Public School Stages Drone Camp for Students: White Kids Not Welcome
Some Pennsylvania students just got a lesson in how discrimination really operates in American public schools.
A middle school used a video broadcast during school announcements to invite kids interested in flying drones to attend a weekend camp.
There was just one catch — and parents of white students probably weren’t happy to hear about it.
As National Review reported Monday, the Upper Merion Area Middle School’s announcement for the camp, which took place on Saturday, opened with a woman brimming with enthusiasm, followed by video of drone activities pretty much guaranteed to pique the interest of any adolescent.
Then came the kicker:
Besides it being limited in size — there were only 24 slots available — the program was extremely limited in who its target audience was:
“Here’s the thing,” the woman said. “It is a Black Student Union-sponsored event, so, in order to participate, 1: You must have a signed permission slip to claim your seat.
“Secondly, you must be black, African-American, a person of color in order to participate.”
Check out the video here. The drone stuff is undeniably cool. The uncool, undeniably ugly part comes at the end:
There it is — an actual example of literal “systemic racism” that progressives claim, ludicrously, is everywhere. Except in this case, it’s openly biased against white people.
But Upper Merion Area School District Superintendent John Toleno evidently doesn’t see a problem.
In an email to The Western Journal on Tuesday (a collection of bubbly boilerplate that was apparently being sent for PR purposes to any news organization that raised questions), Toleno noted that the program was simply part of the district’s “ongoing efforts over the past 8 years to give opportunities to groups who are underrepresented in STEM fields with a primary focus on students of Color and students who identify as female. This has been a national focus in the STEM community.”
The modern education mindset is on full display in those few words: jargon like “groups who are underrepresented”; the obsequious capitalization of the “c” in “Color”; being careful not to say “girls,” just “students who identify as female.”
Walking on eggshells all the time must be a tough way to live.
A couple of comments on Facebook communicated the reactions of what were doubtless many, many more people who heard about the video:
One commenter wrote: “This is wrong on so many levels and not at all what I want for my children, and that’s why I’m homeschooling now and by the grace of God, my children will never step foot in another public school — they undo and undermine everything my husband and I teach them.
“Maybe white people should take to the streets and start burning communities down. ? I jest, obviously. But this is blatant racism on its face.”
There aren’t too many other ways to see it. (Liberals love to claim racism over differences of opinion. Don’t expect them to see it where it actually is.)
In his email, Superintendent Toleno stressed that the school district has drone programs open to all students throughout the year. He even noted that this particular program would have accepted white students if not enough black students were interested.
“Please be further advised that if we didn’t get to our 24 student limit with African American students as stipulated in the grant we wrote and were awarded, we would have absolutely opened this up to our entire middle school student population to fill the 24 student seats,” he wrote.
How very gracious. (The email didn’t come out and say whether all of the slots were filled at the event, but it sounds like they were.)
It’s worth noting here that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Upper Merion area, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, is about 72 percent white, about 19 percent Asian, and 6 percent black.
Assuming the school district’s demographics are similar, the overwhelming majority of students who watched that really cool video about drones were told right to their faces that there was a party going on and they weren’t invited.
As ugly as it sounds, there’s no other way to put it: They’re not of the favored race these days.
That isn’t the United States as most Americans of any race understand the country. It’s not the United States the civil rights movement of the 1960s fought for, with Martin Luther King Jr.’s dreams about content of character being more important than skin color.
And it’s not what parents want for their children, as evidenced by the critical role of public education in last week’s election results in Virginia.
But it’s the American public school system today.
Class dismissed.
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