It brought them together more than the segregated schools did. I grew up in the aftermath; my wife grew up in the aftermath. We went to school and socialized with folks we almost certainly wouldn’t have gone to school with or socialized with pre-integration.
I know the time during which it happened was ugly, but I think you’ll find yourself in a very small minority in claiming that they were uglier than the days of segregation, and I think you’ll find very few African American families who will agree with you.
If “an impartial view of the decision” is equivalent to “monumental leap forward in common sense and justice”, then the article is biased, no doubt. Big damn “if”.
Define “days of segregation”. If you mean pre-Brown, yes. But busing wasn’t used to address legally enforced segregation, it was used to address the type of segregation that happens when people just tend to cluster together with others of the same race.
Depends on the specific legislation we’re talking about. The EEO defines it as blacks, whites, persons of Latino or Asian origin or descent, and indigenous Americans (Eskimos, Native Hawaiians, Native Americans). I’m not sure if that would count as 5 or 7.
There is no clause in the constitution that is limited to education. Are you thinking of a new constitutional amendment? I thought you said it was time for a court case.
I’m well aware of that; it does not change what I said.
Okay; there would be as many races as the EEO defined, then. The point is, this isn’t an insurmountable problem.
No, there’s a right to equal access to the privileges of citizenship. The “protected class” issues would not be about the estate tax, they would be about access to Medicaid and such; again, this is a “right to sleep under a bench” type of non-issue.
You’re right that this couldn’t be limited to education, but it could be limited to access to government services, and as I think about it, my language of “class” is unnecessary (although it’d hardly be the insurmountable difficulty that you seem to think it’d be). We’re talking about situations in which children get a drastically worse education because schools in poor areas are worse-funded than schools in wealthy areas: by dint of birth, there’s unequal access to this government service. That seems like a fourteenth amendment issue to me.
Right. The problem is there were several other important factors influencing school budgets, and so it’s impossible to isolate just the effect of those court cases. Prop 13 might have been the single biggest influencer and that tended to be across the board. At any rate, the CA courts have found that funding schools solely thru local property taxes violates the state constitution. I don’t know how that constitution compares to the US version and whether or not something similar could be successful at the national level.
Regarding the idea of economic classes as a “protected class”… sure, we could arbitrarily create any number of classes, but they would be entirely arbitrary. Someone making a penny a year more than someone else would be in a different economic class. I don’t see how it could be limited to access to government services, either. There is no constitutional clause that is restricted to “access to government services”.
But it has been interpreted as protecting equal access to public accomodations? Why should we imagine that there is a bright line of seperation relative to “access to government services”?
Broadly speaking, there are only two classes of privileges that U.S. citizens have and noncitizens have not:
Right of residence on U.S. soil. If you’re a native-born citizen the state can lock you up, but it can’t exile or deport you for any crime – that’s a punishment unknown to our laws.
Right of political participation, including voting and holding public office.
Benefits of the first accrue to all citizens equally regardless of wealth. Benefits of the second, decidedly not.
I completely agree with you-but here are my questions (it’s a pity I’m asking this in the pit instead of GD which is the tone of my query, I’m not being antagonistic)
Why must those with social capital be forced to share it or take care of those who do not have it?
Is having the state intervene to force people with social capital to interact with those from different backgrounds really going to have that much of an effect ? Do you believe interaction with those with social capital is going to affect more than a marginal percentage of all who do?
I ask because I went to an upscale public school in MA that was among the first bussing communities. My experience was that a) after middle school, it was socially segregated based on advanced tracking and b) 99% of children in the bussing program did not make it into the advanced tracking program. The program essentially benefitted the 1% of participants who had a strong family structure at home that forced the child to take advantage of going to a wealthy public school.
I don’t know what the answer is but my experience with “forced” bussing or forced class interaction where all kids have access to $X spent for their education is that the students essentially live parallel lives within the same school and that a large part of any student’s success comes from the atmosphere at home and you can’t make parents with social capital go to the home of other people and force them to parent their children as well. Of course, the other option for integration would be to eliminate advanced courses and teach everyone at the lowest common denominator of achievement. Otherwise, it doesn’t make much of a difference.
I’m not following your argument. Are you saying that the term “privileges” in that clause refers only to “access to government services”? If so, can you indicate where you get that interpretation from?
That’s what I would imagine, too. So I don’t see how the courts could craft something, on a constitutional basis, that would only affect access to government services. Even if they tried to, future court cases would surely expand it beyond that. It would only make sense.
Government services are generally supposed to be available to all residents, not just citizens. (Though there have been political movements to change that.)
I know from my experiences as a teacher that parental expectations are a key factor. But there are other ways to benefit besides academically. Didn’t you see any socializing at all? This is really a surprise to me.
I’m wondering if the difference in our ages has anything to do with it. Despite my father’s promises, I did not attend an integrated school before I went to college. There was one African-American male in my freshman class. He was the first admitted to the college. I remember segregated fountains, restrooms, waiting rooms in bus stations.
A 27 year old minister named Andrew Young taught me the lyrics to Eyes on the Prize and We Shall Overcome on the campus of that same college in the summer of 1961. He was the first Black person who ever told me about how inconvenient it was to be Black. I know this is ignorant, but I had no idea.
Now I am almost a lifetime away from all of that and I see how different it is – though not as different as I would like for it to be. But Blacks and whites do seem to feel more comfortable together. I got a hug from a friend I hadn’t seen in a while and I exchanged pleasantries with a couple of strangers. Both seemed to feel comfortable in initiatinting the conversations.
Is this kind of interracial interaction just a Southern thing?
I chose to teach in integrated schools the first year that I taught (1969). And I watched the “us vs. them” attitude relax. Sports activities helped a lot and still do.
When we got the Tennessee Titans, that sealed the deal for Nashville. Steve McNair was everyone’s hero. (Still is, you lucky Ravens!)
My point in all of this is that integration (forced or voluntary) has changed our society for the better! I resent anything that threatens to reverse the direction we’ve been moving.
I agree with a lot of your post, but not this part. Gifted students are considered “Special Education” students. Yet, for every dollar spent on a gifted student, $100 dollars is spent on a learning disabled student. That is unfair. The amount doesn’t have to be the same, but certainly there should be a better balance.
I was witness to a bewildering event that took place in the school where I used to teach. The building was new when I retired. It was in the middle of the inner city and had some really nice features including an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a state-of-the-art library. The students (low income Blacks and whites) were very proud of it. Their old school had been built in the Nineteeth Century.
The school was then given a National grant of some sort that was just unbelievable. Banks of computers were installed in every room along with cable televisions and telephones for the teachers. While this may sound like standard office equipment to you guys, we weren’t even air-conditioned until the mid-1980s. I don’t know what other technical advantages these classrooms were wired for or what other assists these teachers had, but their classrooms were showplaces.
I know that the teachers were hardworking and most of them were qualified. The kids were, for the most part, good kids. But their scores and attendance did not improve.
I’m not sure how we are supposed to interpret that. Is your resention supposed to be relevant to the constitutionality of this issue? Are you arguing that if someone resents something, that that is meaningful wrt how the SCOTUS should decide a given case? Please elaborate.