The update to that story on Jezebel shows the school handbook (must be the high school) that allows for a black and a white homecoming court.

[link]

U.S. Birth Rate Sets Record, Hits Lowest Level In A Century

The U.S. birth rate has dropped for the second year in a row, and experts think the wrenching recession led many people to put off having children. The 2009 birth rate also set a record: lowest in a century.

Births fell 2.7 percent last year even as the population grew, numbers released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics show.

The U.S. birth rate has dropped for the second year in a row, and experts think the wrenching recession led many people to put off having children. The 2009 birth rate also set a record: lowest in a century.

...

The situation is a striking turnabout from 2007, when more babies were born in the United States than any other year in the nation's history. The recession began that fall, dragging stocks, jobs and births down.

"When the economy is bad and people are uncomfortable about their financial future, they tend to postpone having children. We saw that in the Great Depression the 1930s and we're seeing that in the Great Recession today," said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Did they also have a Best Dressed Black Girl and Most Beautiful Black Girl? Because while horribly horribly horribly wrong, I could see that they're thinking, "We need to be equitable and have 1 white/1 black of each thing." Misguided, but coming from a good heart.

That's what I feel like this thing is like too. "Let's make sure we have both white and black kids in the student government by assigning race to the positions!" Except there's no excuse for making the President white every single time.

I must admit, my high school had two homecoming "princesses" from each class: one white and one black. I've always assumed that they dropped it after a while (my class was the first integrated class to go all the way through my high school (in the 80s, it's all rather depressing) and there was a lot of weird stuff with race going on in school policies), but there was none of that shenanigans with class officers or one's race barring anyone from doing something. That's just, words fail me.

"When the economy is bad and people are uncomfortable about their financial future, they tend to postpone having children. We saw that in the Great Depression the 1930s and we're seeing that in the Great Recession today," said Andrew Cherlin, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University.

There's also the fact that I've seen that for people near or at the poverty line, childcare costs are %50 of income, even above that it's something like %25.

for people near or at the poverty line, childcare costs are %50 of income

Yikes! I did not know that.

How are they even allowed to get away with that? How is that not illegal?

I can vouch for that. My annual child care costs have always run around $12K; sometimes more.

That's like...a car a year!

My annual child care costs have always run around $12K; sometimes more.

Yeah, that sounds about right.