out from the rest is that this latest victim of zero tolerance policies run amok happens to be a veteran school teacher.”

Bartlett had 17 years of experience in the classroom. While teaching a second grade class, the curriculum required a “tool discussion.”

During the lesson, employing a common technique by educators, Bartlett used a visual aid which included several garden-variety tools that included wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers. These tools are found in virtually every home and toolbox in America.

Along with the other tools, Bartlett displayed a box cutter and pocket knife and showed the students the proper use of these tools. When not in use, the tools were kept in a toolbox on a high shelf, which required the use of a chair for even an adult to reach.

But an “observer” complained and Bartlett was charged by the school district with “possessing, carrying, storing, or using a weapon” and “negligently supervising children, inattention to duty and repeated vagrant acts.”

Now, U.S. District Judge Robert Dow Jr. has dismissed a complaint filed on Bartlett’s behalf. He said officials at Washington Irving Elementary School acted correctly in defining the tools as “weapons.”

“In an age where public schools face an unprecedented number of real challenges in maintaining student discipline, and addressing threats of real violence, surely no one benefits from trumped up charges where no actual ‘weapons’ violation has occurred and no threat is posed to any member of the school community,” Whitehead said.

“This school district’s gross overreaction to a simple teaching demonstration on basic tools such as wrenches and pliers underscores exactly what is wrong with our nation’s schools.”

Whitehead told WND when the case was filed while zero tolerance policies have been around for years, there is a new movement afoot to take it to a new level where people are being taught to be afraid of anything that remotely resembles a weapon.

“I talk to people today who tell me they cannot even look at a picture of a gun because it is too frightening,” Whitehead explained. “I always tell him to walk down the street and look at a police officer who has several weapons on his belt. As a society we are going to have to live with guns and things that could potentially be used as weapons. If you’re using it safely as Bartlett did then what does it accomplish to make this an issue unless it is to put the fear of the state in somebody.”

WND also has reported that a West Virginia student was arrested, jailed and suspended after he refused to remove an NRA T-shirt he wore to school. The arrest occurred after Jared Marcum, an eighth-grade student, got into an argument with a teacher who objected to the image of a gun on the shirt.

Other students have been punished for drawing pictures of a gun or wearing a picture of a gun, but zero tolerance policies often go even farther.

“We had a case where a Florida girl, who was an honor student was expelled for year and three months after she passed her nail clippers to another student because it has a little fingernail pick in it.”

The Chicago student handbook defines a weapon as “any object that is commonly used to inflict bodily harm… even though its normal use is not as a weapon.”

The brief says that since it is a student handbook, Bartlett reasonably assumed that the definition did not apply to teachers who were using household tools as part of their instructional material.

“What we’re seeing in the schools today with all of these things is the belief that students are considered threats for doing anything that is slightly out of the ordinary,” Whitehead warned. “What these policies are doing is teaching kids and teachers to be very compliant and conditioning them to live in a police state.“

He also warns there could be unintentional consequences from sending the message to young children that common household items such as screwdrivers and pliers are now considered weapons. For instance, what would happen if a child were to call the police and inform them their parents have a large amount of weapons in their homes, referencing their father’s toolbox.

“The SWAT team would be there in a heartbeat with guns drawn. That has the potential to be a deadly situation very quickly,” he said.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/judge-says-ordinary-tools-actually-are-weapons/#Yb9dYuxqXGEpFi11.99