Report: Majority Of Students Who Attend Public Schools Named After Confederate Leaders Are Of Color

There over 191 school countrywide that are named after confederate leaders, meaning that about 129,000 children will be going to such institutions of learning when they return for a new school year in the fall, according to a new study by the Huffington Post.

And a disproportionate number of these students are children of color.

How bad is it? More than half the students who attend these schools are children of color. Of that over 27,000 are black students and over 40,000 are hispanic students, the analysis shows.

Even more revealing is that the number schools with such names have barely changed since the Huffington Post last did a similar survey in 2015 following the domestic terror attack against the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The question of honoring confederate leaders also peaked then, and their survey found 195 schools maintained such names.

Today there are 191, meaning the needle has barely moved.  Also, most of these schools are also in the southeast part of the country.

The Huffington Post’s new survey comes at  a time when the conversation about honoring  a confederate legacy has reached new heights. President Donald Trump’s comments after the tragic events in Charlottesville last weekend, and his defense of confederate monuments has brought on further scrutiny of their history and relevance in public spaces today. Charlottesville drew protests from white nationalist leaders after the city council voted to remove a prominent statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The President added more fuel to the flames when he tweeted on Thursday about the removal of confederate statues nationwide:

“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” he wrote.  “You .can’t change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!”