Hey, all you “root cause” fans!  Guess who’s been teaching black kids that violence is acceptable!

Writing in City Journal, Heather Mac Donald provides good insight into the rash of mall violence over Christmastime.  In her very first sentence, she impolitely notes that the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators were black.  This fact was airbrushed out of most news accounts of the legacy media for the usual reason: to be politically correct. 

That particular revelation of Ms. Mac Donald's is not the real value of her article, although it is pertinent to the point she makes.  Specifically, she sees a clear connection between this gratuitous mall violence and the lack of discipline in the public schools.  And she goes on to explain how the policies of the Obama administration have greatly exacerbated this problem as it relates to blacks.

As MacDonald writes: 

The Obama Justice and Education Departments have strong-armed schools across the country to all but eliminate the suspension and expulsion of insubordinate students. The reason? Because black students are disciplined at higher rates than whites. According to Washington bureaucrats, such disproportionate suspensions can mean only one thing: teachers and administrators are racist. The Obama administration rejects the proposition that black students are more likely to assault teachers or fight with other students in class. The so-called “school to prison” pipeline is a function of bias, not of behavior, they say.

Objective evidence does not enter into the Obama administration's thinking.  

 ... the Obama administration would have us believe that in the classroom, black students are no more likely to disrupt order than white students. Equally preposterous is the claim that teachers and administrators are bigots. There is no more liberal a profession than teaching; education schools are one long indoctrination in white-privilege theory. And yet when these social-justice warriors get in the classroom, according to the Obama civil rights lawyers, they start wielding invidious double standards in discipline.

Keeping disruptive minority students in the classroom instead of removing them is done under a flimsy pretext known as "restorative justice."  This cockamamie policy, when applied to the classroom, fuels school violence.  How could it do otherwise?  And worse yet, as any teachers will tell you, the ensuing chaos makes it nearly impossible for the students that may actually want to learn to do so.

Mac Donald notes that when the Obama administration sees a school district where black students are disciplined at a rate significantly greater than that of whites or Hispanics, federal litigation can follow.

Given this threat of lawsuits, it’s no wonder that district superintendents dismiss the rising violence and announce that restorative justice is “working.” It’s certainly “worked” to reduce expulsions and suspensions—in Seattle, by a whopping 77 percent from 2013 to 2016. Never mind that students aren’t learning and teachers are at risk.

This has been happening nationwide under President Obama and his politicized justice and education departments.

Policies have consequences.  The destructive dynamic that Obama's race-centered restorative justice has set loose in the schools is this.  Students see teachers and administrators as authority figures.  This need is particularly keen for underprivileged kids from broken or single-parent homes.  So when these youths see those who are supposed to be their role models turning what is essentially a blind eye to their antisocial behavior and/or that of others, a message is sent.  And that message is that acting up badly, even violently, is acceptable.  

Among the root causes for violence and criminal behavior is surely lack of discipline and self-control.  This problem begins in the homes and, if not addressed in the schools, soon makes its way out into the streets.  It is a pity that the Obama administration makes a bad situation worse.  In this case, it is true what Ronald Reagan observed: "Government is not the solution; government is the problem."

Obama's hyper-race-orientated policies on school discipline ripple through society, increasing the general level of violence and criminality.  They are also a tremendous drag on the ability of earnest minority students to learn.  If nothing else, the K-12 schools should have a civilizing effect on those in their care, and even this President Obama has taken away from those who most need it.

Barack Obama is a man who was elected to a position far beyond his level of competence.  He and those he has brought into government have degraded almost everything they have touched during his eight years in office.  With the election of Donald Trump, America has a golden opportunity to set things right across the entire policy spectrum of governance.  In many areas, it will not take genius to make great improvements; just the application of some common sense will do wonders.