My understanding is that private school vouchers are being made available mostly to black students in largely white, in some cases “failing,” public schools in Louisiana. The reason they’re mostly available to black kids seems to be that eligibility is based on poverty, and the poor people in question are mostly black. The Department of Justice is reportedly suing to block the distribution of those vouchers, on grounds that it would reduce the black population in those student bodies, and thus run counter to the goal of desegregation.
From the AP:
"LOUISIANA Justice Dept. sues state over vouchers
The U.S. Justice Department is suing Louisiana to stop the state from distributing school vouchers in districts that remain under desegregation court orders.
Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal called the department’s action Saturday “shameful” and said President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. “are trying to keep kids trapped in failing public schools.”
In papers filed in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, the Justice Department says Louisiana distributed vouchers in 2012-13 to nearly 600 public school students in districts that are still under such orders, and “many of those vouchers impeded the desegregation process.”
The department said Louisiana has given vouchers this school year to students in at least 22 districts remaining under desegregation orders."
Eric Holder is being lambasted for this from several directions, including the usual suspects as well as the WaPo editorial board.
So, one view is that the DoJ is cynically taking action that harms poor black students, under the pretext of racial fairness, but politically motivated by a desire to protect teachers’ unions. I’m generally skeptical when something seems too nefarious to be true, but in this particular case I’m coming up empty in seeing what good the DoJ is up to.
All I can think of is that perhaps these private schools are in fact no better than the public ones, and that the voucher program is actually just a backhanded way of getting blacks out of largely white schools. Some commenters online have also suggested that the private schools are largely fundamentalist Christian institutions that teach the world is 6,000 years old. In any case, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of informed commentary on this on the Interwebs, so I now turn to the everlasting fount of wisdom that is the SDMB.