Bigots In Jacksonville?

Interesting story, this is. A bus driver in Jacksonville removes several Muslim kids from the bus. The kids end up walking home and are refused transport two days later (the first event happened on a Wednesday, the second on a Friday). Those are the facts that are agreed on. It gets interesting when you start reading differing accounts of the story.

This isn't just a simple local story. With there being Muslims involved, we of course, ended up with CAIR involved and then the ACLU. This leads to a situation in which the truth becomes relative and subjective, rather then strictly factual. But then, to make it worse Al Jazeera got involved.

Al Jazeera is making the claim that the kids were thrown off the bus eight miles from home and forced to walk, along with being denied transport on Friday, simply because they were Muslim. They merely brush past the allegations of disciplinary problems, as though they never happened, and instead focus on this being a racist act by the evil, bigoted people of Jacksonville.

However, the racist bigots at the Florida Times-Union seem to have a bit of a different story.

They agree that the kids were removed from the bus. But according to the school officials (never quoted in the Al Jazeera article) they were dropped at the school and chose to walk, even after being given a chance to call their parents. School administrators and a school police officer trying to get them back to the school. On Friday, the school system indicates that they were twice offered transportation and twice refused to get on the bus.

Two very different stories, huh?

Something doesn't sound right to me. I'm guessing that the story of the school officials is probably the more accurate. I'll bet that there were disciplinary problems on the bus. I'll bet that the kids were brought back to school and then chose to walk home on their own accord. And I'll almost guarantee that the bus driver was motivated by anything but racism.

What lessons are the kids involved here learning? Simple. They're being taught that the best way to deal with an uncomfortable situation is to scream racism. What they should be learning is how to behave according to normal rules of conduct. What they should be learning is how to accept the consequences of poor decisions without reaching for the crutch of victimhood.

It's too bad that these parents, CAIR, and the ACLU are more concerned with pandering to the Al Jazeera reporters than they are with teaching their kids how to act responsibly.