The most famous passage from Brown I states that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. If we go back to them, we’re going back to a situation that Brown declared unconstitutional.
As for the continuing idea that somehow rich people would be a protected class in any meaningful sense by such an interpretation of the XIV amendment, I’m not really sure how to approach it. To me, it sounds as if you’re saying that Roe v. Wade equally protects men’s right to an abortion, and that this makes Roe v. Wade an unworkable decision. Unless I can figure out how your argument is making sense–which I dont’ deny it is, I just can’t see how it is–I think I’m going to have to drop it for now.
Roe was not decided on the basis of gender being a protected category. It was decided on a right to privacy. I don’t think the two situations are comparable.
This comes down to one of those “what kind of world do you want to live in?” questions. It’s a little presumptive to assume that there are “haves” and “have nots” regarding social capital, and I might be responsible for promoting that assumption. Everything’s relative. In a schooling system designed by, and for the benefit of White, middle-class, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, English-speaking individuals, those sharing those traits and/or an understanding of those cultural norms, expectations, etc. are at an advantage. However, it’s easy to see how wealthy White Americans might not be as successful in a school in Spain, for instance.
Here’s a hackneyed, but helpful way of seeing it: perhaps the parents with social capital can help community members direct their energies in meaningful ways. They might have personal relationships with key members of the school committee, but the footwork, attendance at the school committee meetings, and rallying of other members of the community (non-English proficient, local business owners, etc.) are often the greater part of the work. Without that parent with the personal relationship, perhaps all of these efforts escape the attention of the media, or the committee ignores the request - after all, if committee members are elected by districts or neighborhood, they have little to worry about if the protesters are from another community.
Another more down-to-earth example: White kid is new at a majority minority school. He obviously sticks out like a sore thumb, and crosses paths with a bully in gym class. Another kid, Latino and from the neighborhood, intervenes and gets the bully to back off. In this case the Latino kid is using his social capital to vouch for the White kid, and through this connection, the White kid gains a certain level of respect in the community. (I saw this happen countless times in my schooling experience - of course, I saw it the other way as well, where nobody intervened, or when the reverse happened, where a White kid gave a helping hand to a kid of color.)
So every time someone takes a stand to help someone being victimized - whether it’s in a political context, or the most base experiences - like the Black people who rushed to save Reginald Denny after he was attacked by thugs during the L.A. riots, people are willing to expend social capital for the benefit of others. I suppose it is what makes us human, but also the understanding that “a rising tide floats all boats.”
No, I don’t think forced interaction works. But if people are never proximal to others different from them, how is it going to happen? I think there is a misconception that a school that is desegregated equals multiracial friendships. Not necessarily. I don’t think it’s necessary to force kids to integrate their social networks, but I do know that activities like sports, band, and clubs bring kids of different backgrounds together, and to be successful, they have to find a way to find a common language and communicate. (Yes, the Remember The Titans schlock.) As cheesy as it sounds, it actually does work. When I was involved in multicultural education with undergraduate students, I typically found that students who had been involved in integrated activities were much more receptive to the message of communicating and appreciating differences (and similarities) across race. Doesn’t mean they “had it figured out,” but inevitably they had some level of engagement with someone with a different life experience, and a respect for that to an extent.
But of course, you’re not going to have these possibilities if kids never interact with one another. Athletes, student body presidents, and cheerleaders are role models, and their behavior can often affect that of their peers. Even “ordinary” kids that make new and different friends will challenge other friends to re-examine how they interact with the world. I don’t believe it all happens in school, either. Kids are often encountering issues that are reinforced by their parents, community, and media. But the exposure at an early age means that kids are going to be more open to re-examining their prejudices. The breakthrough might not occur in high school, but later.
As an educator I’d go back to evaluating how a school decides to track kids in the first place (I’m against tracking, BTW). But as someone who was tracked, and spent time in high track, middle track, and low track (briefly, thank God) classes, I know that it’s virtually impossible to move from the low track to the high track unless a) you are evidently a budding Einstein clearly placed there by mistake or b) you have teachers or parents who really care and see your potential or c) you understand the gravity of being in the low track for your future, and perform like hell to get out. There’s a sizable body of research that suggests that kids are placed in low academic tracks because of factors extraneous to aptitude, intelligence, and ability - see, for instance, Ray Rist’s study of Black children in a Harlem school, where kids were labeled because of accent, behavior, and cleanliness. Low track students typically get the less experienced teachers, a weaker curriculum, and essentially do worse over time.
Parents don’t often know that kids in the high track classes aren’t always the highest achieving students. An aggressive parent can push a kid into a higher track. In some cultures, educators are so revered, that it’s assumed that the decisions they make are beyond reproach. I would argue that in middle class WASP culture, that isn’t the case.
My experience is different than yours, but I also know that I was taught by teachers, mostly Latino, many of whom were community activists. They role modeled for us cross-cultural friendships and respect for other groups. Having your history teacher close the textbook and explain to you what it was like to be beaten by cops for trying to integrate a restaurant has one hell of an impact. The fact that our faculty seemed to be on the same page, and seemed to believe that all the kids at our school could do great things was monumental. I don’t know too many kids my age who had White teachers bring people like Cesar Chavez and Edward James Olmos to their school, to talk to all of the kids - not just the high achievers - and then participate in marches after school. But that’s the kind of role modeling kids need to understand the value of cross-cultural relationships. It’s not going to happen by just throwing kids together, at least not all the time.
Zoe, I saw your response upthread and I mostly agree with you. I’m from Texas and you described how it worked in my schooling experience (most of the time). It wasn’t perfect, and the person that I am, I tend to remember the good stuff a lot better than the bad. (I was in high school in the late 1980s.) BTW, that quote was from anu-la1979, not me.
My high school is a lot like the one you’re describing. It’s become a cause in my hometown, and there are volunteers and money flowing into the school, but scores aren’t improving. But I think it has more to do with the concentration of kids who have performed poorly on these tests and the way our schooling system does so little to help advance these kids than misappropriated funds.
For the children who had to be bussed an hour or more to a bad school, I’d say so. The bad thing about segrated schools was the education they offered. For the government to take action and see to it that some kids would be transported there seems like a double wrong. One, there’s the bad school. Two, there’s the bus trip out of his neighborhood to that bad school.
I’d certainly appreciate you going and fucking yourself, douchebag.
If you think it’s historical revisionism to say that the Civil Rights movement was about equal treatment, then you’re pretty much too stupid to really bother with. I never said that certain “special-treatment” initiatives did not exist within the Civil Rights movement, I simply claimed that the primary motivator for said movement was equality, and the historical record and the rhetoric used at the time makes that beyond doubt as what the movement was about.
I think in large part our consciousness has changed in regard to race. Do whites still (generally) view blacks as different (generally)? Of course, anyone who denies that has their head in the sand. But white and black children alike have it hammered in to their heads from a very young age that treating people differently based on their race is wrong. Does institutionalized discrimination still happen in some workplaces? Yes. It’s ludicrous to say the work of the Civil Rights movement is entirely done. I do think we’ve reached a point where we’ve done just about everything we can do to stop State-sanctioned discrimination as well as institutionalized discrimination in education and the work place. People who continue to discriminate can be discovered and sued.
The issue now is primarily becoming one of economics. I no longer believe that white people are going to suburbia because they don’t like blacks; shit, I live in suburbia and there’s a fairly large black population here. The difference between these blacks and the ones living in squalor in Richmond itself is they’re educated, have well-paying jobs, and have the means to live where they choose. Poverty is a vicious cycle that most certainly afflicts a greater proportion of blacks than it does whites. If you’re raised in poverty pretty much any data set you look at shows you’re more likely to be arrested and convicted of a crime, more likely to grow up in a single-parent home, more likely not only to not attend college but to drop out of High School. Children of those individuals who were raised in such conditions will themselves be poor, and the problems that causes will continue to be passed on down the generations.
Anyone who knows my posting history knows I’m no fan of income redistribution. But I believe essential government services need to be provided to all, regardless of income level. Public High Schools in poor neighborhoods should be just as well funded, and just as well staffed as the ones in rich neighborhoods. I have no problem with the private school system, which provides a premium education at a premium price (sometimes), but public schools need to be of a relatively standardized quality regardless of the neighborhood they are in.
Nah, that’s subtly different from what you said. Most of the leaders and participants in the civil rights movement recognized that in the short term, equality could not be achieved by superficial colorblind attitudes. What you said was revisionism, as I demonstrated.
Equality probably cannot be achieved by strictly legal means, nor can it be acheived by forcing people together. Color blind laws are not the ends, they are the means. As soon as colored people had a grasp on the vote, legal equality was in end-game, the moves were clear, only the timing remained in doubt.
I approve of programs that accept the facts of race and racism, and endeavor towards change. But it seems to me that AA programs engender more resentment than is justified, I think the point has been made, and largely accepted. We do better to focus our attention on equality of education, as Comrade Hyde has suggested, and I find little in his latest to disagree with.
No, this was another school system. It makes sense that the federal government would fund more than one system this way.
John Mace, of couse I want decisions based on the Constitution and not on whether it’s just good for us. But I really get suspicious when the vote is 5 to 4 with a couple of new conservative appointees and it seems to fly in the face of a landmark case based on the Constitution that has affected our schools for the last half century in positive ways.
John, do you mind my asking if you are from the North?
I can say that as a teacher who was once not given a certain teaching position because I was not the Black teacher. That position required a person of color. So sometimes the policy has worked against me personally. I have absolutely no bitterness. It was worth it to get positive Black role models into the schools.
Hippy, I disagree with you about one thing that you said. The more experienced teachers were not always the ones to teach higher track classes. Seniority gave you a better chance a choosing what school you would teach in, but no choice about what classes you taught. (I am speaking of schools in our school system.)
Almost all of our teachers taught at least one fundamental class. They were the students that I enjoyed teaching the most – just as some teachers prefer to work with learning disabled.
I believe that everything that can be accomplished by affirmative action using race as a criterion can be accomplished using poverty as a booster instead. Blacks aren’t the only people who are disadvantaged in our society, and not all blacks need the help. Do you think Oprah’s kids need affirmative action to get into college?
Zoe, speaking from my experience as a elementary and middle school teacher, the “tough” and “low track” classes were always taught by the rookies. I do think that high school is probably a little different.
I think the nuance missed in these conversations about affirmative action is the fact that that there are many forms of affirmative action that receive little attention, but the race-based variant is the one that is vilified. Legacy admissions, admissions based on athletics, and even regional affirmative action are practiced on a regular basis. But there’s little rancor directed to those preferential admission programs.
I personally don’t have a problem with any of those types of preferences. It makes a campus community stronger to have kids who have a family history with the school, kids who have great talents, and kids from different places. The other fallacy is that there is an absolute, objective measure that determines someone’s ability. It can’t be captured in a test score, or even (completely) with grades. In essence, competitive admissions is about interviewing for a slot, but most institutions don’t have the resources to interview each candidate individually… so scores are the proxy. An imperfect one, but I don’t have better ideas. I think test scores are part of the picture, but they shouldn’t be the whole picture.
But that’s another myth - that the problem is social class and not race. The underperformance phenomenon, where African-American college kids with the same preparation and schooling than White and Asian kids do worse in college, is well documented. Claude Steele’s work on stereotype threat suggests that groups that are stigmatized in academic contexts - African-Americans and women, to name two - perform poorly when their exceptionality is recognized.
Poverty-based programs will help, but to suggest that socioeconomic status is a sufficient proxy for the goals of race-based affirmative action leads to the fallacy that institutional racism is no longer a barrier to success.
Interestingly, the argument from the conservative justices is based on the very stigmatization you identify. They say that affirmative action makes that stigmatization worse, though I don’t imagine they have much social science to back it up. What do you think?
What landmark cases are you referring to? As I noted in this thread and the other threads on this subject, the courts have frowned on numerical quota systems (unless the action is taken to correct specific past forced segregation) going back to *Bakke *in the 1970s. The systems under consideration here are numerical quota systems.
I live in CA now. I grew up mostly in New England, but I did live in the south at times. I even lived in the south at the very end of the Jim Crow era.
Here’s the thing. We decided, with Brown, that separate but equal is not constitutional. We said you couldn’t set up separate schools systems. But we never said that you could deny access to a given school simply because you are the wrong race. That flies in the face of *Brown *and it doesn’t matter that the end goal is “diversity” or not. It’s a simple matter of the ends not justifying the means. You can think that “diversity” is the noblest goal on earth, but you still can’t block kids from certain schools because of their race and claim to be upholding the constitution at the same time. There is nothing in the constitution about diversity. If you want to put it there, you need to amend the constitution. Until that happens, you can’t discriminate by race.
In order to remedy the effects of past efforts to enforce segregation, not in order to “promote diversity” when no such evidence of enforced segregation existed.
This court case says you can do all sorts of things to “promote diversity”, including creative drawing of school districts and building schools in particular geographic locations. You can even take race into account as one factor (though not the only factor) in trying to promote diversity in schools. But you cannot prevent kids from going to a particular school solely because of their race.
Daniel and Zoe (and anyone else interested): Have you read the opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts in this case? If not, I really think you should do so before taking this debate further. Link.
