Providence (RI) Teacher Loan Forgiveness Program Only Open To Non-Whites Challenged By Legal Insurrection Foundation
“The Providence Public School District’s discriminatory loan forgiveness program is one of the most brazen racial preferences we have seen anywhere. They don’t even try to hide it. They seem proud to discriminate.”
The Providence, Rhode Island, Public School District has a loan forgiveness program for new and recently hired teachers, funded by the Rhode Island Foundation, the largest charity in the state. There’s a catch, however. Whites need not apply, it’s only open to non-whites.
Legal Insurrection Foundation has filed a challenge to this overtly racist and discriminatory program, after a 6-month investigation that included obtaining information from public sources and also from records obtained by LIF pursuant to the Rhode Island Access to Public Records Act.
You can read the full Complaint.
Fox News reports, Providence school district slapped with civil rights complaint over loan forgiveness only for non-Whites.
Here is an excerpt, click on the link for the full report:
A civil rights complaint was filed against the Providence Public School District with the U.S. Department of Education on Monday over a program offering student loan forgiveness to new teachers that is exclusively available to non-White educators.
The complaint claims that Providence Public School District is “engaged in a continuing violation and an ongoing pattern or practice of discrimination” with a student loan forgiveness program for newly and recently hired educators that is only available to non-White applicants, billed as the “Educator of Color Loan Forgiveness Program.”
The Providence Public School District advertises that recipients can have up to $25,000 of college loans forgiven once the teacher completes three consecutive years of teaching in the district. The eligibility requirements indicate recipients must “identify as Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latino, biracial, or multi-racial.”
“Discrimination against non-White applicants is just as unlawful as discrimination against Black or other non-White applicants. There is no good form of racial discrimination,” the complaint states….
“PPSD does not even attempt to hide its racially discriminatory practices. To the contrary, PPSD brags about treating white applicants less favorably than non-white applicants. The unlawful discriminatory provisions of the program are advertised on multiple platforms, including on the PPSD’s website and hiring portal. The program is a key part of PPSD’s hiring efforts, and already has processed dozens of applicants on this discriminatory basis,” the complaint states. “The program violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and a variety of state law anti-discrimination statutes. ”
Cornell Law School professor and Legal Insurrection Foundation president William A. Jacobson wants to get in touch with any teachers who were shut out of, or did not apply, to this loan forgiveness program because of their race or ethnicity. He has also called for the “discriminatory practices be discontinued immediately.” …
“The Providence Public School District’s discriminatory loan forgiveness program is one of the most brazen racial preferences we have seen anywhere. They don’t even try to hide it. They seem proud to discriminate. The promotional materials make clear that White educators need not apply for this hiring incentive and employment benefit,” Jacobson told Fox News Digital….
Jacobson, who is particularly irked because the PPSD receives millions of dollars in federal funding, called for the district to make the program retroactively available to people hired since the program started that were excluded from consideration on the basis of race or ethnicity.
“That will not compensate people who never applied because of the discriminatory provisions, but it would be a good start. If that means the Providence schools and Rhode Island Foundation have to put forth additional funding, it’s the least they could do,” Jacobson said.
Here’s more from the Complaint:
According to the Agreement, PPSD pledged to recruit, over five years, up to 127 “teachers of color” – which was defined as “full-time (non-substitute) teachers providing classroom instruction who identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian, American Indian, and/or 2 or more races.” To meet this goal, PPSD promised to pay each new “teacher of color” up to $25,000 of that teacher’s student loan debt. To fund this incentive program, RIF agreed to raise over $3 million, and to provide that money to the Rhode Island Student Loan Authority, which, in turn, would use those funds to make student loan repayments directly to the teachers’ loan providers.
Because a teacher’s qualification for the loan repayment program turns on race, skin color, and ancestry, the program is discriminatory on its face and in practice and violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
* * *
Under the Agreement, “teachers of color” is defined as “full-time (non-substitute) teachers providing classroom instruction who identify as Black, Hispanic, Asian, American Indian, and/or 2 or more races.” Even among candidates who fit these classifications, the Agreement provides that a “preference may … be given for individuals who identify as Black.”[1] ….
PPSD promotes the Loan Forgiveness Program in its job postings and on its website. A sampling of the PPSD’s job postings are annexed hereto as Exhibit 6….
PPSD’s website also lists the eligibility requirements for the program. To qualify, applicants must meet three criteria. They must: (1) “[B]e a newly hired full-time (non-substitute) teacher or be currently employed as a full-time (non-substitute) teacher”; (2) “Identify as Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latino, biracial, or multi-racial”; and (3) “Have a minimum of $5,000 in student loans.”[1]
[1] https://www.providenceschools.org/Page/5843
[https://web.archive.org/web/20221114160319/https://www.providenceschools.org/Page/5843] (accessed on Nov. 14, 2022).
A printout of the “Educator of Color Loan Forgiveness Program” page of the PPSD’s current website is annexed hereto as Exhibit 7, and a screenshot is provided below.
As of June 2021, 18 new hires to PPSD qualified for the Loan Forgiveness Program. Of those, eight identified as Hispanic, five as bi-racial, four as black, and one as Asian.[1] Data obtained from PPSD pursuant to the Rhode Island Access to Public Records Act reveal that, as of September 22, 2022, 19 individuals were under consideration for the Loan Forgiveness Program for the 2022-23 school year. Each identified as either “Latinx,” black, Asian, Indigenous American or multiracial.[2]
After a lengthy disussion of additional evidence and the law, the Complaint concludes:
The Providence Public School District, enabled by the Rhode Island Foundation, is engaged in unlawful discrimination through the “Educator of Color” student loan forgiveness program. Racial discrimination by a public school district is illegal regardless of which race suffers. Discrimination against white applicants is just as unlawful as discrimination against black or other non-white applicants. There is no good form of racial discrimination. Because PPSD receives federal funding, OCR had the power and obligation to make PPSD stop and to impose whatever remedial relief is necessary.
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch., 551 U.S. at 748. OCR should promptly investigate the allegations in this complaint and take the necessary enforcement action to end the PPSD’s ongoing unlawful policies and practices. This includes, if necessary, imposing fines, initiating administrative proceedings to suspend, terminate, or refuse to grant or continue federal financial assistance, and referring the case to the Department of Justice for judicial proceedings to enforce the rights of the United States under federal law.
We expect that OCR will take this seriously, as it has other substantial issues. If and when a teacher comes forward who either did not apply to the program or was denied from the program because of the racial and ethnic requirements, we also will consider filing a court lawsuit.
Moving from research and investigation to litigation is part of LIF’s plan for 2023. We are in the process of trying to put that all together. Stay tuned.
(Much thanks to Ameer Benno, Esq. and Ilana Cutler, Esq. of LIF for their hard work on this investigation and filing.)
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Comments
Some might want to read the 1964 civil right act.
They have read it they just refuse to be limited by silly things like laws.
I think it would be a real eye opener.
Does this indicate that perhaps the left wasn’t as pro civil rights as they claimed?
They are not in favor of civil rights. The “Free Speech” movement of the 60’s was always a power play not a belief in Freedom.
You only need to look at what a horrible state of decay and corruption South Africa is in today to see where this is going. They have ruined that country that used to be so beautiful and well functioning.
I’ve been saying similar here and at other sites for close to a decade.
Yesterday a national census happened in my country. Ten years since the last one.
Although I (accurately) listed myself as White, Church of England and normal – I must confess a brief strong temptation to troll them with stupid ‘identity’ spam answers.
Normal? How boring. /ducking
Go get ’em professor!!!!!!!
England counts ethnicities? I thought this was not allowed anymore?
So, if a white looking person identifies as black the loan is forgiven?
That would be my thought. And who can honestly say that they don’t have “one drop” of preferred minority blood?
Let the onus be on the leftist racists (is that redundant?) to prove otherwise. They haven’t been especially good at it (Warren, Donezal, Churchill). It is probably too “discriminatory” to try….
Redundant? It seems to be. The authoritarian side of the governing spectrum and woke (and morally broke) invariably wallow in each other’s muck.
That’s pretty damn brazen.
TDS has shown itself in manifold ways, from subtle to brazen, but always bat guano crazy.
Now we have demonstrably illegal, racist practices being portrayed as normal.
The Dems actually got the blacks to segregate themselves and like it.
I identify as Scots/English. That makes me a silly bstrd who wears kilts in winter with a black heart.
Now if I just didn’t pay for most of my own education.
You busted a lot of fantastic icons with that post.
. . . recipients must “identify as Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latino, biracial, or multi-racial.”
The solution is simple. Have all white educators that just moved into the Providence RI School District identify themselves as “Black” and apply for the program. After all, it simply states you must identify as one of those racial groups. It doesn’t state you have to be one of the racial groups. And then when school district administrators heads explode simply tell them they made the rules – not them.
Bingo! It is all about how you feel, right? They can no more say “you are obviously white” than you could say “you are obviously a woman,”
Alinsky works both ways: Rule 4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.
Astute comment on Alinsky. Conservatives continually (mis)criticize Alinsky and his Rules for Radicals as promoting leftist, communist causes. He may have been left leaning himself but his rules were for the underdog to gain political power against the status quo right or left or in between.
Alinsky wasn’t “left leaning”. He was a full blown Stalinist.
He didn’t lean. He was straight up and down left.
“Alinsky works both ways “. When will more conservatives embrace that idea? AND USE IT?
Abbott and DeSantis just did (and are still doing that). You love your sanctuary cities, welcome illegals with open arms? Great. We’re sending ours to you.
There’s no need to be surprised when they published their playbook.
There’s no need to be out-played, when you can play the game they are, not the one they say they are playing.
If your preferences actually work, appeal, and make sense, you can *still* Alinsky them politically.
Do I want to win tactically, or on the merits? Embrace the healing power of “and.”
If a man can identify as a woman to check out the women’s locker room, you can identify as whatever race you find most convenient.
Sue them into the ground. Sue for many millions too.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Providence pulls the plug on this program knowing, if it lose and has to open the program up to everyone, projected costs will skyrocket.
This complaint should be dismissed immediately. I think that a compelling argument can be made that anyone voluntarily residing in the State of Rhode Island has impliedly, perhaps expressly, consented to whatever woke policies and laws are imposed on them. They have, in effect, forfeited their right to object to woke BS, like the BS at issue here.
The State-established [ethical] religion is notoriously Pro-Choice. Woke and morally broke, #HateLovesAbortion
Ok, so we all know you’re not a lawyer. Got it.
On what basis is Hispanic considered a race? Elsewhere it’s considered an ethnic group that crosses racial boundaries.
If someone identifies as being biracial, specifically a mix of the Anglo and Saxon races, can they claim non-White status? 🙂
Last names. I am convinced, based on the definition of “hispanic,” that I could take a few Spanish courses, eat at Taco Hell and qualify.
Might throw in a margherita or ten too…..
Do you identify as a breakfast taco?
I identify as a hearty stick of chouriço, and I still don’t know if I’m hispanic.
I bet Rhode Island determined that long ago, though, because if anybody had to, they had to.
Anglo + Saxon = mixed-race
Love it!
Excellent point. There’s actually no such entity as “Hispanic”. Latin Americans aren’t an undifferentiated mass from The Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego. People from Latin America don’t have a common race, ethnicity, nationality, culture or socio economic group. On the contrary, they are of every race and combination of races, of numerous nations with distinct histories and cultures and topography, and occupy every socio-economic group from multi-millionaire businessmen to middle class merchants to doctors, lawyers and academics to lower middle class office staff to working class service industry to illiterate unskilled laborers.
Diversity [dogma] (e.g. racism) breeds adversity… One step forward, two steps backward. #HateLovesAbortion
Diversity also breeds perversity. See Kindergarten drag shows.
It’s trickle down morality. Perversion in the university mutates into a form of perversity which trickles all the way down to pre-school.
But it’s a secret boys and girls. Don’t tell your parents.
I read the complaint and it is well-written. The most common basis for permissible discrimination in the law is as a remedy for past discrimination. For example, following Brown v Board of Education, many courts ordered busing to “desegregate” the schools. This required a finding of past discrimination to justify a narrowly tailored remedy.
Here we are giving loan forgiveness to an Asian-American teacher yet not providing the same possible benefit to new teachers who self-identify as “white.” There has been no finding of a past discrimination by the RIF, needing a race-based discriminatory remedy.
I hope that this is an open-and-shut case.
The way “they” do it now is to initiate some hair-brained scheme that is blatantly illegal/unconstitutional, knowing full-well it is so.
Then just do it until someone notices.
Keep doing it.
Wait until someone takes them to court.
Keep doing it for a few more years until the court finally tells them to stop.
Change a few tiny things to make it look as if they’ve stopped and keep on doing it.
This is done at the local/county/district/state/federal level over and over.
Just do it anyway and let the courts figure it out. The gig could last for years before its shut down.
Shut up, you hater!
This is how Democrats protect and defend the constitution, which is, as Pelosi just lectured us, all Democrats have ever done.
LIF deservs much kudos for this challenge to a patently unconstitutional program
The obvious fix to me is to make it federally illegal to ask for racial or ethnic data on any and all application forms. Not even for “research” purposes. The Only place that information should exist is in your medical records.
For college applications, requre that names, photographs, and addresses be redacted when the application is reviewed for acceptance. That should stop a lot of the shennanigans.
I’m so old, I remember that it was the Feds that originally demanded that data from parents of school children, over and against parents’ objections.
If they require a photograph, there is plenty of software that can make your skin look darker than it really is.
Seems to be an odd smell, odd as in questionable, to this arrangement.
Democrat’s new Jim Crow.
There has never been a time when the D Party was not the Party of racial discrimination.
I, myself, identify as a super-intelligent shade of the color blue. (Hey, I don’t have to be smart. I just have to *identify* as smart.)
That makes me colored, to use the anachronism. Bring on the reparations.
Seriously for a moment, the game is make them say the quiet part out loud. They’re about advantage by category as reparations by category. Or the game is stomping out grift-y “advantages” and “allocations” by these categories. Which is it?
I wonder if the failure to get prior national civil rights acts through had something to do with the legislation not being hijackable enough. Our Screaming-D friends do love pointing to that law, of 1964. They don’t so much like pointing to the vote counts, or the several attempts before, and what — meaning who — shot them down.
They don’t want a solution; they want the issue.
Liberals think that some discrimination is okay
Prof. Jacobson, I hope you’ve considered the possibility of bringing a False Claims Act action against the Providence school district to recover all federal monies it’s received. The school district had to certify that it does not discriminate on the basis of race in order to receive the federal money. The school district clearly made a false representation.
I see that my native state and its capital city is still making headlines with respect to the practice of everyday discrimination.
May they go down in flames on this one!
Just check off whatever box you feel like checking off to circumvent the racial preference. If a man can identify as a woman to play women’s sports, you can identify as whatever race you want especially that, if you look back far enough, you probably have some nonwhite and/or Hispanic ancestry. This is bad news only if you are a white supremacist.
Robert A. Heinlein wrote, “That southern Senator, what was his name? — the one who had built his career on “white supremacy.” Hugh had come across two sardonic facts: This old boy had died from cancer of the jaw and had had many blood transfusions — and his blood type was such that the chances were two hundred to one that its owner had not just a touch of the tar brush but practically the whole tar barrel.” Heinlein’s protagonist does not name him but a little research shows his likely identity.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/mississippi-sen-theodore-bilbo-dies-at-age-69-aug-21-1947-227126 “On this day in 1947, Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-Miss.) died in a New Orleans hospital at age 69 from oral cancer after the Senate had ducked a showdown on whether to seat him for a third term.” I suspect Bilbo would have died a lot sooner, from apoplexy, had somebody proven to him that he was part Black.
Spain once ruled a good part of the New World and also the Netherlands and Naples, so if you’re from any of those places you could be Hispanic. Sephardic Jews are, by definition, from Spain which was a great place for Jews and Muslims be FROM in 1492. Taiwan and Japan are big islands in the Pacific which would make their inhabitants Pacific Islanders and so on. Of course, as Morocco (which has many Africans) once ruled a good part of Spain, many Spaniards and their descendants could be part African as well.
If your family has been in the US long enough you also might be part Native American; Elizabeth Warren does in fact have a distant ancestor who is Native American.