Barack Obama has inspired thousands of people the world over — in good and bad ways. Here's a bit of the bad: Greg Howard, a middle school teacher in Jackson County, Fl., wrote "C.H.A.N.G.E. — Come Help A Nigger Get Elected" on his dry-erase board during his seventh grade social studies class, which included 17 white students, six black students and one Asian student.

Howard was not fired. Instead, he was suspended for 10 days without pay and reassigned to adult education. He also had to write his students a letter of apology. "We feel like the punishment is sufficient," the school superintendent said. "We did not feel he had to be fired." Really? You didn't? [TD]

A few weeks ago, the children were freak dancing, presumably with the support of a filming guardian. Today, they're being goaded by an adult into violently berating another little girl who they say is "big in the stomach."

Videos like this always remind me of a great Keanu Reeves quote from 1989's Parenthood:

You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.

Click through for the NSFW, horrifying clip.

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In a new campaign ad in response to Barack Obama's recent criticism of John McCain's education record, the McCain camp says that Barack Obama's one education "accomplishment" was legislation to teach kindergartners "comprehensive sex ed." Here's the script:

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UCLA political science professor Tim Groseclose has resigned from the university's admissions committee after his calls for information about and an investigation into the method with which blacks were being admitted fell on deaf ears. Groseclose believes UCLA is "cheating," admitting blacks based on their race despite a longstanding ban on the practice.

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Perhaps because my post-collegiate school experience is limited to the Washington Metropolitan area, an American school in Germany, and the Pacific Northwest, I was completely and totally unaware that there are actually states that allow corporal punishment in schools. Although the practice is in decline, students can still be legally paddled in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida and Missouri, according to the AP. Now that I'm aware of this surprising fact, the results of a Human Rights Watch study on the practice don't surprise me in the least. I bet you can guess which students are paddled disproportionately!

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A new report finds that poor schools, a high cost of living and a lack of cultural experiences are the reasons behind a major black exodus from the city San Francisco.

San Francisco has seen its black population decrease faster than that of all other large US cities – "from 13.4 percent in 1970 to an estimated 6.5 percent in 2005, according to the census" – and the mayor's African American Out-migration Task Force, which put together the aforementioned report, hopes to stem that withdrawal.

But it won't be easy. One shameful statistic stands out as reason enough for African Americans in San Francisco to have disdain for their city: 24 percent of them live in homes that are classified as needing "severe or moderate repairs."

The report recommends improving schools in black areas, adding programs for youth, increasing employment opportunities and promoting business development.

A note to the rest of the world: You should follow that recommendation, also.

Be careful what you wish for.

For quite a while now I've personally lamented the loss of the protest in American society, especially in such a tumultuous time in history. A group of Chicagoans are now making me regret my longing by attempting to pawn off a half-baked temper tantrum as a rational act of dissent:

Community leaders on Monday called on students from poorer parts of Chicago to protest inequalities in school funding by skipping the first day of classes.

State Sen. James Meeks wants students to spend Sept. 2 trying to enroll in a suburban school district that spends much more per student than Chicago Public Schools does.
…
"Today we are back to two-tiered schools - white and affluent on one side, and black, brown and poor on the other," said Meeks, who also is a minister on the city's South Side. "That's an injustice and it's immoral."

Meeks said he expects several thousand Chicago students to travel in a caravan of buses to New Trier Township High School in the leafy, North Shore suburb of Winnetka, where they will attempt to enroll.
…
Officials at New Trier Township High School District 203 said it wasn't yet clear how they'll deal with so many Chicago students showing up at one time to attempt to enroll at the high school.

So yanking children out of school to go and disrupt other schools is how Meeks et al intend to promote their demand for high-quality education? Ugh. Again: Be careful what you wish for.

Does John Wiley Price work at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis?

A white janitor and part-time student at the school was reading Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan, a historical non-fiction book about a riot between Notre Dame students and the KKK in the 1920s, during his lunch break when a black co-worker decided that the cover of the book, its title, and the mere fact that it was being read in his presence constituted racial harassment. Despite his explanation of the book, the situation escalated, and he was sent a letter by the school's affirmative action officer that said, "You used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your black co-workers." Seriously! A whole year later, IUPUI is finally apologizing to the history buff and copping to their mistake. What do you make of the influx of accusations such as these? Is it because we're so desensitized to the actual racial discrimination that goes on in this country? [MSNBC]