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MSNBC Reports –
Miss. school reverses race-based rules for student elections
According to a memo sent home with students last week, African-American students could not run for class president in Nettleton Middle School this school year. However, the board voted at an emergency session Friday to drop that policy
Nettleton School Board takes race out of student elections
The decision came after a parent complained about the policy.
Brandy Springer posted on her Facebook account that students of a certain race could only run for specific offices at Nettleton Middle School.
In a statement released by the district Friday, it was revealed the practice had been in use for more than 30 years with whites and blacks rotating among offices annually.
30 years? Seriously? Good grief. What a bunch of buffoons. I doubt this will get much, if any coverage, in the print press in Mississippi, but that a policy like this existed in the first place is embarassing to say the least.
Of course, those who follow politics in Mississippi will remember that the MS Democratic Party has a very similar policy and does to this day.
State Democratic Vice Chair Barbara Blackmon says Franks’ appointment Thursday of Eduardo Martinez as Interim Executive Vice Chair was unlawful and unconstitutional. Blackmon says Martinez was not a member of the administrative committee, therefore cannot serve on it.
She also says, since Franks is white, according to the State Democratic Constitution, the Executive Vice Chair should be African American. “A Hispanic is not defined as a race,” Blackmon says. “It’s defined as an ethnicity. You cannot inject a Hispanic in that position.”
In Franks’ response, he states, “In following the Constitutional requirements for that office, I appointed someone of opposite race than me by selecting the first Hispanic member of the Mississippi Democratic Party to ever serve in a leadership position. I consulted with the officers of the Executive Committee, including Vice Chairwoman Blackmon, before making my selection.
Unfortunately, the bylaws/constitution of the MS Democratic Party are not anywhere in the public domain that the YallPolitics research division could track down.
Magnolia Tribune
