The Wake school board recently passed a very very controversial resolution ending what is typically called “busing for diversity” — that is, busing minority students to specific students across the county in order to maintain proper race stratification and to balance poverty levels. And, of course, certain people are angry this passed, and that the busing ended.

“Busing for diversity” is a plan that’s been around for quite a while. The idea is, simply, that certain areas of counties/states/districts naturally contain a higher population of one minority or another, and sometimes as a “result” of that, certain minority neighborhoods are poorer than others. Following logically, many argue, schools local to these poorer neighborhoods are filled up with poor, under-funded, uneducated minorities, who are basically given a raw deal in a school that does not give them the opportunity to escape their problematic lifestyle. Thus, the answer to this issue is simply to take a wire whisk to the entire school district — to take different racial/economic groups and to bus them around the county to different schools, thus enduring a fairer division of race, economic status, and academic possibility.

Of course, this sounds nice, but what other groups argue is that this leads to what is in effect institutionalized racism. In the process of figuring out specifically what minorities are being disenfranchised, one must inherently single out racial groups and deem them worthy of “special” treatment, and consequently determine that other “majorities” are getting too fair of a deal. What inevitably happens is that the state has to basically pick a group (typically, but not always, African-American or Hispanic students) and “punish” them by making them go all over the wild blue yonder so school statistics look balanced. Basically, in the attempt to be “fair”, it ends up massively inconveniencing everyone and often only being impressive in the racial statistics of the schools involved in the program.

So what do I think?

First of all, both of the issues above don’t entirely address the issue. On one hand, “busing for diversity” is institutionalized racism: it’s an attempt to arbitrarily bring focus to race where it oftentimes needs not be taken, and it really is a kind of ridiculously PC attempt by schools to look “diverse” in perhaps the most racist way possible. On the other hand, however, the issue of low-income “minority schools” still remains — like it or not, these types of schools do exist, and they need to be fixed. Such schools create a kind of cycle of low-education begetting low income begetting disenfranchised children, and it’s a loop that basically screws promising kids out of a future.

Put another way, both positions above don’t really address the issue — the under-performing schools. “Busing for diversity” is just slight of hand, an attempt to randomly shuffle a deck of cards to possibly make things more “fair” just through random chance. Not doing so means that those who are in the under-performing schools are trapped there.

So what should we do? Two things.

First off, the answer to poor performing schools is not to start throwing the students all around the county. The answer is to fix the problem itself. School districts need to have the money and the ability to financially support these schools and send in highly talented teachers and principals who can turn these schools around. Even if 100% of the students get free lunches and can’t afford a single pencil, schools need to provide a great education, and if students are under-performing, they need to find a way to remedy the situation, not put a band-aid on it by sending select students out of the area and bringing other students randomly in. As I mentioned above, shuffling the proverbial cards does nothing but try to randomize the chance that an unwitting student gets forced into a bad school.

Additionally, further opportunities outside of the hard-and-fast highschool system need to be available. If a student is particularly gifted, regardless of his school or economic situation, accommodations should be made for him to be able to go to a community college for some classes — some school districts have implemented programs like this to great effect. Indeed, this can run the risk of putting a “brain drain” on local highschools — but simultaneously, it will allow promising students even in the worse schools an avenue to higher quality, more focused education, and possibly a proper segue into undergraduate studies. Investing the little money into these kids to allow them such opportunities pays back in the future of a state fifty-fold — it’s a small expense we should be willing to pay.

Of course, it’s unlikely much will happen in this case. The unfortunate fact is, this entire debate’s been perverted by the fact it’s become partisan — either side is not willing to think of much else but beating the opposition. Creative, objective thinking has been quashed in the attempt to “win” in a partisan debate, which never results in anything productive. It’s too bad the citizens of Wake County are too busy protesting and complaining to think of real answers.

There has recently been quite a stir over at Salon.com regarding an article about “hipsters” — the new “hip” generation, the self-proclaimed “creative class” without either the creativity or the class — are finding refuge in food stamps.

For the uninitiated, hipsters are best described as the new face of the “arts class” in America — stereotypically clad in too-skinny jeans and flannel shirts, you find hipster-type people frequently today in arts programs and other “creative” outlets, particularly in the music world and the fashion world. As the name implies, hipsters are all about what is “hip” in their own small world, particularly in the popularity of being “ironic” — it’s not uncommon to see hipsters obsess over vinyl records, expensive organic foods, androgynous clothing, and vintage clothing, obsessing over aesthetics to the detriment of anything even resembling reality. Admittedly, “hipsters” is somewhat of a pejorative, as is what they were once called — arrogant trust fund babies in arts programs.

The reason for the gnashing of teeth regarding the aforementioned article is fairly simple: Hipsters are typically arrogant and picky, and in this case embody everything wrong with welfare. Close examination of the article reveals why these “hipsters” are on food stamps: careers listed in the article range from “installing museum exhibits” to “part-time blogging” and “AmeriCorps volunteer”. It doesn’t take long to understand why the aforementioned jobs fell through the cracks when the economy worsened: with perhaps the exception of the first, the jobs weren’t jobs, they were attempts at not doing jobs, or at least jobs in the very loosest sense. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with volunteering or blogging, or even being “creative” — all are valuable in their own right — but one must ground himself/herself in an actual job with a living wage before one does either. The ability to find a job that is fulfilling and allows you to be “creative” is wonderful, but not a divine right — and the ability to temporarily live off occupations like “blogging” is just that: temporary.

The anger is compounded because these hipsters still try to maintain their picky lifestyles while they maintain food stamps. As noted in the article, stores these hipsters shop at range from Trader Joe’s to Whole Foods — stores I personally cannot afford whatsoever. These hipsters do shop at farmer’s markets, which is just fine and frugal, but their choice to go to extremely expensive stores to buy “organic” food on the Government dollar has many, many people angry. There’s nothing wrong with eating healthy: but specialty foods from these stores push the limit, especially when they can cost up to two times as much, valuing the presentation of the food and the display over lowering the price to the point where Forbes insinuated the store dealt in “Food Porn”.

I’m not attempting to bash the arts community, nor am I trying to bash specialty food stores. I am trying to show that it’s not entirely the economy’s fault these “educated, unemployed, 20- to 30-somethings who ‘work’ in creative industries” [quotes mine] are on welfare now, and there’s a legitimate reason to be angry at their use of food stamps. If the economy was strong enough, I’m sure there would be plenty of “blogging”-like jobs available — heck, I’m sure there would be jobs where people did nothing but sit around and be hip for a living. The problem is, these jobs are very much reliant upon the economy to be powerful — and when the economy tanks, these people need real, tangible skills to fall back on. In a sense, “hipsters” need patronage, just as much as artists and writers did of old: and if they can’t get it, they need to find alternative employment, not curl into the fetal position. Put another way, the ability to be “creative” is nice, but creativity oftentimes takes a back seat to practicality, and you can’t whine about not having a job when all you want to/can do is post on blogs or take pictures of yourself wearing “hip” clothing. It’s arrogant to expect the government to pay you until you can find a job you want. And when the government is paying, you don’t get to shop at a store with $4/lb chicken, $19.99/lb cheese, and $390 wine.

Are there jobs hipsters can have and avoid food stamps? Absolutely — not that they would ever take them. Those “educated, unemployed, 20- to 30-somethings” could find steady employment in the military — and if they are indeed college educated, they could even be officers. Even as bad as the economy is today, fast food joints sometimes have job offerings, as do places like Wal Mart. With the right know-how and enough energy, these “hipsters” could start small businesses that do practical and local things, like landscaping or maid services or anything similar, and likely not only make themselves a job, but other jobs in the process. I’m not saying it will be easy to find a job by any means, but if these hipsters are as useful and as educated as they would like to pretend to be, they could undoubtedly find something. Of course, what they would find would likely not give them the opportunity for being “creative” like they want, and none of them would be quite as sexy as being an “artist” or a “designer”, but they are jobs, real and meaningful. And they would leave welfare money to go to people who legitimate need it, not those who just want it.

Independent of your perspective on the immigration debate, statistics are showing that the illegal immigration situation may be much worse than we may initially imagine, not to mention much more diverse.

According to ProCon.org, a website that collects “Pros and Cons of Controversial Issues”, illegal immigrants comprise a whopping 5% of the entire US workforce. Of that number, they comprise 40% of the entire bricklaying workforce, 37% of the drywall installing workforce, and 30% of the “miscellaneous agricultural” workforce (i.e. fruit pickers, farmhands, etc). North Carolina is #9 on the list of states with the highest percentage of illegals, with 380,000 illegals spread across the state. Interestingly enough, the stereotype that all illegals are Mexican isn’t true: while over 60% are indeed Mexican and 14% come from other South American countries, 25% come from countries like Korea (I’m presuming North Korea), the Philippines, China, and India. Total, the population of immigrants in the US total approximately 11.6 million, with 51% in the service and construction industries, as opposed to the 21% of legal US nationals.

What this may indicate in a casual reading is that there may be some legitimacy to the ever-parodied “I lost my job due to illegals” argument. Consequently, it also shows us that the entire issue is not merely “fixing Mexico”, as many pundits may argue: though Mexico is over half the problem, the remaining half of the problem is spread all over the world.

To be honest, however, what is most important in my mind is that this means that there are 11.6 million or more (I’m guessing much more- I doubt many illegals are stupid enough to respond to surveys) people in the US right now who are working, living, and doing other things, implicitly using government resources (even things like roads), and not paying taxes. In terms of our good state, 380,000 people are living and breathing in North Carolina right now who are placing a drain on the system without placing a single dime into it, outside of sales tax and other unavoidable taxes. Furthermore, because illegal immigrants work under the table, their ability to work for cheaper than legitimate U.S. workers unfairly “taxes” Americans and North Carolinians in another way- by taking their jobs by not playing by the rules. If this means that illegals should be simply deported or integrated and forced to pay taxes, or any combination thereof, is up to you. Regardless, one thing is very clear: something needs to be done.

North Carolina has recently been the subject of news and controversy after it was revealed that a Wake County middle-school teacher, FSU grad Melissa Hussain, was suspended from her job because she complained about a proselytizing group of Christian students in her class. You can read the News & Observer article here and get a fairly good summary of the situation here, but the situation is pretty straightforward: Hussain, a science teacher, incited some hatred from certain Christian students after revealing for some reason she was not a Christian. This resulted in the kids allegedly branding her a “Jesus hater”, in which they decided to proselytize her or harass her, I can’t tell which. As a result of her complaints about the incident on Facebook, she was unceremoniously suspended and replaced.

During the period in question, the students left a Bible on her desk with a card with the “Christ” in “Merry Christmas” underlined, wore Christianity-related “Jesus shirts” in class and simultaneously broke into the song “Jesus Loves Me” during class time, and in other instances supposedly pejoratively called her a “jesus-hater”. Hussain, “mad” at the kid(s), posted complaints on the social networking website Facebook, saying, among other things, that she could not believe the “cruelty and ignorance of people”, and that she felt the act of the child leaving the Bible on her desk was “malicious and hurtful”- and, further, in one post said she “was able to shame her kids” for the incident. Some of her friends on the website were less than kind in their comments, calling the children “small minded” and “ignorant rednecks”, and one poster even went so far as to state that Hussain should put up a poster of Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the classroom wall and draw a Nazi swastika on his forehead to punish the children. If you are interested, the full images of the comments can be found here (Warning: PDF).

I’m not sure how to respond to this incident. On one hand, what the children did can indeed be at least loosely defined as a hate crime- the kids clearly ganged up on Hussain to harass her because of her religious beliefs (or lack thereof), and I think it’s fairly clear they were goaded on by their parents or other authorities, as I doubt kids would do this on their own volition. Even beyond that arbitrary definition and the authority figures, I do not think what they did was appropriate- I do not feel a science classroom is the proper forum for the blatant promotion of any religion, be it Christianity or otherwise. On the other hand, however, I think the teacher is over-reacting, and her posts on Facebook did get a little bit dramatic- Hussain should have had the good sense to know better than to whine about small children on Facebook like a small child. She only made it worse by placing it in what was in essence a public forum, where others were implicitly encouraged to ridicule small children. One can only hope she- and her students- will learn better from this incident in the future.