We told you this would happen. The Trump administration now basically ending racial discrimination complaints from colleges and universities. Put it up full mass. Here we go. Black students who experience racial harassment, bullying, [00:00:20] disproportionate discipline and other race based discrimination at a school. Under Trump, are finding the education department is no longer interested [00:00:38] in holding the offender or offenders of a local school system, etc. Accountable. That's according to two separate, recently published investigations by ProPublica and The Washington Post. [00:00:55] Now you have a Department of Civil Rights, a Department of Civil Rights inside of your Department of Education. You have a Department of Education that has enforcement rights by administrative law. [00:01:12] Meaning if the Department of Education funds your institution, it could be K through 12. It could be by way of a state grant that the state then gives out or chooses who receives it locally. It could be a college or university. If the Department of Education is involved. [00:01:30] The federal entity, you have to follow particular guidelines one. You can't actively discriminate against students or faculty staff based on immutable factors. Keep that in mind during the Donald Trump administration. [00:01:47] Trump's second term in office, the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights, the OCR, the office that was developed for civil rights, has now dismissed thousands of civil rights investigations and has only opened [00:02:05] 14 new investigations into allegations of racial harassment of black students. While more than 500 complaints of racial harassment has been filed since January 20th, ProPublica reported so roughly 50 racial harassment cases were resolved [00:02:26] by OCR over the last three years under the Biden administration, usually through agreements with school districts, requiring changes in the policies and practices, and establishing independent monitors for years or months to make sure [00:02:41] the districts followed through. As it has been historically, the Department of Education's civil Rights division under Biden was focused on ensuring equal opportunities for students of color. Why? Because statistically, they are the most disenfranchized demographic. [00:03:01] They are disenfranchized by way of economic opportunity, access to technology and mobility. So they are a specific demographic [00:03:16] to target for equitable outcomes. It's real simple. It's in the data. There's more. But nearly a year since Trump has taken office, the office for Civil Rights has not entered into a single new resolution agreement, not one involving [00:03:33] racial harassment of students. ProPublica found this in their data. Meanwhile, the agency is prioritizing investigations of alleged discrimination affecting white students and antisemitism complaints and policies regarding transgender students. [00:03:51] During the first six months of the year, OCR required schools to make changes and agree to federal monitoring and 59 civil rights cases, compared with 336 during the same period last year. A previous Washington Post analysis found this data. [00:04:07] Most 89% of those cases involved disability rights. Disability rights. There's more, but the investigation highlights cases where severe racial [00:04:24] harassment against black students has been alleged or substantiated through local and Department of Education investigations. But the federal government has not followed through on enforcement action [00:04:40] or have decided to abandon the investigation altogether. Put it up. Let's go to a middle school. Ironically, this is the Buck Cooper Laura Bush Middle School and 2023. [00:05:00] The OCR Launched investigations into a Texas school district after several alleged incidents of racial bullying shocked the community and made national headlines. One case involved allegations that white students accosted black students [00:05:20] with racial slurs, such as the n word, and porch monkey told them to, quote, go pick cotton, end quote, and play the sounds of cracking whips on their cell phones at black children as they [00:05:38] walked the hallways of a middle school. A year ago, an investigator from the OCR was planning to visit the area. Community members told the post, and complainants hoped that afterward, the federal government would negotiate protections [00:05:54] for minority students in the county, where about 8% of the students are black. But the visit never happened. And in March, the lawyer representing the families learned the Education Department investigator was terminated, along with more than 300 OCR employees. [00:06:13] The Trump administration closed 12 regional civil rights enforcement offices, including the one in Dallas responsible for complaints in that county. No one from OCR has reached out to either the plaintiffs attorneys or school district officials this year. Now you're starting to see the plan. [00:06:32] Now you're starting to see cause and effect of a lack of administrative oversight that you pay for through your tax dollars. It is amazing that because of the efforts of Elon Musk and Trump, when they decided to basically get rid of all of these federal regulatory systems [00:06:49] and agencies and fired government employees to a record number, and some, after the government shut down, were not even brought back. Why is it that you still pay the most of taxes? Because obviously it's not going to these employees anymore. [00:07:08] Since then, the post reports that the Lubbock NAACP has been bombarded with complaints about racial injustices in the schools, including, quote, a black high school football player was called the B word and the n word by [00:07:24] white players during a game in September with no consequence, his mother said. A black 12 year old boy falsely accused last December of touching a white girl's breast, was threatened and interrogated by police at the school without his parents and sentenced to a disciplinary alternative school for a month. [00:07:42] His grandfather recounted a black honor student was wrongly accused by a white teacher of having a vape pen. It was a pencil sharpener and sentenced to the alternative school for a month. This past fall, for the mistake of the educator. In an email to the post about these complaints, Julie Hartman, [00:08:02] press Secretary of Legal Affairs for the Education Department, wrote this quote. These complaints of racial bullying were filed in 2022 and 2023, meaning that the Biden administration had more time to investigate this than the Trump administration has been in office. The Trump administration's OCR will continue vigorously enforcing the law [00:08:21] to uphold all American civil rights. End quote. She did not respond to a question about whether the agency had opened any investigations into discrimination against black students since Trump has taken office. The OCR did, however, reach out in July [00:08:40] to Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky, ProPublica reported, to sanction it for efforts to address discrimination against black students. So that got their attention. [00:08:56] That's what the resources went. That's what your tax dollars paid for. Now you have racism in your school. No problem if you're trying to combat it. And the victims happen to be people of color or children of color. Now you have the full authority of the government's attention. [00:09:16] In September 2024. In September 2024, under the Biden administration, the district had agreed to address Oscar's finding that it disproportionately disciplined black students. We read this report to you on air that it disproportionately disciplined [00:09:36] black students and to place measures to halt this unfair treatment. They found it in the data. This year, Trump's administration, the Department of Education, warned the district that it will not tolerate efforts to consider [00:09:56] racial disparities in discipline practices and accused the district of, quote, making students less safe Then it revoked a nearly $10 million federal magnet school grant and chastised the district for having sent extra funding [00:10:12] to schools with more students of color. They took the money away from the babies. They took the money away from the students because they needed to make a political point about how racist they are willing to be. [00:10:32] The district revised its school funding formula in response, but has asked an administrative law judge and the Education department to reinstate the grant, which is designed to help further school desegregation nationwide and ensure all students have access to high quality education. [00:10:50] Last year we covered. When white students in the Southwick Tolland Granville Regional School District in his community had a mock slave auction. This was on Snapchat. Bidding for the sale of black students. [00:11:11] It prompted a federal complaint filed with the Doe Office of Civil Rights by a 13 year old black girl who was bid on during the auction, followed by a lawsuit filed in a Massachusetts state court in July [00:11:26] accusing the Southwark district of allowing racism to persist unchecked. The district agreed to address racial bullying, and they agreed to be monitored by the state attorney general through this year. The federal investigation is allegedly ongoing. [00:11:43] Quote, they're breaking people. They're breaking people. Phyllis Grant, a long time leader of the county NAACP, told The post, referring to local schools treatment of black children. [00:11:59] Quote, it's just open season on our students. The districts know that OCR has been dismantled and there's no urgency to fix these issues, Garnett told The Post. It's on the community and it's on the parents to be factual, vocal and not quit. [00:12:17] This is so sad. To the good people of Lubbock County, to the NAACP leadership. Before the OCR office was developed, the NAACP under the legal leadership [00:12:33] during his legislative or his legal days. Thurgood Marshall. Before he became a Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall worked on behalf of the NAACP, traveling all around America defending cases just like this, [00:12:51] getting denied access to courtrooms, having to work under the tutelage of underqualified white attorneys just to have his presence in the courtroom. But he did, and because of his successful lawyering office [00:13:06] is like the OCR were created. He later became appointed to the Supreme Court. Now he also has something else. He had a budget, not a large one. [00:13:22] Didn't get paid anywhere near what he deserved, but he was able to travel. He was able to pay his bills, take care of his family to the NAACP, local and national. Regulatory agencies that you worked for and you helped build along. [00:13:43] If they are there, they are run by the same individuals who are there to dismantle them. You will have to fight this in the streets with protest. And attention gathering, education and the courtroom, [00:14:02] which also means you have to donate to make sure the Office of Legal Affairs at every NAACP is properly funded, so that this work can be maintained and enhanced. [00:14:18] That we've started. All right, Senator, thoughts here. I agree with everything that you said, doc. I mean, this is chilling, and it is just a reminder that as much as much as things change, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And what's especially chilling about this is the fact that those students [00:14:39] were mimicking the behavior of the man that we highlighted earlier in. I wish I would segment. So the notion that somehow anti-Black bigotry is just going to die off with a new generation has just been shattered and shattered over and over and over again. [00:14:56] I love your call out to the national NAACP and the local. First of all, thank you for the work that you're doing. And they are going to have to take up the mantle of their historic actions with justice or lawyer Thurgood Marshall at the time, and he became a Supreme [00:15:11] Court justice, I believe, in 1967. But they don't have to take that back up, doc. I mean, there is a force here. There is an anti-black force, and the Trump administration is not afraid and not ashamed to show it. And once you find an administration that is using systems, we're not just talking [00:15:29] about individual prejudice or bigotry. We're talking about systemic power to full force and weight of the federal government to cultivate anti-Black bigotry and racism, and not to protect black students and other able students [00:15:46] and other students of color. We got a problem. So we do need the NAACP to take up its historic mantle. That's right. Well said. And that's why I never besmirched legacy organizations, because they are still very useful, even if there are some bumps in the road.