(Thumbnail Image: ABC)

BY JAYNE HENSON

Brandy Springer pulled her two children from Nettleton Middle school after her 12-year-old daughter was told she didn't meet the qualifications to run for class office because she wasn’t black. A national conversation about affirmative action followed.

In the elections for the 2010 school year, eight positions were designated for white students, and four positions for black students. (Gawker)

Superintendent Russell Taylor first defended the policy posting on the school’s website:

“It is the belief of the current administration that these procedures were implemented to help ensure minority representation and involvement in the student body” (MSNBC)

An editor for The Grio, a news site geared toward African-Americans, tells NBC the policy was teaching kids to vote based on race rather than character.

David Wilson: "What I find interesting about this, to be honest with you, its really an equal opportunity discrimination. One year whites weren’t able to run for election and the next year blacks weren’t ... I think it really puts an emphasis on race more than it should.”

But clearly race has been an issue tied to elections in much of the national discourse.  A professor of Politics and African American Studies tells MSNBC the U.S. should be beyond placement based on race  

Dr. Melissa Harris-Lacewell: “The generation coming of age with an African American president and a Latina on the Supreme Court and a women as Secretary of State that their just gonna see the world differently. And so to know that it was being enforced as a matter of policy for them to connect leadership with race, is something that we’d hoped wasn’t going on in America anymore.”

This is not the first time Mississippi has made headlines for race issues. Last years Charleston High School was forced to end its policy of segregating its proms and just this year a federal court ordered school officials in Walthall county to stop creating “all black” classrooms. (Video: HBO and MSNBC)

A blogger for Think Progress says the 30-year-old policy is difficult for some to move past.

“The 'historical application' is undoubtedly rooted in the state’s history of segregation — a history Mississippians seem reticent to move beyond.”

The Nettleton School District ultimately nixed the policy.

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