Not they shouldn’t. When you said “black people” instead of “poor people” but meant “poor people” you lumped all black people into the poor people bucket and neglected to note that white people are poor and also do poorly in school when that is the case. It has a distinct air of “black people are inherently deficient”.
Again, it is a subtle form of racism that really colors (no pun intended) the conversation and not in a good way. I’m sorry you can’t see it.
Urban/Poor/Black were being used semi-interchangeably in the discussions, it started to center on disenfranchised blacks and I made comments related to it. That’s all that happened here.
And even that would be better than what some here are proposing which is the take the “good” students out along with their resources, while leaving not so good students couldn’t get accepted into a selective private/charter school, and then slashing its budget because it wasn’t testing well.
It’s not an either-or situation. When you live in unjust circumstances, decisions that are blind to race will tend to have no effect on the level of injustice, and will consequently tend to perpetuate the injustice.
I’m going to, sort of, back Anomalous here. Did you see the recent NYTimes article about black boys and education? Opening sentence:
So it’s appropriate to talk about something happening in America’s black communities, as distinct from what’s happening in other communities.
Where I differ, strongly, from anomalous, is in the question of whether that something is necessarily caused by factors in black communities themselves. It seems extremely likely to me that the lion’s share of the causes for this phenomenon originate from white communities.
What my takeaway is from the entire thread:
The Fix!
Find sufficient over performing schools to handle the underperforming kids. Disperse them and bus them to the over performing schools (in small enough increments to affect the changes reflected in the few instances this has worked)
HUZZAH, everyone wins
That seems the best solution to me as well. And it was what was done in that podcast that was linked. But somehow that doesn’t seem good enough, which is where my confusion about solutions arises.
It seems the thoughts started with “Move white kids to underperforming black schools” and when that got pushback, and then a link to a great podcast seems to suggest the opposite of that is better, now the thoughts are “Well, it’s complicated” instead of “Well, that seemed to work there, maybe we ought to try that?”
There have been mentions in this very thread that sometimes the best thing to do is to shut down a school, and disperse the students to other schools. The problem is is that should not be the only solution.
It is a complex problem, and simple solutions to complex problems have very limited results. That it is a complex problem may be what causes your confusion, but you shouldn’t allow your confusion to detract from others from finding and implementing solutions.
It wasn’t “move white kids to underperforming black schools”, it was “Get white parents to stop removing their kids from schools that have large populations of black students, causing them to lose funding and community support, and decreasing the options available to the remaining students.” And when that was inaccurate called, “Move white kids to underprofmins black schools”, there was defense that even that action is better for the community, and a reasonable expectation that it is better for your kid as well.
The thoughts are in fact, “it’s complicated”, because it is a very complicated problem. And it is better to be aware that it is complicated than to think that because something worked there, it will work here, in all situations and circumstances, and that because it “worked”, it was also the “best” solution.
Sure. But if you think “Stop white parents from moving their kids to higher performing schools” is EVER going to work, then the discussion is pretty much over.
But if you think “Maybe we should try something that worked in this place and see if it will work in another place”, then it seems like a discussion can be had.
It is not a matter of higher performing, I said nothing about higher performing, I just said with a large black population, which is why you assumed I was talking about lower performing, which is the same mistake that these white parents make when they pull their kids out of schools with large black populations.
Maybe if we can find a way to get people to stop being so prejudiced, then we could get something to work there. Any suggestions?
Can we at least note that those solutions were not without their problems? That that means that not only black students, but black staff and faculty also gets dispersed. Programs that used to belong to the students are just ended. Schools that used to be important community centers are abandoned.
When it makes sense to do that, absolutely. Many of these schools are in bad shape, both as far as their structure and their staffing. But to consider it a one size fits all solution is a bit more simplistic than this complex problem demands.
It may - but it’s essentially a ends/means argument which I’m not a supporter of. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” What Roberts said in 2007 applies here.
Do you know of any non-draconian way to prevent parents from removing their kids from any school?
No I assumed you were talking about lower performing because why else would parents remove their kids? If it’s simply because of racism, then sure, I agree 100% that it’s racist. I can’t comprehend of a way to prevent it though. Can you?
Just an FYI: You are correct that not all black people are poor, but incorrect that their kids do as well in school as white kids (or Asians).
Cite - pdf. So there is more to it than just poverty.
Regards,
Shodan
Stop making them think that because there is a large black population, that it is a bad school.
As with anything in the fight against ignorance, I can’t think of a way to prevent people from being ignorant, just present information and hope that they decide to learn.
I’m curious: Does anyone have any statistics on how schools with “a large black population” perform, compared to, say, the average school, or something like that? Or maybe something comparing majority-minority schools with majority-white schools? Anything along similar lines?
First we would have to break down what a “large black population is.” In my local high school, parents started complaining when the black population reached about 6%.
I gave a possibility that I think is a reasonable starting point: majority-minority vs majority-white schools.
That’s cool. So perhaps you could name a school that was not under-performing, but white parents pulled their kids out anyway.
As those are not really things that are tracked and tabulated anywhere, I don’t know how I can give you a cite, but I can give you the history of several school districts around me.
The school district that I live in now is now largely black. It didn’t used to be. Prior to the consolidation of school districts in 1955 (done because of desegregation), you had primarily whites living in the northern suburbs, and primarily blacks in the southern. When the northern white suburbs had to allow the blacks to attend their schools, they ran another county north, leaving a perfectly good school district behind. Now it is primarily black, and it is actually a really good school district. (We pass levies, they don’t)
Someone actually wrote a book about it. I haven’t read it.
But yeah, when I was a kid in school, everyone talked about “those districts”, which were the ones that the “blacks had taken over”, which I think we were just jealous 'cause they kicked our ass in sports. At the time, those districts were perfectly fine, and only had problems because of the white flight and loss of tax base, and back in today, those districts are doing pretty well.
Just out of curiosity, are you one of those who doesn’t believe that “white flight” was an actual thing?
And my point is is that you don’t have to have a majority of black students before white parents start pulling out their kids. Just a visible minority is enough.
Especially if you go back to when these problems were first introduced at the time of desegregation. White people retreated to white neighborhoods and schools in droves when they started with the “bussing”.
I’m sure it was a thing.
For you other statements, I have to think about it because I’ve kinda lost track of what I’m trying to say.
Other than “A solution that somehow forces white people not to move will never, ever happen, so what is even the point of talking about it?”