While eight percent of Harvard undergrads are black, they’re the wrong blacks, critics said at a black alumni weekend. According to Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of Harvard’s African and African-American studies department, “the majority of them — perhaps as many as two-thirds — were West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples,” reports the New York Times. Guinier herself is the daughter of a Jamaican father and a white mother.

If their figures are correct, affirmative action is helping students whose families didn’t suffer from American slavery or segregation. And not just at Harvard.

Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania who have been studying the achievement of minority students at 28 selective colleges and universities (including theirs, as well as Yale, Columbia, Duke and the University of California at Berkeley), found that 41 percent of the black students identified themselves as immigrants, as children of immigrants or as mixed race.

In another survey, nine percent of college-age blacks describe themselves as of African or West Indian ancestry.

A Harvard sociologist quoted in the story says West Indian immigrants, are “less psychologically handicapped by the stigma of race” because they come from majority-black countries. Gates points to cultural values.

“This is about the kids of recent arrivals beating out the black indigenous middle-class kids,” said Professor Gates, who plans to assemble a study group on the subject. “We need to learn what the immigrants’ kids have so we can bottle it and sell it, because many members of the African-American community, particularly among the chronically poor, have lost that sense of purpose and values which produced our generation.”

Many academics want to duck the issue that Gates and Guinier have raised. If immigrants’ children don’t count, it’s too hard to make the diversity numbers come out. Students of all colors from poor or working-class families rarely qualify for elite universities.

The Supreme Court ruled that racial preferences are OK to promote diversity but not to remediate past injustice, writes On David Bernstein on Volokh Conspiracy. Discriminating against immigrant blacks is probably illegal. Discriminations wonders if preferentialists are getting a clue that race is not a reliable proxy for diversity.

To battle childhood obesity, a Massachusetts elementary school has told parents not to bring cupcakes on their child’s birthday. Instead, the birthday boy or girl will get a cover for the back of the student’s chair, a sash, a special pencil and a sticker with the school’s mascot, the Happy Dragon. Preschool and kindergarten students will get to wear a birthday crown. Gosh, isn’t it fun to be a kid?

Are you blue? Good for you. Happy people are not as nice as sad people, according to a study reported in the New York Times Magazine.

Warning: A commenter reports that the researcher says his study had nothing to do with happiness. Most research shows happy people are darned nice. And why shouldn’t they be?

Annoyed by a Chomsky-loving teacher, 18-year-old Bryan Henderson launched Operation Tiger Claw: He put up satiric signs in the halls of his Princeton, WV high school expressing his conservative views. For example: “Except for ending slavery, fascism, naziism and communism, WAR HAS NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING.”

On his site, Henderson describes his dogged attempts to defend his right to free expression and to stand up to students who accused him of racism and bias against Muslims. The principal ultimately decided he could hand out flyers but couldn’t post signs, which seems a dubious distinction. The school year ended before the ACLU could make up its mind about getting into the case.

Henderson belongs to Protest Warrior, which is dedicated to making fun of “America-hating leftists.”

In Oregon, some school districts are starting charter schools to meet special needs more efficiently. The Oregonian reports:

When Republican lawmakers tried to introduce charter schools to Oregon in the 1990s, they drew sharp resistance from public school leaders who saw charter schools as a drain on resources and competition for students. But as the movement has grown, some administrators have turned to charters to provide specialized programs. The prospect of up to $350,000 in federal charter planning and startup money for each school also helped.

Four charter schools that will open in Columbia County this fall illustrate the trend. Working with the Northwest Regional Education Service District, the Vernonia, Scappoose, Rainier and Clatskanie school districts decided to form two independent charters to attract home-schooled students and two small district-operated charter schools for students struggling in traditional high schools.

. . . Another public school consortium was responsible for the Center for Advanced Learning in east Multnomah County, which caters to students interested in engineering, health sciences or information technology careers. The school opened last year with the Reynolds, Gresham-Barlow, Centennial and Corbett school districts as owners-sponsors. Part of the districts’ motivation was to relieve crowding at high schools.

School districts profit when charters educate students, such as home-schoolers and prospective drop-outs, who’d otherwise not be eligible for public funding. The marginal cost of new students is lower than the cost of educating them.

The U.S. Education Department profiles eight successful charter schools in a new report. The schools are: Houston’s Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) Academy; the BASIS School in Tucson, Ariz.; Gates Charter Language School in Lake Forest, Calif.; Oglethorpe Charter School in Savannah, Ga.; Arts and Technology Public Charter School in Washington, D.C.; School of Arts and Sciences Charter School in Tallahassee, Fla.; Roxbury Preparatory Charter School in Roxbury, Mass.; and Community of Peace Charter School in St. Paul, Minn.

Successful charters are driven by a shared mission, the report says.

A strong, clearly articulated purpose focuses the work, creates a pervasive positive spirit, and promotes consistent expectations from class to class. Teachers are deeply aware that they are creating change, both for their students and also within the larger public school system. At a mission-driven school, it is easier to focus on what will enable students to reach the school’s goals and objectives. A clear vision also makes it obvious when teachers are not in sync with the school program and empowers administrators and governing boards to hold the staff accountable.

As small schools of choice, charters create a strong sense of community.

Zachary Olkewicz left Burbank High School without a diploma so he could care for his ailing father. But he studied hard for the GED and passed with the “only perfect score out of the 569,000 people who took it in California over the last decade,” reported the LA Times. Nationwide, only six people aced the 7 1/2-hour test, which covers reading, writing, math, science and social studies.

Now in community college, Olkewicz wants to start a software design business.

My brother-in-law dropped out of high school and joined the Navy in the ’50s. He passed the GED with a very high score. After leaving the Navy, he asked the Cal Poly admissions director what he’d have to do to get in. He hadn’t taken the SAT, but he had his GED report with him. The admissions director went to talk to the dean of engineering, then returned to say, “You’re in.” My brother-in-law was graduated four years later with a degree in computer science. Of course, Cal Poly probably isn’t that flexible these days.

Seattle’s school board has committed itself to stamping out “institutionalized racism,” reports Shark Blog. Even though the district is spending its reserves and the finance director is buying lottery tickets, money is no object. The district is spending $200,000 to create an Office of Equity and Race Relations.

In a written statement, the board didn’t put a price tag on (eliminating “institutional racism”): “While unable at this time to quantify the resources necessary to accomplish this goal, we anticipate a major shift in the way existing resources –including staff time, materials, supplies, and money — are utilized, now and in the years to come.”

Stefan Sharkansky asked board members what they meant by “institutionalized racism,” and prints one substantive reply, which cites the board’s training by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. Two board members refuse to reply because he’s a critic of the school board.

If the board focused on improving the achievement of low-achieving students, it might do some good. For example, it could change seniority rules and teacher compensation so that inner-city principals could hire the best teachers. It could insist that elementary schools use reading and math curricula proven effective for disadvantaged students. The board could adopt a “no excuses” policy, instead of letting students, parents, teachers and administrators off the hook by blaming a gaseous form of racism.

In some school districts in California, a large bloc of parents can’t vote in school board elections because they’re not citizens. San Francisco officials want to put an initiative on the state ballot to let non-citizen parents of public schoolchildren vote in school elections. Public school parents who are illegal immigrants also would be able to vote. Almost one-fifth of adult Californians are non-citizens, says the San Jose Mercury News:

“It’s almost a necessity for many cities,” said Joaquin Avila, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles and a voting-rights expert who wrote a 2003 study on non-citizen voting and its potential impact on California. “You can’t have a growing number of residents in your jurisdictions that are not part of the body politic. ”

Matt Gonzalez, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and author of the proposal, favors non-citizen voting in all city elections.

Until 1926, almost two dozen states allowed non-citizens to vote. Chicago and several suburban towns in Maryland allow the practice, and Washington, D.C., is considering doing the same. New York City, which for decades allowed non-citizens, regardless of their immigration status, to vote in school board elections, also is looking to open up the vote in all local elections.

Unions have a lot of clout in school board elections because members and their relatives turn out to vote when so many people don’t. But I’m not sure enfranchising immigrants would make much difference — assuming it’s legal and practical to tie voting rights to school enrollment. Many immigrants haven’t become citizens because they have mixed feelings, or no feelings at all, about participating fully in this country. Illegals tend to lie low. I’d bet the majority of non-citizen immigrants won’t bother to vote if it becomes possible. After all, most citizens don’t bother to vote in local elections.

I also worry about extending the rights of citizenship — and voting is the biggie — to people who haven’t made that commitment.

“Sensitivity” isn’t the word for exercises that humiliate children, writes columnist Linda Seebach. She blasts “Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes,” which tries to fight discrimination by enacting it. Employees — or students — are divided into groups based on eye color, with the blue-eyed designated as inferior and subject to discrimination. (The leader can decide whether those with green and hazel eyes are in the superior or inferior group.)

Seebach heard from a woman whose son’s ninth grade English class, which was studying Othello, was subjected to the exercise.

“The teacher made my son wear a blue card on a string around his neck. He was required to smile ingratiatingly, bow his head, and beg people to tie his shoes for him,” she wrote. “The teacher wore a yellow card, that of the superior race, and she petted and made much of the other yellow-card students.”

In a particularly nasty wrinkle, the teacher told the students chosen for the subordinate group that they would all receive Fs for their work that day and that the failing grades would be on their final transcript. And she sent them home still believing that lie.

. . . “Teaching children about abuse should never include abusing them,” the mother wrote. “Committing a hate crime should not be the way we teach our youngsters about hate crimes.”

I think it’s very easy for children and adults to understand and condemn blatant discrimination. It’s a no brainer. But it’s much harder to understand how prejudices influence human interactions in the real world. Why does Iago hate Othello so much? Why is Othello so vulnerable to jealousy? If Shakespeare hadn’t made Othello a Moor, how would that change the play?