You mean like clearly and unequivocally stating that it has nothing to do with race? If there is a communication gap, it is willful. Are you still hanging on to the notion that people who choose to live in suburbs are racists? Don’t be coy, if you think someone posting here is a racist, say so. Drop this shit about dog whistles or whatever you’re talking about.
I’m simply saying that the concerns of the parents you describe seem entirely reasonable. If I were them I would have reacted the same way.
I’m glad things worked out well in your anecdote, but it might not have. Why take a chance, especially with your kid’s education?
You also didn’t say that only new kids were impacted. That helps to take the sting off of it.
It’s probably something of both; a school with excellent students will have high test scores, but there are likely network effects(reputation, teacher quality, etc…) that come from a concentration of high test scores that are beneficial to the students above and beyond their individual scores. If nothing else, you’ll have parents in the classes below the current one who are determined that their children do as well, and will put pressure on both the children and the school administration to make sure it happens.
And a lot of people DO move for the schools and lower price values. I can’t really count the number of people I’ve known over the years who live out in far-flung suburbs because they could get a new 2500 sq. ft. house on a big lot for less than they could get a 1700 sq. ft. house in the city on a smaller lot, and with a much crappier school district (Houston ISD or Dallas ISD).
And yet these people drive anywhere between 25 and 50 miles each way to and from work.
I really do think that people look at a few primary things- school district performance, home price, and the crime rate / “idyllic” nature of where they’re thinking about living, and make their choices accordingly. Few people go decide they want to live far within the city, in an older, more expensive house in a more crime-ridden area, and send their children to worse schools. So they move to the suburbs.
It’s not racist, and probably only indirectly classist in that crime and crappy schools are prevalent in areas of lower SES.
I don’t think anything needs to be added. Something needs to be taken away. This attitude that so many people have where regardless of context certain words automatically invoke thoughts of racism.
Earlier in the thread someone made a point regarding gangs, to which I responded and in my response dared to use the word “gangs” when discussing, you know, gangs. Immediately multiple posters went hysterical, claiming I was blatantly using a racist dog whistle to say… something.
It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.
Just respond to what people post. If you have questions, ask. But don’t filter everything through this hyper-sensitive filter that seeks to find racism in every post you see.
IME, whenever a Doper posts “It’s not racist” or words to that effect, usually it is.
Your post is racist. Deny it.
I know! Totally.
I mean he even said “Doper”, clearly a dog whistle to mean “Crack Smoking Black Person”.
BrainGlutton why do you think all black people are drug addicts?
The article in question is actually pretty well written and it is hard to see how you could have read more than its first few paragraphs and not understood its point. Given that Black males over 18 make up just over 5% of the population, 5% being in college is not “just” 5%. There is a lot of hyperbole that gets thrown around and the very real issues and some real improvements can get lost in it.
Point taken. I may find when my two younger kids get to school that they are not as academically gifted as the older two and I may not be able to be so sanguine. We shall see. (I still think it will be a cold day in hell before I send them to Catholic school, though, even if they were to get a full scholarship.)
I do want to point out too that in case it was not clear upthread, I don’t think it is completely irrelevant where a kid goes to school. One of my childhood friends had a younger sister who was friends with my sister, in fact the whole family was friends with my family. They moved from the medium-size city we lived in to a small town but the son, my friend, was very unhappy there as the only nonwhite in his class (the family is Native American, but the parents are highly educated and financially comfortable).
So they moved to a poor inner-city neighborhood with a high concentration of Native Americans as well as other minorities. Before long, the younger sister was dating a gang leader (not just a member), and got pregnant by him and dropped out of school. Getting pregnant and dropping out certainly happens in small towns too, but I couldn’t help but wonder if her parents regretted their idealistic liberal determination to move into a neighborhood like that.
I also have a cousin whose parents–my aunt and uncle–are highly educated and well off, but chose to live in an economically struggling former mill town with the worst level of heroin addiction on the East Coast. And guess what: my cousin is now a heroin addict with HIV, living in a trailer park. Oops.
These experiences inform my desire to have the worst pockets of poverty and dysfunction broken up and scattered amongst middle-class populations.
But those numbers are both roughly proportional to their share of the overall population–that was his point. But I don’t think you read it carefully, as it was talking about how many go to college and not how many graduate although that was addressed later. Given what was done to African-American populations for hundreds of years and then finally they were more or less released but not given any repayment for all that was taken from them, I think it is if anything surprising that they are doing this well in educational attainment.
Let’s face it: the rules here require coyness. Racists (not that I’m saying there are any here) would have to be coy in the way they expressed their racism; and then the antiracists would have to be coy about implying that they are onto the racists, if there were any here.
Oh, it wasn’t even my post, some nigger was using my account.
Racists do not have to be remotely coy on the SDMB, I’m not quite sure where you got that misinformation, you can be openly racist on the SDMB for extended periods of time, what you can’t do is CALL people on it.
I see.
Here’s the thing though; it doesn’t work. Go look at poverty in Dallas since the 1980’s era decision by Judge Jerry Buchmeyer to break up the Dallas housing projects and scatter the section 8 housing to various apartment complexes around the city.
All it managed to do is spread crime and poverty around; it didn’t do much for the actual people in the apartments. What ended up happening was a micro-scale “move to the suburbs” where the non-impoverished apartment dwellers moved elsewhere, and the apartments in otherwise nice areas became extremely poor and crime ridden.
What we ended up with is the rather odd situation of having some really crime-ridden and very poor apartment complexes surrounded by some fairly upscale single family homes. For example, my neighborhood is in northern Lake Highlands, and is pretty high-value; the cheapest homes in my neighborhood start at about $230,000 and go up to the higher 6 figure range. Yet up the street not a quarter mile, we have 3 of the 27 highest crime areas in Dallas, all of which are centered around clusters of poor apartment complexes.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/databases/20111006-exploring-dallas-crime-hot-spots.ece
(I live roughly where the 3 of the ones north of “Lake Highlands” intersect)
Most of those north of downtown are the result of Buchmeyer’s decision; those areas weren’t nearly so criminal prior to it. And yet, the people living in these clusters of apartments are no less criminal now than they were in the concentrated days, so in effect all the decision did is to spread the blight elsewhere.
Yeah if you just scatter them like seeds in the wind after eliminating the projects it will not help too much. Regardless, the big concrete buildings have to go.
I’ve been in two places, though, where I was in a “project” and didn’t even know it. Here in Seattle they have places where Section 8 housing allows you to get some really nice townhomes in developments right next to neighbors who pay 250K to own the homes outright. They’re regularly police patrolled (unlike projects) and the people who live there have their own homes, and even if they’re section 8 they keep them nice because they feel a sense of ownership. This is as opposed to a project where no matter how nice you keep your place, you will still have rats, roaches, and gun battles in and right outside of your home.
I also was playing with some kids in Indianapolis once before they confessed to me they were embarrassed they lived in the projects.
“This isn’t a project.” I said.
“Yes it is!” and they pointed out their duplex.
A bunch of brightly painted, nice looking duplexes that looked exactly like a duplex I had lived in before. The lawns were mowed and nice, and no drugs were being dealt in sight. These kids stood a chance. I don’t think anyone who has ever seen the Cabrini Greens or Robert Taylor homes up close could EVER say that projects are better than spreading the poor out and giving them affordable, safe, clean housing with dignity.
This is a pretty important difference of opinion. Started new thread.
I said exactly what I mean.
But I like how you assume I’m calling people racists, in code, while denying that people could actually be racist but in code.
Here’s the way I see it:
City/Urban
-Liked by left-wing/hated by right-wing
-Why does the left-wing like the city? The left is more collectivist, multicultural, intellectual and people oriented. The city has a lot of people and is very diverse. It offers a lot of culture. You also have to live normally in an apartment which are more “collective” oriented. The right-wing has these opposite values so they tend to hate the city.
-Best place for adults especially single adults to live. There are a lot of jobs and bars. Also a lot of people around that you can make friends with.
Suburbs
-Tend to be moderate/mix of Republicans and Democrats
-Most people I do see criticizing the suburbs are left-wingers. They stereotype the suburbs as boring and materialistic. Hold on a sec…aren’t these the same people who say we shouldn’t stereotype? Why yes they are! Hypocrites.
-Best place for married couples and children to live. Raise children in more privacy. Put a pool and basketball hoop in the backyard, play football on the front lawn, play hockey in the street. Invite the neighbors over for a BBQ. Can’t really do this in the city. Screw people who say the suburbs are boring. I would hate living in the city as a child/teen. Suburbs are also safer for children.
Rural
-Liked by right-wing/hated by left-wing
-Why does the right-wing like the rural areas? Well right-wingers seem to prefer privacy and are not as people oriented as the left. If you live in the rural areas it is likely that the closest house to you is a quarter mile or more away so there is lots of privacy and not many people around.
-Best place for senior citizens to live. Peace and quiet.
Damn those hypocrites you just invented.
Zombies hate suburbs, too. Population density is too low.
Never heard that philosopher called a liberal before.