Paul Sperry writes:
A key part of President Obama’s legacy will be the fed’s unprecedented collection of sensitive data on Americans by race. The government is prying into our most personal information at the most local levels, all for the purpose of “racial and economic justice.”
Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites.
He says that like it’s a Bad Thing. Is it? Read more on the New York Post and then let’s talk about whether the government’s use of data and creation of these databases serves a legitimate government purpose or is just one more set of mega-databases that puts citizens and residents at more risk from a breach.
For starters, consider what Perry reports about school databases;
Through its mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection project, the Education Department is gathering information on student suspensions and expulsions, by race, from every public school district in the country. Districts that show disparities in discipline will be targeted for reform.
Those that don’t comply will be punished. Several already have been forced to revise their discipline policies, which has led to violent disruptions in classrooms.
OCR has been posting such analyses for a while now (see, for example, this report). The data clearly demonstrate disparities in discipline by race, gender, and special education status. How you interpret those data and where we go from there are important questions, but are we better off having the data or not having it? I’d argue (strongly) for the former. What do you think?