Resegregation of U.S. schools deepening »
Posted By ameliog 8 months, 3 weeks ago in NewsAt one time, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina was a model of court-ordered integration. Today, more than half of its elementary schools are either more than 90 percent black or 90 percent white.
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1-2-Oscar8 months, 3 weeks ago
Charlotte-Mecklenburg was the place where the first court-ordered busing took place, and was long considered a model for other areas. Cities like Memphis and New Orleans never experienced substantial desegregation--the courts never caught up with rapid white flight from those areas, and the surrounding county systems always remained separate. Today Memphis schools are almost totally segregated by race, and student performance within these socially and culturally isolated facilities is abysmal. The gains made during the Civil Rights movement and those from the judicial remedies which followed it are being surrendered without a fight.
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trnscndr8 months, 2 weeks ago
I grew up in North Carolina in a small mountain town, Brevard. Unlike big cities, we could not afford two schools so we were never segregated. Blacks and whites went to school together and were, for the most part friends. The country club crowd either sent their kids to private schools in Asheville or told them to avoid socializing with blacks.
I fondly recall attending black churches when I was in a biracial Christian Band. We had a ball. Frankly, it never occurred to me to discriminate.
As an adult, I began to live in big cities, Atlanta and LA. There I finally saw tremendous segregation, not only black and white, but American black vs. African Black and Mexicans vs. other latinos, white Anglos vs. white Italians; the list goes on and as we further divide, we strengthen the resolve of the rich.
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trnscndr8 months, 2 weeks ago
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My solution is to go back into the ghost towns of Kansas and buy an old school for $100,000 with several of your friends. Start a green company or one from which one can telecommute. Buy a house for $5000 and raise your family, side by side with a rainbow of races and cultures. We can make rural America diverse if we take advantage of the tremendous economic opportunity that comes with remigration and the experience each of us has had in the big cities can teach us how to accept each other once we have reclaimed our roots of the Earth.
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ameliog8 months, 3 weeks ago
Not liking this trend - we don't need any more divisions. FTA: "While resegregation has been taking place for some time, Orfield says the latest numbers are worrisome both for the degree to which they show the trend is occurring and in light of the US Supreme Court's most recent decision on the issue last June, which struck down several voluntary integration programs and made it more difficult for districts that want to work at desegregating schools to do so."
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rwrnae8 months, 2 weeks ago
A predictible outcome of a stupid law. You CANNOT make different cultures live together and get along. Multiculturalism is the dumbest idea of the 20th century. The white people aren't moving away from "blacks", they are moving away from people who have a different and unacceptable culture. No law is going to change this. Most whites these days are openly accepting of educated blacks who have adopted the mainstream culture. But they are not going to let their kids go to school with rappers, gangbangers and drug pushers.
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rwrnae8 months, 2 weeks ago
"You mean there are no white rappers, gangbangers and drug pushers?"
Certainly there are but we don't let our kids go to school with them either. We move, completely out of the district if necessary, or we send them to private school. Interestingly enough, a lot of minority parents do the same. It's not white/black, it's cultural differences. A family that has a culture of obeying the law, giving their kids a good education, etc., regardless of their race, does whatever they can to keep their kids out of schools full of children from "families" that don't share their values.
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Beau78908 months, 2 weeks ago
Here's another intersting article on Charlotte-Mecklenburg school resegregation.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=...
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slate8 months, 2 weeks ago
Anyone remember what a school lunch room looks like?
They are full of faces from the neighborhoods that are from the surrounding area. The lunchroom is as diverse as those neighborhoods. You have diversity in the neighborhoods you have a diverse lunchroom. However, if you look closely the diverse lunchroom is not that diverse but segregated. You have all the tables full of different 'groups' of students; from the cool kids, to the nerds, different races, humans do tend to 'hang' with those that are much like how they are. Try as you may, busing folks all the way across town to 'achieve' some goal isn't the answer. Let people go to school where they want to, but make all the schools 'a place that everyone can learn' and you will accomplish something worth while.
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ameliog8 months, 2 weeks ago
I remember lots of them. The lunchrooms I've been part of do cluster according to sex, culture, business unit, enlisted/officer, race, income level, other status separators. However, once lunch was over we were together again, encountering each other frequently. But what if we went from one segregated lunchroom to equally segregated lives? Nothing changes at all then. When will these children be exposed to another color on the palette if not in school and before adulthood when many core ideas and biases are hardened? If the parents carry biased views, how does the child see anything else to break the closed loop of narrow viewpoints?
If I see my neighbor all the time I'll tend to see him as less of that group (Swedish immigrant, for ex.) and more of my group (friends/neighbors). I'll begin to care for his needs as much as my own. A man no less than GWB's favorite philosopher claimed that grasping this principle was one of the two greatest things a person should do.
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Mdiar8 months, 2 weeks ago
Its been my experience that today's children are less racist then those in the past. In general they seem more accepting. I'm not saying that your not right, we should be making certain integration remains in schools, but just saying... today's kids are really accepting, for the most part.
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saneman8 months, 2 weeks ago
OMG. I actually agree with slate. Making a kid go to a school he/she doesn't want to go to surely isn't good for the kid. A good kid being made to go to a school isn't going to help that kid learn anthing. I would never allow my kid to be bused to a school way across the city just to satisfy some idiots. I want my kid to have the best education and I will determine where that may be, not the government.
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jmopinion8 months, 2 weeks ago
Its white flight. Same thing happened at my old High School growing up. All the white parents with the money eventually pulled their kids out of public school and sent their kids to private schools or these days its private school and home schooling. All that's left is the small percentage of poor white kids that catch hell from a lot of violent minority inner city classmates.
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Howtogo8 months, 2 weeks ago
jmopinion
You are 100% correct the same happened where I grew-up. The only difference was there were very few private schools and the parents simply moved out of the area.
I know the hated word by the public school unions and the secular movement is "vouchers". Don't forget the poor students come in all colors and races. The parents that want their child to be placed out of the "unequal education" school (so to speak) into a school of their choice will have to have financial help. A voucher might just be the help needed.
I know about the "the voucher will only help the rich", and will not help the poor argument, but unless it is tried it's only speculation. Of course the public schools would have to improve their operation to compete for that voucher money.
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TOD3968 months, 2 weeks ago
Suppose that all parents are given vouchers to send thier kids to any school they choose. White parents are going to look for white schools and black parents are going to look for black schools. It really doesn't address the issue of segregation, but rather the issue of mediocrity of teachers in a particular school.
Rather than give vouchers, or to even try to integrate blacks and whites into learning in the same school, let's focus on the real problems. Why are schools attended by mostly blacks, repeatedly scoring significantly lower on standardized tests, than schools predominantly attended by whites? Get the answer to that question and then you can address the real issues. In Gary, Indiana, mostly black schools have a severe handicap, even though the system spends twice as much per student as a nearby community with mostly whites. It isn't the money that makes a difference. So what is it?
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palamaComment removed: User banned.
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TheAttacks8 months, 2 weeks ago
When my family lived in Charlotte, my little brother attended a middle school about a 45 minute drive from our house. There was a middle school right next to the high school I attended, which was about 5 minutes from our house, but he couldn't attended that school.
"Busing" students to other schools to make them more racially equal is just makes things harder on the parents and I would imagine that money spent figuring out how to balance race in schools could be spent on other, more important areas of education.
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amazed8 months, 2 weeks ago
I somewhat agree with rnrae in that the "white flight" is more about culture than color.
I believe that one of the main reasons that there is more segregation now (although I believe much of it is voluntary on both the white AND black sides)is that this country and its inhabitants have lost the will to assimilate -- in fact, assimilation has become a dirty word and those who are foolish enough to espouse out loud are shouted down as racists....BUT...
people tend to hang with those who are most similar to themselves. Back in the 60's and 70's, we all acted much more alike. I grew up in the suburbs and the minority kids were more or less the same as the rest of us -- we all listened to the same music - Zeppelin, Hendrix, Motown, we all dressed essentially the same -- bell bottoms, long hair, etc.
That's not so true anymore...
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