So in the day and age when almost anything can be considered "racist" the Guardian news outlet published a story that I immediately was apprehensive of, mostly because it was written by the Guardian.
This story had the headline of "'Lunch shaming': New Jersey students with $75 debt barred from dances and trips." Of course since there was a hint of political controversy and an opportunity to use the words "People of Color" political activist groups that spout nonsense such as "The Other 98%," "Occupy Democrats," "The Hill," and "The Young Turks" jumped all over this.
While the original article by The Guardian didn't specifically mention race, later articles by even less reputable news sources simply ran with that notion even though there is zero evidence to indicate that this is the case. Notice something about the two pictures (neither of which were actually taken in the school in question)?
So the story is that the school lunch program at a New Jersey school started to ban students from certain optional school programs such as buying a yearbook, attending prom, going on school trips, etc. All of these things cost money out-of-pocket on behalf of the student. The reasoning being this is that if the student's family can afford to shell out $100 for an overnight trip to Six Flags, then they can afford to pay $2 for lunch. This in my mind, seems completely reasonable.
If the family is truly poor, and can provide proof that they are in fact eligible for government benefits such as food stamps and EBT (are those the same thing? I honestly don't know) they would be able to receive free lunch or extremely reduced price lunch (as low as 40 cents) anyway.
But these families are not the ones in question: The families that are simply not paying for lunch for the most part, actually do have the money, they just realized that they can get away with not paying for it and the school system has responded in the only way that they can.
This particular school district that The Guardian is attacking isn't even in a poor district. It is Cherry Hill district and the median (not average) income is well above the national median income.
The school has declined offers from local business people that want to pay off the entire debt stating something along the lines of "simply paying off the debt doesn't address the real problem here."
Let's also keep in mind that the "lunch debt threshold" that disqualifies students from extracurricular activities is at $75 / student. In order for a poor student to reach that level of debt they would have to have not paid for lunches for nearly a full school year. There is some suspicion that the students in question are actually not paying for lunch despite the fact that parents have been giving them the money to do so.
from the absolute trash FB page with millions of followers called The Other 98%
Upon looking further into this (what i consider to be) #fakenews I have come to the conclusion that I agree with the school system. There aint no such thing as a free lunch, as they say and seeing as how the school already has programs in place to provide free or reduced cost lunch to any student who actually is in a poor economic situation, it appears to me that the abusers of this generosity are precisely that: Abusers.
There is zero indication in any of the data provided that this even affects minorities and the fact that they jump to that conclusion is just shameful, not to mention, racist.
