How decades-old discrimination against Latino kids continues today – and what you can do about it
“. . . in at least 35 districts in 14 states, hundreds of unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have been discouraged from enrolling in schools or pressured into what advocates and attorneys argue are separate but unequal alternative programs – essentially an academic dead end, and one that can violate federal law.” –Associated Press
[pullquote]In Mendez v Westminster, Sylvia Mendez was told that there was a separate school for Mexican’s and she should enroll there.[/pullquote]We’ve already done this
It was in 1947, when nine-year-old Sylvia Mendez was not allowed to register in a “whites only” California public school. Her father, Gonzalo Mendez, sued four school districts and, with a team of civil rights lawyers that included Thurgood Marshall, eventually won a class action suit. The case, [tweet_dis]Mendez v Westminster, preceded Brown v Board of Education by eight years.[/tweet_dis] In fact, Marshall took his experience and lessons learned in Westminster and applied them to Brown, which has come to be known as the landmark anti-segregation case.
What’s happening to the Central American kids isn’t new . .
. . . because segregation is segregation.
In Westminster, Sylvia Mendez was told that there was a separate school for Mexican’s and she should enroll there.
In the case of the Central American children, they’ve been told they can’t enroll because they lack transcripts or are too old to graduate on time.
But this shouldn’t be an issue, because [tweet_dis]the question of whether undocumented children can attend U.S. public schools was decided in 1982, in Plyler v Doe[/tweet_dis], another Supreme Court case that struck down a city ordinance that denied funding for unauthorized migrants.
[pullquote]This is outright bigotry, a nastier sore that oozes on the underbelly of our society.[/pullquote]So you can’t call this racism . .
. . . because racism is institutional and the institutional hurdles regarding segregation and education rights have been cleared.
This is outright bigotry, a nastier sore that oozes on the underbelly of our society. This is the blatant classification-by-default of children as “other.” And it won’t be allowed to stand.
The frustration is that cases like this need to be re-litigated every time ignorance twines with prejudice. The problem is that although federal protections exist, there is no funding to enforce or monitor school districts that operate at the local level. So we only hear about the abuses as the occur.
According to the Associated Press, “[tweet_dis]Since fall 2013, the federal government has placed nearly 104,000 unaccompanied minors with adult sponsors in communities nationwide[/tweet_dis], where they are expected to attend school while they seek legal status in immigration court.” If local school districts don’t comply they can be forced to change their policies.
But undocumented children and their guardians don’t know their rights . . .
. . . so the abuses happen many times without notice.
An Associated Press investigation found that abuses have been happening in Alabama, California, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and South Carolina,
It needs to stop, and it’ll only stop with information and vigilance.
It can start with a simple phone call to your local school district, to ask what their policy is regarding undocumented children in general, and the undocumented children from Central America specifically.
[Photo courtesy of Colrin Colorado]
