The Associated Press, via Breitbart, reports that Attorney General Eric Holder wants public schools to back off zero tolerance policies that he alleges discriminates against minority students. Putting a chill on discipline and stymieing schools from ousting miscreants means lots of public schools -- particularly inner-city ones -- will do even less educating.

Holder 's guidelines aim at halting "targeting minorities," but, practically, will accomplish defining deviancy downward yet again in urban minority-dominated schools -- that's mostly black and Hispanic kids from broken families and single-parent households.

The A.G.'s guidelines are another tacit admission that there are enormous dysfunctions in poorer minority communities that liberal prescriptions can't arrest and change. In place of reality-based solutions and constructive engagement, Holder -- on behalf of the president -- desires to excuse liberal urban failures by rationalizing and dismissing near- or outright criminal behavior on the part of minority students.

Reports the AP:

Attorney General Eric Holder said the problem often stems from well intentioned "zero-tolerance" policies that too often inject the criminal justice system into the resolution of problems. Zero tolerance policies, a tool that became popular in the 1990s, often spell out uniform and swift punishment for offenses such as truancy, smoking or carrying a weapon. Violators can lose classroom time or become saddled with a criminal record.

Carrying a weapon? Kids are being suspended in some public schools for bringing toy guns to classes or pretending their fingers are guns. Besides, the AP is letting Holder and the president off easy. Suggesting that truancy and smoking are leading to criminal actions against minority students ignores more serious offenses: gang activity, violence, bullying, theft, robbery, rape, drug dealing and use, threats or actual violence toward teachers, and more. (See "Normandy High: The most dangerous school in the area," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for a vivid picture of a dangerous urban school.)

More from the AP:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged the challenge is finding the balancing act to keep school safe and orderly, but when it comes to routine discipline the "first instinct should not be to call 911 when there's a problem."

Sheer nonsense, and Duncan knows it. Poor urban public schools aren't calling the police for minor infractions (which likely are routine in those environments), but for greater offenses or because the offender has a track record of more serious violations.

Another nugget from the AP story:

In American schools, black students without disabilities were more than three times as likely as whites to be expelled or suspended, according to government civil rights data collection from 2011-2012. Although black students made up 15 percent of students in the data collection, they made up more than a third of students suspended once, 44 percent of those suspended more than once and more than a third of students expelled.

Of course, legal actions against criminal black kids in largely poor urban schools carried out by mostly black administrators are racism. Liberals and race pimps have evidently degenerated to the point where black education officials are guilty of discriminating against their own. But Holder and company will fix on the instances where white or Hispanic administrators are seeking criminal action against black students in a tortured effort to find racism as the core problem.

Moreover, there are far greater breakdowns of family and neighborhood in poor black and Hispanic communities across the land. The sad reality is that criminality is disproportionately higher in poor minority communities. That fact can't be wished away. Holder's guidelines are an attempt to satisfy that need to wish away reality and hoist that old boogeyman, racism, as the cause of the catastrophe (not an exaggeration) in inner cities. Liberals and the race-pimp industry don't intend to be held accountable for their failures and follies.

Mind you, Holder's guidelines aren't binding, but given that many public school districts are hooked on federal money, they'll take heed. Funny how federal money can dry up when recipients fail to play the tune Uncle Sam wants.

Meanwhile, poor black and Hispanic kids who are struggling to get educations in substandard urban public schools are being done great disservices; actually, moral injustices. Holder wants to saddle good kids who are trying to improve their lives with kids whose criminal behavior is at best disruptive to learning and, worst, prevents real learning from occurring.

But then there are school vouchers. But, no, come to think of it...