Stubborn facts from an African-American dad

An African-American dad brings up some facts that the hypersensitive types wish would stay at the back of the bus.

"Once again, some students engage in bad - in this case violent and allegedly criminal - behavior, and the brunt of the concern gets directed at the school principal, on the grounds that she has been racially insensitive," Alan Hairston of North Bethesda writes in a letter to the Washington Post.

"A number of violent incidents have occurred at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac in the past two months. And though the school population is only 6.6 percent black, all of the incidents involved black students.

"As a black parent of a son in a school in a neighboring cluster with similar demographics, I don't find noting such facts to be 'racially insensitive'; I find it to be 'racially accurate,'" Hairston says.

"If anyone had taken the time to read Principal Joan C. Benz's original letter, he or she would have seen that Ms. Benz was stating that the actions of a small part of a small population of the school were tarnishing the accomplishments of all Churchill's African-American students (SAT stores up an average of 203 points, for example)," he continues.

"Instead of worrying about Ms. Benz's 'insensivity,' the NAACP should be concerned about the inactivity of the parents whose children were involved in the brawl. The principal attempted multiple interventions with the parents, to no avail. I'm tired of the apologists who blame achievement gaps on the schools instead of the parents."