Justifying Injustice using rhetorical appeals

by Posted on " The Disturbing Treatment Of Black Kids In Minneapolis" Share: CREDIT: AP Photo/Jim Mone African Americans in Minneapolis are dramatically more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses including marijuana possession, "disorderly conduct," and vagrancy - and those disparities start young.

For generations, Minnesotans have regarded our public education system as one of the nation's best. With state investment in education  near the national average, Minnesota's students are among the most college-ready in the nation. But for generations, we have failed our students of color.  The achievement gaps between Minnesota's white students and its black and Hispanic students  are among the highest nationally.

A generation ago, schoolchildren caught fighting in the corridors, sassing a teacher or skipping class might have ended up in detention. Today, there's a good chance they will end up in police custody.

Three high school students were arrested while waiting for a bus in Rochester after a police officer told them to disperse. The boys are members of a basketball team at Edison Tech High School. They were arrested Wednesday, Nov. 27 while waiting for a bus to take them to a scrimmage at Aquinas.

A program to monitor the social media use of public school students in Huntsville, Alabama has drawn accusations of racism after 86 percent of the students expelled under the program were black. The school district is pushing back against such criticism, saying that investigators did not know the race of the students they were monitoring.

What was supposed to be fun for a group of teenagers ended up being detrimental to their school careers, claim the parents of four black Ohio students who say their children were unfairly targeted and discriminated against for making rap videos, the Associated Press reports.

BOSTON - A majority of disciplined Massachusetts public school students are suspended or expelled for relatively minor offenses, and black and Latino students receive harsher punishments than white students, a new report has found.

Here's what the education data show: kids who are suspended or expelled from school are more likely to drop out, and those dropouts are more likely to end up with criminal records. In many places, school discipline pushes kids directly into the juvenile justice system.

To Sam McNair, a 17-year-old high school senior in Duluth, Georgia, it was an innocent hug. "You never know what someone's going through," McNair told CNN affiliate WGCL in Atlanta. "A hug might help." It didn't in this case because after McNair hugged a teacher, he ended up with a year-long suspension from Duluth High School, putting his college plans in jeopardy.

A young girl in Tennessee says she was suspended after breaking a class rule of saying "bless you" after a classmate sneezed. When Dyer County High School senior Kendra Turner said "bless you," she says her teacher told her that was for church. Turner feels her teacher was taking issue for her religion.

A Florida school has threatened 12-year-old Vanessa VanDyke with expulsion for not cutting her natural hair. VanDyke told a local Orlando station that she was given one week to decide whether or not she will cut her hair or leave Faith Christian Academy, a private school in Orlando she has attended since the third grade.

A U.S. District judge ruled this week that a Texas school can put locator chips on its students -- and expel those who don't comply. In the controversial ruling, District Judge Orlando Garcia said San Antonio Northside School District was within its rights to kick sophomore Andrea Hernandez out of Jay High School.

Violating Gonzales High School's dress code is not a crime, but some of the offenders are about to start looking a lot like convicts. Soon after classes begin Aug. 25, violators of the district's beefed-up dress code must don navy blue coveralls unless they get another set of clothes from home - or serve in-school suspension.

A charter school network in Chicago praised by Mayor Rahm Emanuel for its academic performance is under fire from parents and advocates for charging students $5 for some disciplinary infractions, including chewing gum, violating the dress code or being more than three minutes late to class.