Mississippi school stuck in the 1960s

[General Zod]

What the sweet zombie christ?

If you’re black and a student at one public middle school in Mississippi, you can’t run for president – only whites need apply.

Nettleton Middle School in Nettleton, Miss., has segregated its elected class positions by race, according to a memo sent home with children at the school last week that was obtained by NBC News.

Read the memo

The memo was first brought to light when Brandy Springer, a mother of four children, contacted blogger Suzy Richardson, founder and editor of the blog mixedandhappy.com. It was also reported by Gawker.

“My [eighth-grade] daughter came home from[Nettleton] school telling me that she wanted to try out for the school reporter, but it is only open to black students,” Springer wrote Richardson. “They told her ‘she should run for class president, that was open to only white students.'”

The memo indicates that only white students can be president of the school’s eighth grade, while only black students can be vice president.

In seventh grade, whites are the only ones who can be both president and vice president, while the only position a black student at Nettleton can apply for in sixth grade is that of the class reporter.

Springer told msnbc.com on Friday she was "shocked" when she first saw the memo, and has since moved her family out of Nettleton -- a small town of around 2,000 that Springer said is itself geographically segregated on racial lines -- to nearby Plantersville, Miss.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, close to 67 percent of Nettleton's population is white and 32.5 percent is black. In 2000, only 0.3 of the town's residents identified themselves as being of mixed race.

According to an excerpt from the school's handbook, homecoming positions are also divided by race – black and white, with no mention of other races.

Read excerpt from the handbook

“I have always taught my children not to see race,” Springer told Richardson. “This is so disgusting to me.”

Separately, Springer told msnbc.com she spoke with the superintendent of the Nettleton school district on Thursday. She said he agreed the policy was outdated and that he was willing to review the policy.

The school issued a media statement on its website, but would not comment on any specific details about the memo or excerpts from the handbook.

“The processes and procedures for student elections are under review,” Superintendent Russell Taylor said in the statement. “We are reviewing the origin of these processes, historical applications, compliance issues, as well as current implications and ramifications.”

School officials said another statement will be released later Friday. The school had no further comment on the memo when contacted by msnbc.com.

Talk around town: 'That's just the way it is'
"Even if they changed this policy, there's the fact that officials at this school have this attitude that they have let it go all this time, which means that apparently they have thought it was OK," Springer said. "I can't let my children be in a school district like that."

Springer moved to Nettleton from Florida with her husband, who is black, and her four children, two of whom are Native American and white and two of whom are black and white.

She said said her youngest daughter was called a derogatory name when the family first moved to the town and that Springer and her husband have been on the receiving end of racially charged comments, but that those incidents had been relatively isolated.

Why the flying fuck haven't this school's officials been raked through the coals yet? "Racism is a thing of the past" my ass.

[Mayabird]

Why the flying fuck haven't this school's officials been raked through the coals yet? "Racism is a thing of the past" my ass.

Because 1) it's in the middle of bumblefucking nowhere, and 2) nobody complained until now. The former contributes to the latter - you don't get new people coming in who know better and everybody local either just accepts it because they've been taught to not rock the boat or (somewhat understandably) keeps quiet out of fear.

[Simon_Jester]

My impression is that places like this are usually for people to move away from, not to, as far as demographics go. Is that what you're talking about, Maya? That because you don't get a substantial influx of people from outside bringing civilized attitudes into the area, things persist there much longer than they do in the outside world?

[Mayabird]

Pretty much, yeah. People who can (emotionally, financially, via education or the military or whatever other path), get out. With no population base or useful resources, there's no reason to bring in industry or business so nobody's going to move in. Which means nobody comes in to bring the Law or whatever, so things stay pretty much as they have been. Social inertia doesn't meet any opposing forces. People who are stuck there can't or won't rock the boat out of fear because they/their families/whatever are all there and could be targeted as well. People who have that courage have already gotten the hell out of there.

Plus, there are always those people who like the way things are and keep perpetrating it. They stay because they have they have their own little petty fiefdom there - better to rule in a tiny festering cesspit hole in the ground than to live somewhere where people say you can't dick over people because of their skin color, to terribly misquote Milton.

[Zixinus]

According to an excerpt from the school's handbook, homecoming positions are also divided by race – black and white, with no mention of other races.

What about Asians then? Are they white?

[Marcus Aurelius]

According to an excerpt from the school's handbook, homecoming positions are also divided by race – black and white, with no mention of other races.

What about Asians then? Are they white?

It's a small town in Mississippi. There probably are no Asians who also look like Asians there. Like Mayabird wrote, there probably has not been a significant influx of people from other parts of the US for decades.

[Johonebesus]

The article has been updated.

Following an uproar over a policy it said was designed 30 years ago to achieve racial equality, a school district board in a Mississippi town on Friday scrapped a system of student elections where race determined whether a candidate could run for some class positions, including president.

The rules sparked an outcry after Brandy Springer, a mother of four mixed-race children in Nettleton, Miss., complained that her 12-year-old daughter couldn't run for class reporter because she wasn't the right race. Read the original memo

Springer contacted an advocacy group for mixed-race families and the NAACP called for a Justice Department investigation — not surprising in a state with a history of racial tension dating to the Jim Crow era.

By Friday afternoon, Superintendent Russell Taylor posted a statement on the school's website, saying the policy had been in place for 30 years, dating back to a time when school districts across Mississippi came under close scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department over desegregation.

"It is the belief of the current administration that these procedures were implemented to help ensure minority representation and involvement in the student body," the statement said. "It is our hope and desire that these practices and procedures are no longer needed."

"Therefore, beginning immediately, student elections at Nettleton School District will no longer have a classification of ethnicity," it added. "It is our intent that each student has equal opportunity to seek election for any student office."

Springer, who moved to Nettleton from Florida in April, said her daughter was told the office of sixth-grade class reporter at Nettleton Middle School was available only to black students this year.

Her anger grew when she saw school election guidelines that allowed only whites to run for class president this year. In alternating years, the positions would be reversed so blacks could run for president and whites could hold other positions, district officials said.

Even if the policy is an attempt to ensure black and white participation, Springer said diversity is no longer a black and white issue, with a growing number of mixed-race children, Hispanics and other ethnicities attending school together.

'Ethnic diversity' now embraced, school says
The school agreed, saying it the statement that it "acknowledges and embraces the fact that we are growing in ethnic diversity and that the classifications of Caucasian and African-American no longer reflect our entire student body."

Springer is white. Her two older children, including the sixth grader, are half Native American. Her two younger children have a black father.

"How are they supposed to be classified?" she asked.

"My main concern is that the object of school is to prepare people for life. An employer could never do this: Advertise a position for a white man only or a black man only," she said. "This is not a lesson we want to teach."

Springer told msnbc.com on Friday she was "shocked" when she first saw the memo, and has since moved her family to nearby Plantersville, Miss.

The changes in school policy may have come too late for Springer. Springer said she moved to another school district last week and pulled her kids from Nettleton Middle School.

School administrators did not immediately respond to messages seeking further comment left Friday by The Associated Press.

Nettleton is a town of about 2,000 people with a population that is about 66 percent white and 32 percent black.

Springer's plight demonstrates the complexities faced not only by interracial families, but by school officials trying to achieve racial equality in a state known for tensions between blacks and whites. The school district also manipulated prom and homecoming elections so that the outcome is an equal division of blacks and whites.

Springer and others worried that could leave out Hispanics, Asians or any other student from another race or ethnicity, Springer said.

Springer's story spread rapidly on the Internet after she contacted a website for mixed families — mixed and happy dot com.

Suzy Richardson, the website's founder and the mother of four mixed-race children, said she and her husband have "raised our children to tell them they are black and white. They're half of me and half of dad."

Wrong message on race, blogger says
"It really made me upset (to hear Springer's story). The message that were sending to kids is that they have to choose one side of who they are," she said. "The message that we're sending our children is that we do things based on race."

According to an excerpt from the school's handbook, homecoming positions are also divided by race — black and white, with no mention of other races. Read excerpt from the handbook

“I have always taught my children not to see race,” Springer told Richardson on her blog. “This is so disgusting to me.”

Before the school announced it was getting rid of the policy, Charles Hampton, a vice president of the Mississippi NAACP, said he would ask the U.S. Justice Department to investigate.

"That's something that shouldn't be happening anywhere in America, but we still have pockets of it happening at certain schools," Hampton said. "The local community needs to get involved and demand they change the policy."

Springer said her youngest daughter was called a derogatory name when the family first moved to the town and that her family has been on the receiving end of racially charged comments, but that those incidents had been relatively isolated.

"Even if they changed this policy, there's the fact that officials at this school have this attitude that they have let it go all this time, which means that apparently they have thought it was OK," Springer said before the policy reversal. "I can't let my children be in a school district like that."

Springer said the sense in the town had been to let sleeping dogs lie.

"The talk around the town is that this is the way it is, that's just the way it is and nobody knows any better, nobody wants any better and that's why nobody's challenged it," Springer said prior to the change.

The Associated Press as well as msnbc.com's Ryan McCartney and NBC News' Carlo Dellaverson contributed to this report.

The policy has been officially revoked. Supposedly it was introduced around 1980 as an attempt to desegregate class officers, to ensure some blacks were elected. According to the principal, the racial requirements alternated yearly, so next year the class president would be black and the vice president white. It still stinks, but sadly it actually sounds like a well intentioned attempt to get blacks included when whites surely wouldn't elect them. That's assuming the principal isn't lying, of course, and doesn't excuse the fact that the policy was never revised.

[Temujin]

Yeah, I smell backpedaling from the principle now that they've been caught. It's always amazing how apologetic and excuse filled they are after they get caught.

[eion]

This is nuts, but the craziest part is that the BLACK administrators continued the policy past any conceivable point of useful affirmative action. Talk about battered wife syndrome.

[Mr. Coffee]

I seriously don't see why anyone is really surprised about this. It's fucking Mississippi. That's the state people in Alabama point at and say "Hey, at least we're not as fucked up as they are". Keep in mind that this is the same state where the lesbian high school student had to get the ACLU involved just to be able to go to her Senior Prom with her girlfriend.

[CaptainChewbacca]

It kinda sounds like the Lebanese government, where the PM has to be Sunni, the Secretary Shia, etc.

[Psychic_Sandwich]

Well, if they're actually telling the truth about it's origins, it makes some sort of sense when considered in light of the conditions when it was implemented. Given the choice between no black students getting elected because the rest of the student body were racist dicks and this, I would chose this. It has, however, fairly obviously outlived that sort of justification, and should have been scrapped years ago.

[Wing Commander MAD]

If its origins are true, it actually makes some sense. I just hope that it truly is no longer needed. I kinda get the feeling from what Mayabird said that the actual populace probably isn't much changed from the 1960's, in which case they may still be as racist as back then. I certainly hope that's not the case, but anymore my cynicism seems to be validated. Here's hoping for the best.