The article correctly Chronicles the decline of public education in JeffCo but misdiagnoses the cause and effect. It wasn't just white flight, the professional and upper middle class blacks have also fled Birmingham city and county schools. Just as you've seen white numbers plummet in the county, minority enrolement at the best suburban schools are at all time high. These public schools are arguably more integrated then at any time since the 1960's,
3
I totally disagree that black children feel inferior because of segregation. It's the lack of black pride, and exceptionalism.
3
My parents moved from Virginia in 1958 when I was 10. My father had to choose between job offers in Alabama and New Jersey. He chose New Jersey because he wanted his children to grow up in a racially normal environment. Before he could buy a home in our new suburban community, he had to prove that we were white. There were covenants against selling to blacks. I spent seven years in public schools without ever seeing a black student. This passed for racial normalcy in some wealthy northern suburbs.
5
I have lived in Jefferson Cty most of my life. I guarantee you that we have more black, Latino, Asian, and Middle eastern students in our schools now than we did in 1989 when Hoover formed its own district. This article is cherry-picking the school re-districting issue to show how racist we Alabamans are. Look at interracial marriage statistics, workplace diversity for our county. there simply aren't these widespread racial tensions that we all read and hear about on the news. Now, Google "Jefferson County Rolling Stones Sewer" and you can read about how our county filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in our nation's history - many former county commissioners are still in jail for corruption. That is what triggered the recent school "secessions", not racism. That and increasing metro area crime is what is also causing the 'desegregation' if you want to call it that. But if lack of diversity is a sign of racism, then look at concentration of blacks in our state as a whole versus a state like New York. From the perspective of someone in Timbuktu, the South is overwhelmingly the most diverse part of the US! Stop buying the race-baiting. If you lived in a diverse place like Alabama, you would see racism yes. But most of the educated people is this state don't tolerate it. As for the real racists in our state, we ignore them and don't give them a platform where they can spew their vile hatred.
2
My daughter lives in Jefferson County. Am I surprised? Shame on Alabama for treating its black residents as though they're not human, for asserting white supremacy over them and leveling inferiority and other awful stereotypes against them and teaching their white children the narrow path of segregation from kindergarten upward. Conservatives can laugh at diversity all they want but we are one globe, all humans and the problems that face us are what will annihilate us and wipe us out as one people--man made global warming, which many conservatives, so callously and stupidly deny, natural disasters like the ones in Houston and Florida, Harvey and Irma, monstrous storms that don't discriminate based on color, nuclear war and nuclear arsenals that we must deal with as one world, the preservation of species and whatever is left of our natural resources, the Amazon or the forests of the Congo, ocean life across the continents, the globe's responsibility to bring back to good health and foster, cyber security so our grids will not be paralyzed, only achievable across cultures and countries, pulling down color and language barriers--we need more global cooperation, more global peace and understanding, we need to drop all presumptions based on race and color to move toward such goals, to achieve the survival of humanity. Jefferson County, AL does its white and black students a great disservice by keeping them apart, all global citizens, all Americans, needed to save our planet.
5
The suburb of Alabama I live in seems to be more classist than racist really (although it's still pretty racist). There is a fairly rural neighborhood of poor whites whose children are zoned for one of the elementary schools near me and I've heard many other parents refer to them as the "wal-mart kids". They want ANY type of diversity as far away from their children as possible.
1
In a society with radically unequal schools, parents do what they have to do to get their children a good education -- if they can. These actions preserve the inequality in schools, so the radical inequality persists from generation to generation. Children of affluent parents will get better educational opportunities and will be better prepared to compete for places in the affluent sectors of society. Other children will have to compensate for this by individual effort or ability.
Any attempt to create a more level playing field will disadvantage those who have fought for or benefitted from a playing field tilted to their advantage. It is conservative to think that the playing field will inevitably be tilted and that any attempt to remedy the tilt will have very bad consequences, both for society as a whole and particularly for those now benefitting from the tilt (who have often worked hard to get into that position). The conservative position is to figure out how to do well in whatever game is being played and to act on that, rather than trying to change the rules of the game. White Southerners tend to be conservative.
1
Programs for so-called "gifted" students are almost universally segregated, which is why they are growing like kudzu throughout the country. Recent data suggests the students in these programs revert to normal IQ scores by the time they graduate high school.
2
Is there a Constitutional Right to be schooled at the expense of taxpayers?
2
There is in NC. School districts are funded through state monies, because in the Great Depression, all 115 districts went bankrupt. To stop that from happening again, NC wrote into their Constitution that all children have the right to a free and appropriate education payed for through taxes.
4
I live in a smallish city on Canada's East Coast. I must admit that I was shocked at this article.
We have various problems here, as do all cities, but I can honestly say that el-hi education is a very minor one. Why you ask?
Firstly, there is one school board for the entire municipality (approximately 150 square miles encompassing the urban core, suburbs and rural communities. All funding comes from the same pot of assessment-based taxation and provincial government funding. To my knowledge there is little to no "better school" districts, my perception is they are all relatively equal. Consequently, there is no real estate imperative for schooling other than perhaps close proximity.
All teachers must have at least 6 years of post-secondary education (and some much more) All have state of art facilities: classrooms, labs, gymnasiums, playgrounds, libraries, etc. There are both French and English schools and comprehensive ESL, we have a sizable immigrant population, though nothing compared to urban centers like Toronto.
This system is not an outlier, it is typical for most if not all Canadian provinces.
Consequently, 60% of Cdn adults have completed some form of post-secondary education while 90% of Canadian adults have high school diplomas.
Sure its expensive, and taxes are high, but what price for our children's and country's success?
I think I now understand why Trump is your president. If Alabama is any indication, he was inevitable.
9
So, you think the education for the wealthiest children of Montreal and Quebec is the same as the education given to the average child in Antigonish NS?
I seriously doubt it.
5
I have no doubt about it. You can only squeeze a litre of liquid into a litre container. Plus, Antigonish HS grads can move on to St. Francis Xavier University, one of the finest undergrad universities in Canada without changing a postal code.
2
Ryan from Birmingham, I bet they're a lot closer in services than Alabama's schools.
2
This sums up the circumstance of the entire state of California. Wealthy communities have their own school districts, and get to keep all the property tax dollars if it exceeds the state per pupil alotment. Some districts receive about $6k per student, where rich districts have 14 to 18k per student. How can this possibly be equal education - or equal opportunity? No race language needed, but the districts are highly segregated.
4
Why don't we all work together to reduce, if not end, poverty.
We are the richest industrialized country on the planet but we have infant mortality rates the same as Botswana for some of our population.
If people don't want to reduce poverty because it is morally the right thing to do, then do it for your children's long term economic interest.
Get people educated and working and paying taxes instead of paying for Welfare and prison, police costs, and justices system costs.
In addition, most of the social problems get reduced as one reduces poverty - crime, drugs, teen age pregnancy, abortion.
4
Freedom for whom? Free country for whom? Neither whites nor blacks seem to be "free"
2
I don't really understand why you do not support the idea o f a group of people forming a commonwealth to further the interest of their families in agreement with their neighbors who have the same goals. It's called a community. Most of us actually want more local control of this type, not some giant shared co-op of 370 million people. If I do not respect your culture, why should I have to share in it? If you covet my culture, why does that mean you get to come in and free load off of it? If you like the way we set up our schools, move here or start a program like it in your town.
8
You did read the article, right?
7
At some point the NYT is going to have to investigate what people are running away from. There are two sides to every story and this one is no different.
6
In Dallas, they are running away from a district (DISD) that takes in a BILLION dollars a year but does not fund a psychologist at every school (despite an incredible need), reading interventionists at every school (despite an incredible need), facilities repair, decent student furniture, and enough teachers so that classes can be smaller. Where is the money going?
Parents are running from inept TFA teachers embraced and paid for with district money (not their salaries; a finder's fee goes to TFA despite no shortage of regular job applicants), from constant testing designed to enrich testing corporations, and a layer of bureaucrats that outnumbers the teachers!
But to admit this would be to admit that both Dallas and the school district have been mismanaged by Democrats for literally decades. Massive corruption has gone on during their watch.
If any parents tried to secede their neighborhood schools, they would be immediately labeled as racists because that would be so much easier.
1
We live in Connecticut. When my husband and I bought our first house, we bought it in a "diverse" town, hoping to send our kids to a diverse school.
Well, that was some pie in the sky progressive naivete.
Our town was maybe around 20% black. But our local public school - in the most affluent neighborhood in town - was majority minority. Almost all white people with any means sent their kids to private school. And not because they were "racist"; the fact was that classes in the local elementary school were CHAOTIC because of the discipline of the students there. And of the middle class students who remained in the school, test scores showed they performed much lower than middle class students throughout the state.
My husband is a teacher in an urban school. It is a mess. Not because it is underfunded (it isn't). Because THE STUDENTS have no desire to learn, and the parents have no desire to discipline. Kids as young as 12 join gangs and get shot. What parent with any means would send their child into that environment? How will just throwing "more funding" at it solve the problem when the problem is the dysfunctional culture of the students and parents themselves?
I know the history of race in America. It is a shameful history that needs to be acknowledged. But no amount of Civil Rights laws or court orders or Affirmative Action will diminish racism until black communities start taking some responsibility for their own dysfunction.
10
Why? White communities certainly haven't taken responsibility for THEIR dysfunction!
4
Rather than focusing on the specifics of this article many posts preferred to dwell on personal history and shifting the discussion to more general issues and complaints about journalistic balance. The article made clear that the main reason the secessionist parents wish to create their own school district is that they don't want their kids to be around Black children; and, they've used "local control" as the fig leaf.
4
They don't want their kids picked on and bullied, and they don't want their kids in classrooms full of distraction and misbehaving students with no hope of discipline. Some peoples look at education seriously and some do not.
8
white kids don't pick on or bully each other? that's news to me.
3
"On one side sat those who sought to be free of a past they do not want to remember; on the other sat those bound to a past they can never forget."
this, to me, is an incredibly profound statement. how many moves, actions, arguments, rewritings of history, does this one sentence explain?
20
And some people just want "free stuff".
2
Really sad to hear all the vitriol expressed by parents here who implicity blame other races while explicitly blaming "elite" Democrats, among others, for problems in their school districts. A good school district has a rich racial diversity that lets kids know that everyone is equal in our democracy.
12
Racism is alive and well in the South -- not news, just the same old sad story that has more prominence now because a purveyor of racism and his minions are in the WH and the administration.
3
What about the example set by our past President, Barack Obama, literally an African-American, who sent his children to majority-white private schools? Why did he (and most other prior Presidents and the current incumbent) do this? As Obama said, to ensure the best possible education--and future--for his children. This certainly does not set a positive example for Americans who are being asked--or forced--to accept integration.
What should we make of so many campuses these days where minority students are demanding--and receiving--dormitories limited to their own races and "safe spaces" where students may congregate based on their race or gender? Is re-segregation the wave of the future or just a moment of blinding stupidity fostered by political correctness gone wild?
Isn't it rather arrogant to suggest that non-white students will benefit simply from being around white students? Human nature and behavior are very hard to regulate, so perhaps one way to help achieve equal education for all students is to focus more on achieving equality of facilities and resources for all schools, whatever their racial mix.
13
Actually, if you look at the data, BOTH white and black students do better in a racially diverse school. The gap between black and white shrinks, with no corresponding drop in white student performance. And President Obama sent his children to a private school because of the difficulties experienced in security and disruption when Carter sent his daughter to public school.
7
Why would Obama's kids need more security at a public school versus a private school?
Are you saying public schools are less safe?
Are you saying the kids and parents who use those public schools pose a greater security risk?
Gee, maybe that's why so many parents want out of these massive, corrupt, unsafe districts!
As for disruption, how would the Obama girls cause more disruption at a public school vs a private school?
Elite liberals need to quit the hypocrisy.
1
We know how to make the inner city school work, with lots of expectations of parents as well as students and lots of contact both ways. The emphasis, however, can never become what it is in the large single-party cities, which is protection of the political support offered by teachers' organizations.
The curiosity for me is how do we desegregate the coastal areas like California along political lines, not racial. Currently we have the political Right leaving California just to find some more friendly place to work and live, like clacks moving north in the early 1900's.
Once California or its bankruptcy governing body decides it needs conservatives after all, how will the violent left of Antifa be restrained from attacking their political opponents? How will solidly socialist cities make room for people saying politically incorrect things like ''freedom of choice'' and ''personal independence''?
5
California is not bankrupt.
5
It is no surprise that Jeff Sessions is from Alabama.
11
At the end of every day however it ends up working out is how it works out and the sun goes down regardless. Tomorrow the same thing happens all over again and probably the sun does not care because it keeps doing its own thing without seeming to judge us. It leaves that to us because we've gotten so good at it.
1
The irony in all of this is that Alabama has some one of the worst public school systems in the world. So while these white parents are obsessed with skin color what they should really be leading a revolution about is the fact that their kids will be woefully in prepared to thrive in the knowledge academy due to weak math skills, no computer science training and inadequate writing skills.
6
The main thing? Not mentioned yet.
What NO progressive news writer or outlet is never allowed to mention is SAFETY as the primary reason white AND black parents want more control over their children's school environment.
These parents know quite well that the average American school system takes a minimum of regard for the safety of children. Every realtor can tell you of getting calls from a parent whose innocent small child was assaulted by tougher under-parented minors.
Progressives can sceram to their elite leaders all they want, but parents will NOT put up with dangerous settings at public schools.
8
It's not skin color. It's disrespect in the classroom, lack of effort, distracting behavior, inability to discipline, and lowered expectations, as the norm.
17
What a twisted walk down memory lane. How sad to find oneself right back where we started.
2
We took our 2 children out of majority-minority Dallas ISD after 8th grade and sent them to private schools for high school. Although our children were among the small handful of white kids in their grades, our decision had nothing to do with race.
We pulled our kids out to escape the effects of entrenched corruption: constant testing (which enriches test companies), inept TFA teachers, dismal facilities, and food of such low quality we couldn't believe it. And DISD takes in one billion dollars a year; the district is not underfunded.
My neighbors would all love to secede from Dallas ISD: we're paying sky-high property taxes and literally getting nothing for it. Not one person I know cares about the color of the kids in the school or even their socio-economic status. But as soon as we'd mount an effort, we'd all be called racists by the people who want to keep wasting our tax dollars.
Blaming race is much easier, though, than confronting the real motivation for secessions: corruption committed by Democrat-supporting school boards, school administrators, and Democrat-led city governments.
Also notice how all of the richest liberal, progressive and Democrat elite send their kids to excellent private schools while lecturing everyone else to attend terrible public schools.
18
It's just the 21st Century way of saying "Let the eat cake!" And the beauty the modern progressive way? Why, it isn't even necessary to move one' slips...
2
The 2017 average property tax bill in Texas was $2578.00. Not sure what you're comparing that to but my bill in CA for a home I've owned for 20 years (prop 13 affected) exceeds $6,000.00. Not bragging, just sayin, TX doesn't seem "sky high."
1
Frank, we pay $12K a year in property taxes and the school district wants to ask for more.
Most Dallas County residents pay hefty taxes regardless of what your unnamed source claims.
1
The term "resegregation" is a misnomer. The only way it can apply in legal terms is if a dual system like those in the Jim Crow days for white and black students is reestablished. No black student should feel disadvantaged just because most of his classmates look like him. I thought we black folks had gotten over that in the 1960s. Because of demographic shifts, many schools will be majority minority. Integrated schools are no magic elixir for the black-student achievement gap. The focus needs to be on getting students to excel, not the racial makeup of schools.
12
As a child I lived in a white community that sent its students to a racially diverse high school in a neighboring town. Shortly after I graduated that community built its own high school and removed its students from the racially diverse town. The other white towns that sent students to the diverse high school withdrew their students and sent them to "whiter" schools. The result was scholastic segregation caused by the segregation of the communities. Returning to my old high school and seeing the condition it is in was both shocking and sad. The community it is in lost a great deal of its funding capability when the white students left and its facilities are totally out of date.
2
Interesting story. The hypocrisy of The Times always amazes. Some how when Northerners choose a town to live in with segregated schools it's OK, only in the South, where there is, I guess original sin, is it a problem?
Chatham NJ, population 9,000, less than 100 Blacks. Guess how many Blacks go to Chatham High School?
Maybe a story on the segregation of Northern suburbs that keep Northern schools totally segregated will be next up?
16
60 plus years after Brown v Board of Ed., African-American students are 0.9 standard deviations behind. That amount is huge. There was significant progress for the first 20 years. Since then the gap has not closed.
The best educated, highest income group in the United States is now Asian. Asian families are not interested in how intelligent their children are, there concern is that they work hard at their education, without ceasing. Asian students succeed in terrible school districts.
We are told endlessly that there is no differences in IQ between races. No one dares disagree. That being the case, it's all about attitude towards education. Students who don't think education is important think nothing of disrupting the classroom. Parents who care about their children getting a solid education do everything they can to get their children to a place where education is valued by students. (Saying you value education is not the same as doing what it takes to make sure your child does their best.)
Black parents, white parents, bright green parents who care about their children getting a good education will do everything they can to get their children away from schools where families don't value education. It just isn't all about race - in education, it's really more about attitude.
19
The author for the most part avoids the great big elephant in the room. Which is that secession or resegregation attempts like these don't happen in the northeast because our schools are already broken up into thousands of independent school districts where wealthy white and Asian districts "public privates" is the name realtors give them, often sit adjacent to poor minority districts and small houses sell for $1M because they happen to be in the right town.
Point being, we can point fingers at "those racist Southerners" all we want, but if the situation were reversed, I suspect we northerners would be doing the same thing.
14
Until I read this article, I had simplemindedly believed that the racism we still see in the South was solely the result of parents passing on the racist beliefs taught to them by their own parents; and that although these beliefs continue to foment discrimination, hate and violence, their manifestation in the form of racial segregation, particularly in public schools, had ended. This article opened my eyes to reveal just how wrong I was. I cannot think of a better or higher purpose for journalism. So thank you Ms. Hannah-Jones. And thanks also to the Times for publishing this illuminating piece of work.
31
if you people in Alabama are so great with your segregated schools and institutional white supremacy- how come your state isn't the hot bed of innovation and economic success that the great (diverse ) state of California is? what does your racism buy you in OUR time?
63
Oh, they are doing quite well.
2
If liberal institutions of higher learning such as the Ivy League want to fight this scourge, they could do a big thing by, say, limiting admission like from private schools and Monochromatic public schools to, say, 10% of the freshman class.
30
Good idea... Why try to improve things when it's easier to drop down a few notches? That works...
1
Astonishing that no word of private "Christian" schools is mentioned. All the Southerners I attended college with had graduated from very expensive private academies, ostensibly set up to instill religion in the pupils, but actually established to enforce segregation by setting the tuition astronomically high. Classism, not racism, is the real problem in the South and until people begin to acknowledge that poor whites are treated with almost the identical disdain that people of color are, those who are permitted to have exorbitant false hair by the age of 15 and who live in overdone mansions suitable for the nouveau riche, we will never see any improvement in Southern schools.
24
Right. That is never going to happen.
1
Here we go again, and I’m still alive; a child born and raised in the USA southland of the 1940s, and the national favorite slick (sickness) story I was forced to read, live and understand continues — Alabamans, you are not alone. The dog-eared pages of that same old storybook are now being unfolded, once again, so we all in this new era can relearn the unedited lines in today’s modulated version of the original melody of the same “we-they” tragedy of “American” apartheid. All the recognizable habits of a collective of (armored) suit and tie hueless males are in action yet again, fully at the ready to induce, forcibly, the same strain of psychological enslavement used over and over of human beings of color, even as a new bunch of habited ‘empty suits’ are at the controls in Washington still trying their darnedest to justify and ‘fix’ ad infinitum what their centuries ago predecessors did… “from their hearts?”
29
dear jevasis,: please write more. your comment is poetic on the tragedy of our nation.
8
Well, I wouldn't send my kid to school in an area where you would be afraid to even drive. Send your kid there.
5
People of all colors don't want their children going to school in fear of being knifed, shot or punched. That is what "resegregation" is all about. It has nothing to do with innate prejudice. And all the elite Libs in NYC send their kids to safe ("white") private schools. Get to the truth.
56
Beginning in 1975, when the Supreme Court clarified the intentional versus unintentional segregation legal standard, the promise of Brown v Bd of Ed was effectively doomed. This piece makes passing reference to the fateful Milliken decision that allowed northern suburban districts to avoid desegregation orders adopted in neighboring urban systems. The northern equivalent to the southern school secession efforts was (and remains) white flight over municipal boundary lines. The damage is the same - urban schools are rapidly resegregating because the math just won't support meaningful integration. And the effect on students is the same. Worse, it perpetuates a social model that has become ingrained and an accepted cultural norm: mostly black, struggling urban public schools, and functional, mostly white suburban schools. So those morally bereft southern school secessionists? They merely want what the scolding northerners have been creating and protecting for decades, courtesy of a post-Brown Supreme Court that went into full retreat.
13
Trust me, if an education system in the South and the parents involved want racial segregation in their schools, they will find disgustingly clever ways to do it. The high school in Florida I went to gets away with it by splitting the school into a traditional curriculum and International Baccalaureate. A test is required to enter the IB programme, effectively making sure the IB demographic remains primarily white and Asian, and the traditional program primarily black and Latino/a. But on the outside, the school looks integrated, because these demographics are all counted together. Because they're counted together, the white/Asian students from middle to upper middle class families skew the demographics in a way that denies the school Title I funding, which severely hurts the traditional program. Most of the funding the school receives is directed to IB, since the school is one unit and the administration isn't required to share between programs.
As for the treatment of IB vs. traditional students, I'd need a whole other comments section for that. Suffice it to say, creating entirely new school systems would be damaging to communities, fracturing them socially and economically. And zoning is its own can of worms. School is where students learn to socialize, especially with people different than themselves. I'm really glad I "dropped out" of IB early. As bad as the provisions were, I met good people in traditional.
As for the treatment of IB vs. traditional students, I'd need a whole other comments section for that. Suffice it to say, creating entirely new school systems would be damaging to communities, fracturing them socially and economically. And zoning is its own can of worms. School is where students learn to socialize, especially with people different than themselves. I'm really glad I "dropped out" of IB early. As bad as the provisions were, I met good people in traditional.
18
Lack of funding is not the problem. You could triple the money and the results would be the same.
2
It seems to me that the goal of full integration is a pipe-dream.
Wealthier people do not want their children going to school with
the children of poorer people, just like they do not want to live near them
or socially interact with them.
That aspect of human nature will never change.
Put all your energy into making sure all schools in your state are
equally funded and that the funding is more than adequate for a
modern education.
Finally demand discipline in your school so your child may learn
what they need to learn during the most important years of their young lives.
Wealthier people do not want their children going to school with
the children of poorer people, just like they do not want to live near them
or socially interact with them.
That aspect of human nature will never change.
Put all your energy into making sure all schools in your state are
equally funded and that the funding is more than adequate for a
modern education.
Finally demand discipline in your school so your child may learn
what they need to learn during the most important years of their young lives.
39
It seems that a big issue, when you cut through the rhetoric, is having minority children attend schools that are majority white. Fine, but we are hearing more and more that the public school systems are becoming majority minority, especially in the lower grades, which will in time advance to all grades. So what happens then, when there are fewer and fewer white students compared to more and more minority students, particularly if many of these white students' parents opt for private over public schools?
Fairfax County VA, whose schools are supposed to be among the best in the nation, is starting to see some of this as a result of 3rd world immigration. About 2 years ago there was an article noting that FFC was having trouble replacing old science equipment even at its premier STEM school while mandated ESL and free lunches were soaring. Parents who had bought over-priced houses there because of the great public schools were now rethinking private school. I suspect they may be rethinking living in high-tax FFC as well.
Back during bussing, SCJ Thurgood Marshall was taken to task for sending his children to private school. I don't have his exact quote but his reply was that he refused to apologize for looking out for the best interests of his children.
Good for him and well said, but then why should anybody else have to either? People will do what they think they need to do to look out for the best interests of their children. It has always been this way.
Fairfax County VA, whose schools are supposed to be among the best in the nation, is starting to see some of this as a result of 3rd world immigration. About 2 years ago there was an article noting that FFC was having trouble replacing old science equipment even at its premier STEM school while mandated ESL and free lunches were soaring. Parents who had bought over-priced houses there because of the great public schools were now rethinking private school. I suspect they may be rethinking living in high-tax FFC as well.
Back during bussing, SCJ Thurgood Marshall was taken to task for sending his children to private school. I don't have his exact quote but his reply was that he refused to apologize for looking out for the best interests of his children.
Good for him and well said, but then why should anybody else have to either? People will do what they think they need to do to look out for the best interests of their children. It has always been this way.
30
The entire scope of articles in today's NYTMag is excellent, albeit depressing and sad. I'll be celebrating my 33 year wedding anniversary next month with my African American husband. We have two beautiful bi-racial children that are now in college. This past year's backlash against Obama and progressive leadership really has made many Americans like me - who frankly grew complacent in the last 8 years - really angry, frustrated and full of fear for our children and what kind of future they will have in this country. In a way, though, this regression and blatant racism has had a silver lining too - it has made many of us fighting mad. In the long run though, I'm still convinced that the only thing that is really going to save us all is growth in interracial love and the increased diversity and understanding of each other that occurs as a result. It is very difficult to tolerate racism and any other form of discrimination when your own loved ones may themselves be the target.
27
great article, but I miss a sustained focus on the shame of the severe segregation of NY schools.
reliable blue state NY has incredibly segregated public schools; my home area of long island is "one of the most segregated and fragmented suburban rings in the country." but the problem isn't just that schools are segregated (though that in and of itself is bad enough) in this supposed coastal liberal elite bastion. it's that they are deeply inequitable (the 2nd most inequitable in the country).
because ny funds its schools largely through property taxes (at a greater percentage than all but 11 states), low-income or high-poverty areas have chronically underfunded schools. this results in "urban and suburban high-need school districts invest[ing] an average of 26% less per pupil than low-need school districts, which results in approximately $3 million in lost investment that could be used to recruit and retain excellent teachers, hire guidance counselors, support advanced coursework and subjects like art and music, and provide the health and other services that low-income children often need. in the school districts with the highest proportion of low-income students, the average per-pupil investment is $4,554 less than in the school districts that serve the fewest low-income students."
where's the feature on garden city vs hempstead, whose division should shame all liberal NYers? how can we not just gawk at southern racism but move to make our own backyards more equitable?
reliable blue state NY has incredibly segregated public schools; my home area of long island is "one of the most segregated and fragmented suburban rings in the country." but the problem isn't just that schools are segregated (though that in and of itself is bad enough) in this supposed coastal liberal elite bastion. it's that they are deeply inequitable (the 2nd most inequitable in the country).
because ny funds its schools largely through property taxes (at a greater percentage than all but 11 states), low-income or high-poverty areas have chronically underfunded schools. this results in "urban and suburban high-need school districts invest[ing] an average of 26% less per pupil than low-need school districts, which results in approximately $3 million in lost investment that could be used to recruit and retain excellent teachers, hire guidance counselors, support advanced coursework and subjects like art and music, and provide the health and other services that low-income children often need. in the school districts with the highest proportion of low-income students, the average per-pupil investment is $4,554 less than in the school districts that serve the fewest low-income students."
where's the feature on garden city vs hempstead, whose division should shame all liberal NYers? how can we not just gawk at southern racism but move to make our own backyards more equitable?
27
Tell me about it. My kids go to a low-income school in NYS. That's why articles like this, although very important, get me so riled up. NYS receives a grade of F in terms of equitable funding (although I see that this year it has moved to a D - woo hoo), and very few people in this state seem to care, or at least many of the people in power that I contact and liberal parents I talk to in wealthier communities. We just like to self-righteously point to others.
23
For those who don't live in the South, let's make this clear. Gardendale is not an anomaly. It is becoming the norm. The Southern states are consistently the lowest funded states in education every year. That's mostly because of the tax structures in many states that have very little income tax, no corporate tax, or where property taxes are voted down almost every time they come up for a vote. (They barely passed in Gardendale at 58%). The state assemblies are so political everything is partisan and education is the issue that NO ONE in Wake County does well with. So parents and communities who have money and want to keep their property values up want state of the art schools with all the bells and whistles. I'm fine with that. But you can't have the high school or any school that was built with tax funds from ALL the citizens of the county. In regions like Holly Springs, Cary, Apex that are consistently named "the best places to move to in the US" the rumbling for separate schools has already started. The community boards for housing subdivisions and the app Nextdoor have made it easier for more and more people to spread "code" about why succession is necessary and how they don't want "their" tax money spent on children who are bussed into their district. This is what happens when you have a Supreme Court Decision (Brown) that is all blueprint, but no buildings. People build what THEY want, not what EVERYONE needs.
21
What about similar counties in east coast states having same incomes, educational levels? Obviously your arguments for segregation are false on their face.
2
This article truly saddens me! The thought of one homogeneous group of activists putting their energy into segregation is emotionally draining. As a human being and teacher, I have often asked my students, who are primarily uninhibited at an early age, how they feel about segregation. It horrifies them! Their developing brains comprehend the tragedy of separating people based upon the color of their skin. We have often referred to the historical, scientific fact that we are all from one continent, Pangea. Why do we separate from one another? I ponder this question constantly. I look within, when I am judging people about silly things. I stop myself and think, what am I doing? I often conclude that I make judgements when I am fearful and insecure. I think we judge people and have prejudice's out of fear. We must look at the true basis of our fear to determine its rationality. Yesterday, I sat at a traffic light, there were many people in the cars around me, young, old, many different colors and races. I thought, if Hurricane Harvey hit right now, these people would be my brothers and sisters. We would stand as ONE, holding hands, to survive a disaster. Wouldn't it be nice if we could solve all of our problems the way Houston residents helped each other during Harvey? I hope that the segregation activists will think long and hard about separating the schools. History has proven that segregation can end in tragedy. Improve the individual schools and keep them integrated!
8
I grew up in Alabama, graduated from Robert E Lee High School in 1968, and there were exactly 2 black students in my junior and senior classes. That high school today is overwhelmingly black. White families choose to spend thousands to send their children to private schools that are overwhelmingly white. Racism is strong in Alabama. From my experience, it is strong across this country and around the world. When left to their own devices, humans generally are selfish and suspicious - just the way we are. That's why we need leaders and laws, both secular and moral, to constantly 'encourage' us to fight our base instincts and endeavor to act like we know we should. Doing unto others as we would have them do unto us is not easy. The need for inspirational guidance and some coercion will always there.
19
This is really a type of do-nothing fantasy. Yes people tend to be suspicious & mean, but it takes more than a request of segregation groups to take the moral high ground. It takes legal action. Time & again legal action has proved the only way to achieve a moral result in this country.
5
The Obamas and every rich liberal I know spends/spent thousands to send their kids to private schools. So they're racists, too, right?
3
So people send their kids to private schools at great personal expense because truth be told, the Alabama public school system is terrible(and school systems are a reflection of home life not a state failure) and this makes them racists? I don't get it.
1
Good article.
In Alabama, segregation is a means by which to protect long held belief systems which make stronger the belief that white people are superior and that contact with any non-white person is demeaning and detrimental to whiteness. For 400 years this, this has been the teaching, the indoctrination. And, no, its not about race, but about white fragility and the need to protect that fine porcelain skin from defect. This idea is problematic on many levels yet as a matter of political acumen they fixate on race saying,"its not about race." That said, Christianity and the Church have suffered great harm, as they has been held hostage by those who believe in racism and white fragility. Yes, lets protect the fine porcelain.
In Alabama, segregation is a means by which to protect long held belief systems which make stronger the belief that white people are superior and that contact with any non-white person is demeaning and detrimental to whiteness. For 400 years this, this has been the teaching, the indoctrination. And, no, its not about race, but about white fragility and the need to protect that fine porcelain skin from defect. This idea is problematic on many levels yet as a matter of political acumen they fixate on race saying,"its not about race." That said, Christianity and the Church have suffered great harm, as they has been held hostage by those who believe in racism and white fragility. Yes, lets protect the fine porcelain.
8
I see very little focus in this article about the quality of education at the schools. As the demographics shifted, have the rate of students passing national exams stayed stable? Have student GPAs stayed stable, the rate of students who get into the national honor society? Has delinquency risen?
If all those factors have stayed the same, then this is a purely racist and racially driven decision on the part of the activists. But if the schools have actually gotten worse by the metrics above, then couldn't it be that they're being driven by a desire to not have their kids attend bad schools?
There is this line: "if Gardendale activists were focused only on the quality of the education, they would be concerned that Gardendale students who now have access to one of the best schools in the nation, an International Baccalaureate school in a nearby town, would have to pay out-of-district tuition to attend the school, if Gardendale broke off," but that hardly covers the average student, only a single really good school in a nearby town.
If all those factors have stayed the same, then this is a purely racist and racially driven decision on the part of the activists. But if the schools have actually gotten worse by the metrics above, then couldn't it be that they're being driven by a desire to not have their kids attend bad schools?
There is this line: "if Gardendale activists were focused only on the quality of the education, they would be concerned that Gardendale students who now have access to one of the best schools in the nation, an International Baccalaureate school in a nearby town, would have to pay out-of-district tuition to attend the school, if Gardendale broke off," but that hardly covers the average student, only a single really good school in a nearby town.
9
Certain people don't want to live next to other people. Let's get the entirety of the government-industrial complex put to work -- to force people to do things they don't want to do, because... feelings.
Didn't work in the Europe, during the counter-reformation, didn't work in America during the revolution, and didn't work in prohibition. Surprisingly, people still don't want to do things they don't want to do and resist with their feet & pocketbooks.
Didn't work in the Europe, during the counter-reformation, didn't work in America during the revolution, and didn't work in prohibition. Surprisingly, people still don't want to do things they don't want to do and resist with their feet & pocketbooks.
10
Thanks for restating the segregationist argument for us.
13
I fear that we will always be a racist nation. Anytime we're left to our own devices we look for ways to exclude those we seen unworthy of being included. Segregation doesn't just happen in the south. This is a national issue. Sometimes it's based on race while other times it's based on money and social status. Zoning rules are about keeping people out. So much for the home of the free and the land of opportunity.
7
The reliable integration/segregation/discrimination trope will never cease. It won't because it can't. Too much protected class political entitlement is at stake. The usual black/white racial dialogue of oppression is no longer relevant. Whites are/already have withdrawn from this equation. The new American dynamic of black oppression will need to find another bogeyman. Perhaps the intractable black oppression problem can be reexamined, explained by comparing black issues to hispanics and/or asians. White people have absolutely no animus towards black people. However, they have lost interest in any further involvement. We wish black people well. We expect other groups may not be as hospitable caretakers as Whites. We are done..
8
The resegregation isn't about racism it's about parents who have lost faith in our public education system & are trying to find a way out. I can't blame them. I have two kids. For six years they went to a public school. I was a involved parent. And yes there're very high functioning public schools with very supportive parents around the country....my kids' were in one. But those schools are a minority, we all know that. But by the time my kids were ready for jr. high school, it was obvious they were going to get a poor education. Every parent I knew... who could afford to pulled their kids out of public school & put them in private. To not do so would have sabotaged their future. It's not our fault that the government is unable to run public schools effectively. When government policy continues to impose rigid personnel rules, regulations,& a mandate to use education to engineer social or political outcomes, a school cannot successfully impart the needed skills, knowledge, & perspective to its students. American students don't possess the communication & computational skills they need today to succeed in college or in the working world. That is a fact beyond debate. The DOE says a huge percentage of students graduating from high school can't read or write on a college level. This is fraud. A high school diploma should mean something...it doesn't anymore. That isn't hyperbole. That's reality. You can't fault parents for running away from schools that doesn't work anymore.
21
Like David and Global Charm and many others pointed out, this article certainly found an angle, but if you look at further facts about the Jeff Co ed system, the narrative doesn't fit easily into the boxes where black schools are neglected and under-performing (not to say this can't be the case) and white schools are elite, successful, and racially selective (although this can also be true).
For example, the author left out that the district's IB school that Gardendale residents would have to pay tuition to if the "succeed" is majority minority - over 70%. But furthermore, an IB school that is application only with less than 400 students in a 36,000 + student system does not provide equity. And one of those schools she listed as an outstanding school in "heavily white" area - Hoover High School - is over 40% minority. If that is the threshold then the entirety of New England must also be racially motivated successionist. Finally, the author leaves out the Birmingham City Schools is its own city district within Jeff Co system - a choice made regardless of the fact it is 99% minority.
At the end of the day this isn't simply an issue of race, it is an issue of money, money, money. The real crime here is that the basis for educational funding - property taxes - result in poor students going to poorly funded schools regardless of the color of their skin.
For example, the author left out that the district's IB school that Gardendale residents would have to pay tuition to if the "succeed" is majority minority - over 70%. But furthermore, an IB school that is application only with less than 400 students in a 36,000 + student system does not provide equity. And one of those schools she listed as an outstanding school in "heavily white" area - Hoover High School - is over 40% minority. If that is the threshold then the entirety of New England must also be racially motivated successionist. Finally, the author leaves out the Birmingham City Schools is its own city district within Jeff Co system - a choice made regardless of the fact it is 99% minority.
At the end of the day this isn't simply an issue of race, it is an issue of money, money, money. The real crime here is that the basis for educational funding - property taxes - result in poor students going to poorly funded schools regardless of the color of their skin.
13
Even if you agree with the secession that this community seeks - and there are some plausible non-racial basis for this such as concern for home values if the school is majority minority - it does not answer the question of how to provide the proper education that all persons, regardless of skin color or wealth, are entitled by law to receive. I suspect that the answer from the residents of Gardendale, and many other communities (including many in New York City) is that this is not their issue or problem and that their overriding concern is the education of their own children. So we have a situation where many white communities do not want poor black children in their classrooms and also do not want to pay the additional taxes to support adequate and proper schooling for these children in their own schools in their own communities.
What gives?
What gives?
2
It would be interesting to hear what the students at Gardendale High School think about their parents' attempts to secede from the larger school system. Interesting insofar as it might well be different from what their parents think, exactly because the students are, contrary to their parents, actually in community with each other.
9
You can never stop people from spending their own money to provide things for their own children EVEN if it is politically incorrect. It's not like they hired radical fascists to burn the old schools down.
Strong leadership that can promise a good education in a racially mixed school system - which IS possible - should be the result from the county. While this might be impossible in racially-charged single-party northern cities, people from all races can work together in the South, just as we saw in Houston recently.
But you can't politicize either the district or the teachers' organization.
Strong leadership that can promise a good education in a racially mixed school system - which IS possible - should be the result from the county. While this might be impossible in racially-charged single-party northern cities, people from all races can work together in the South, just as we saw in Houston recently.
But you can't politicize either the district or the teachers' organization.
7
People who care deeply about their children's educations want their children's schoolmates to be
high performing, academically driven, and well socialized, regardless of race.
Low performing, violent, disruptive, antisocial children of all races ruin plenty of schools. They don't have to be allowed to ruin them all.
People may not be able to save all schools and all children, but saving some is better than none.
high performing, academically driven, and well socialized, regardless of race.
Low performing, violent, disruptive, antisocial children of all races ruin plenty of schools. They don't have to be allowed to ruin them all.
People may not be able to save all schools and all children, but saving some is better than none.
19
Newsflash!
It's 2017 and
Black people pay taxes too! They always have, right after they stopped being 3/5's a person.
You can't take their money to build your school and then deny them the right to learn there.
It's 2017 and
Black people pay taxes too! They always have, right after they stopped being 3/5's a person.
You can't take their money to build your school and then deny them the right to learn there.
25
As a nation America is doomed it refuses to learn from it's past in fact many white American's hark back to that past............."devils walks amongst you"
4
U W Clemon just became my new best (really hero) friend. They shipped him out Alabama to attend college in the north and lo and behold the big fella got a quality education to come back and hunt those bigots.
12
Smaller schools (neighborhood schools are ideal) with much, much better student : teacher ratios, and equal funding for all schools (not districts, which is something that should be perhaps reconsidered and revamped: districts).
Costly?
Of course it is. But that is the "price" of properly educating students, is it not? Nothing of much good is for free.
Costly?
Of course it is. But that is the "price" of properly educating students, is it not? Nothing of much good is for free.
2
I understand Judge Haikala's ruling, but I think she underestimates the negative impact of even allowing partial secession. Certainly, the attempt to secede just after the entire county had just paid to build a new high school facility in Gardendale was blatant theft, but the secession of elementary school districts has long-term consequences.
As the alumnus of a public school system that had highly segregated elementary and middle school systems that integrated only at the level of high school, I can attest to the fact that minority students who were provisioned with fewer resources in younger years were perpetually in academic straits at the high school level. The lack of quality education at the lower levels cascades and the negative consequences compound as the level of education increases. Despite having a high school roughly 50% black, perhaps 5% of AP and advanced classes in high school were black students. It's not just motivation or parental involvement here. This is the direct effect of systemic, institutionalized deprioritization of black education, even at a partial scale.
As the alumnus of a public school system that had highly segregated elementary and middle school systems that integrated only at the level of high school, I can attest to the fact that minority students who were provisioned with fewer resources in younger years were perpetually in academic straits at the high school level. The lack of quality education at the lower levels cascades and the negative consequences compound as the level of education increases. Despite having a high school roughly 50% black, perhaps 5% of AP and advanced classes in high school were black students. It's not just motivation or parental involvement here. This is the direct effect of systemic, institutionalized deprioritization of black education, even at a partial scale.
6
My only question is why have the other side of the debate not done the same thing. They are defeated before they even began, educationally. Don't talk money and opportunity to me.
2
I can't add anything useful to the discussion. I'm anti-segregation in every aspect of life. Leave it at that.
I write to say the essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones is well-crafted and moving, as are the photos by Devin Yalkin, especially the portraits.
I write to say the essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones is well-crafted and moving, as are the photos by Devin Yalkin, especially the portraits.
7
In response to my earlier post, Tina Trent said, "Well, I would certainly hide behind a fake name to recommend that people spread feces on other people's lawns."
I can understand why some might be offended that I suggested spreading manure on the homes of the "elite" Birmingham, Alabama town. This was and is my response to Ms. Trent, "I'm not hiding, Ms. Trent, simply protecting my privacy. I got the manure idea from protesters in San Francisco who took their dogs to the park where white haters were going to have a rally. As the dog owners predicted, the haters were afraid of a little excrement and cancelled the rally.
Seems like a pretty natural, humorous way to show dissatisfaction to me. After all, the haters shovel that and much more on us every single day. Toughen up."
I can understand why some might be offended that I suggested spreading manure on the homes of the "elite" Birmingham, Alabama town. This was and is my response to Ms. Trent, "I'm not hiding, Ms. Trent, simply protecting my privacy. I got the manure idea from protesters in San Francisco who took their dogs to the park where white haters were going to have a rally. As the dog owners predicted, the haters were afraid of a little excrement and cancelled the rally.
Seems like a pretty natural, humorous way to show dissatisfaction to me. After all, the haters shovel that and much more on us every single day. Toughen up."
6
Humorous?
You called for a destruction of other people's property because they seek to legally and peacefully pursue a new direction for their community.
Toughen up? I agree: toughen up and accept that people have the legal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness even when your personal sensibilities are offended.
You called for a destruction of other people's property because they seek to legally and peacefully pursue a new direction for their community.
Toughen up? I agree: toughen up and accept that people have the legal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness even when your personal sensibilities are offended.
The problem is that white folks in Alabama and other rural States are carefully taught that they are superior and that they will be demeaned by association with blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Indians, and anyone who is not white. They essentially are taught to be white supremacists and as a defense measure are also taught that anyone who challenges them by raising a racial question are the racists. They also use their southern religions to cement this belief system. If you don't believe me just drop into the So. Baptist, Pentecostal and Assembly of God churches on Sunday.
Courts can order them till they are blue in the face, but they will hang on to their prejudices. Unfortunately, the white supremacists now have a sympathizer in the US Supreme Court in the conservative Republican appointed Judges who have ruled that discrimination is a thing of the past. Apparently these Justices have never lived in the South.
Courts can order them till they are blue in the face, but they will hang on to their prejudices. Unfortunately, the white supremacists now have a sympathizer in the US Supreme Court in the conservative Republican appointed Judges who have ruled that discrimination is a thing of the past. Apparently these Justices have never lived in the South.
32
This is presented as a black vs white, segregation, issue. But is it?
For this town,, it may be,, I have no direct way of knowing, but I will not assume.
I do know of places when the colour involved is green. Money. I can think of one community local to me,,, they don't care a whit whether you are white, brown, black, yellow, purple, pink, magenta,,, they just don't care. What they do care about is good citizenship, nice yard, nice house, and money.
What really got them going,, was paying 3/4ths of the taxes, and a school board that treated them like a cookie jar, and no voice in the matter. 7/8ths of the district payed 1/4 of the taxes, and had every seat on the Board. And even that would have been okay,,, but the schools were failing all of their students. Is this what is going on in Jefferson County?
So, today, is this a racial issue? Or is it a quality of education and voter control?
If you cannot vote,, you vote with your feet.
For this town,, it may be,, I have no direct way of knowing, but I will not assume.
I do know of places when the colour involved is green. Money. I can think of one community local to me,,, they don't care a whit whether you are white, brown, black, yellow, purple, pink, magenta,,, they just don't care. What they do care about is good citizenship, nice yard, nice house, and money.
What really got them going,, was paying 3/4ths of the taxes, and a school board that treated them like a cookie jar, and no voice in the matter. 7/8ths of the district payed 1/4 of the taxes, and had every seat on the Board. And even that would have been okay,,, but the schools were failing all of their students. Is this what is going on in Jefferson County?
So, today, is this a racial issue? Or is it a quality of education and voter control?
If you cannot vote,, you vote with your feet.
14
The court readings cite that none of those questioned (at least those who had students in the school system) complained about the education their children were receiving. In fact, many said just the opposite. In addition, none of them had complained to the school district about the quality of education their children were receiving. That was a key point. It wasn't REALLY about giving their kids a better "education", it was about giving them a better (at least deemed by their standards) "social" cohort group. It is clearly, racial.
8
Home of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and Addison Mitchell McConnell, Jr. so what we would expect.
15
Finagling between county and city govenments for racist purposes is pervasive throughout this country. Counties are mostly made up of white suburbs. Cities are disproportionately black. County DA's offices and county police assure that urban crime is enforced by whites. And white juries are the icing on the cake. Consolidated school districts assure that the white urban minority are in the racial majority in their schools. And county housing authorities assure that the interests of whites are transcendent. Manipulating county and city governments allows for racial discrimination in all kinds of ways. If you hadn't noticed, you weren't paying attention.
12
Guess this doesn't fit the preferred narrative.
From the link below:
Nowadays, New York state is home to the nation’s most segregated schools.
“For several decades, the state has been more segregated for blacks than any Southern state, though the South has a much higher percent of African American students,” wrote the authors of a report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project in 2014.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-york-school-desegregation_us_56f...
From the link below:
Nowadays, New York state is home to the nation’s most segregated schools.
“For several decades, the state has been more segregated for blacks than any Southern state, though the South has a much higher percent of African American students,” wrote the authors of a report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project in 2014.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-york-school-desegregation_us_56f...
55
And your point? This very well written story is about Gardendale and Jefferson County.
4
Its much worse than that Catherine. According to that same project, if we define intensely segregated as 90-100% of the students being non-white, than 65% of New York state students are in intensely segregated public schools. Moreover, 60% of Illinois students, 55% of Maryland students, 50% of New Jersey students, 50% of Michigan students and about 48% of California students are in intensely segregated public schools. There is only one southern state (Mississippi) -- by the way, the only red state as well -- on this top 10 hall of shame ranking. And of course, if we look at it the other way -- what states have students where 90-100% are in all white schools, Bernie Sanders little socialist enclave wins -- since 95% percent of the state is white!
Its easy to write stories about segregation in the south -- plays to everyone's preconceived notions. The truth is the Blue North is the one with the problem.
Its easy to write stories about segregation in the south -- plays to everyone's preconceived notions. The truth is the Blue North is the one with the problem.
6
Interesting-- refocusing on the article about a specific legal case following a complex legal history and ruling-- it does not seem that NY is subject to the same legal requirement as the district in question.
Would the writer have suggestions regarding how to resolve the above dilemma or is this, as the kids say "concern trolling?"
Would the writer have suggestions regarding how to resolve the above dilemma or is this, as the kids say "concern trolling?"
6
When it comes to a child's education parents need to make sure that their child is attending school with other children from families which value and nurture education. To have their child attend class with disruptive, totally unprepared children for the sake of "diversity" can be considered a form of child abuse. Until dysfunctional families place their child's education as a top priority expect to see more middle-class towns to decide to go it alone.
32
and this is so not a racist observation.
13
And yours, Olga, is not a racist observation?
1
behold a perfect example of "devils walks amongst us"..........
7
My children graduated from one of the schools that broke away from Birmingham/County schools in 1970s. Homewood is much more integrated than Mountain Brook but the motivations are the same. People move to these communities specifically because they have nationally award winning schools. Residents know their local property taxes will be a lot higher in order to pay for better teachers, programs, equipment and facilities. Anyone, regardless of what they look like or believe, can move to Homewood. There are inexpensive apartments if home ownership is not an option.
The NYT chose to use the word "secede" in the title and throughout this article with a very clear intent. If the NYT made the effort to ask unbiased questions, you'd find that this is a socioeconomic problem tied to the desire to get out of a failing school system into one that provides an opportunity for a good education.
What comes with the EXPECTATIONS of good education are the same things that eliminate the differences among us. Communities and families (in whatever their composition) that focus on the quality of education are not going to face/tolerate the problems you see in the schools from which they are running. Who the hell cares about racial composition if you are providing my kids a good education. If you can't, I'm out by whatever means possible.
Now, we have a serious inequality in how schools in Alabama are funded. I AM ALL FOR ADDRESSING THAT INEQUITY BY REALLOCATING FUNDS! I'll pay more!
The NYT chose to use the word "secede" in the title and throughout this article with a very clear intent. If the NYT made the effort to ask unbiased questions, you'd find that this is a socioeconomic problem tied to the desire to get out of a failing school system into one that provides an opportunity for a good education.
What comes with the EXPECTATIONS of good education are the same things that eliminate the differences among us. Communities and families (in whatever their composition) that focus on the quality of education are not going to face/tolerate the problems you see in the schools from which they are running. Who the hell cares about racial composition if you are providing my kids a good education. If you can't, I'm out by whatever means possible.
Now, we have a serious inequality in how schools in Alabama are funded. I AM ALL FOR ADDRESSING THAT INEQUITY BY REALLOCATING FUNDS! I'll pay more!
31
I think the article actually fits with your opinions nicely. Well meaning parents are trying to get their kids the best education. But unfortunately the "whatever means possible" attitude is hurting the less fortunate, is convenient to prejudiced people, and is resegragating schools as the article describes it. It's a double edged sword that white parents and students (like myself and my parents) are oblivious to. I went to schools described in the article and had no idea. Race-neutral rebranding as Nikole put it.
4
You seem to have missed the part where not one of the aggrieved parents ever approached the existing school board to remedy the situation. So is this about a failing school board, or a failing demographic?
6
In the instance of Gardendale, the quality of education was irrelevant. The parents provided no evidence that the schools were poor (they had lodged no complaints with the district) and cheap housing wasn't the issue. The city was already white. There was no opportunity for it to become balanced; it was an existing structure.
Lots of people care about racial composition, to answer your question. They are called bigots, and they exist everywhere but in the South seem to embrace their bigotry as a point of pride or laudable cultural heritage.
Kudos to Judge Clemon and all others willing to fight on for the rights of those who cannot fight for themselves. I don't know how they do it.
Lots of people care about racial composition, to answer your question. They are called bigots, and they exist everywhere but in the South seem to embrace their bigotry as a point of pride or laudable cultural heritage.
Kudos to Judge Clemon and all others willing to fight on for the rights of those who cannot fight for themselves. I don't know how they do it.
5
"What the Gardendale case demonstrates with unusual clarity is that changes in the law have not changed the hearts of many white Americans. As the historian Bagley wrote, when it comes to school segregation, 'there would be no moral awakening.'"
This is the crux of the never-ending problems with race-relations in this country. Many commenters to other articles addressing the topic of race have noted how, during the Jim Crow era, rich Southern whites enlisted the aid of poor whites to enforce segregation, legally or otherwise, as a substitute for real economic opportunity, and how as a result, many poor Southern whites chose racism over seeking common cause with poor blacks and other non-whites. I don't think this phenomenon was, or is, limited to the South in any way; many poor whites, in many parts of the country, have for a long time chosen racism over a class-based union with their counterparts of other races.
Anti-discrimination laws, and the vigorous enforcement of them, are necessary. But their effectiveness will be limited and continually thwarted in the absence of Bagley's moral awakening, or at least of a re-assessment among poor whites as to who/what is really "keeping them down."
This is the crux of the never-ending problems with race-relations in this country. Many commenters to other articles addressing the topic of race have noted how, during the Jim Crow era, rich Southern whites enlisted the aid of poor whites to enforce segregation, legally or otherwise, as a substitute for real economic opportunity, and how as a result, many poor Southern whites chose racism over seeking common cause with poor blacks and other non-whites. I don't think this phenomenon was, or is, limited to the South in any way; many poor whites, in many parts of the country, have for a long time chosen racism over a class-based union with their counterparts of other races.
Anti-discrimination laws, and the vigorous enforcement of them, are necessary. But their effectiveness will be limited and continually thwarted in the absence of Bagley's moral awakening, or at least of a re-assessment among poor whites as to who/what is really "keeping them down."
19
I think what I find most disturbing of all about this story is that the people who are arguing for "secession" don't seem to see the irony in their choice of words.
84
What should also not be missed is the stark fact that segregation is being driven forward by the fleeing whites who cannot see anything worse than sharing a neighborhood with people of color. The laws and customs put in place by segregationists still persist. They will continue until this country faces the fact that their "liberty and justice for all" should include the words "as long as you're white".
8
This is one of the most awful, terrible stores that I have ever read in the New York Times.
Terrible because the basic facts and the lesson that it teaches are all too true.
Awful because the people promoting the new district no doubt believe that what they are doing is just, right, and, perhaps, even sanctioned by the Lord God.
Some who know me believe that I have a marginally good command of the English language, but I am totally unable to comprehend what response to the story might be appropriate, and more significantly, what response to the Gardendale citizenry would help them to understand what behavior on their part would be right and proper -- and in their own best interests.
The problem, I fear, is that we speak different languages.
Terrible because the basic facts and the lesson that it teaches are all too true.
Awful because the people promoting the new district no doubt believe that what they are doing is just, right, and, perhaps, even sanctioned by the Lord God.
Some who know me believe that I have a marginally good command of the English language, but I am totally unable to comprehend what response to the story might be appropriate, and more significantly, what response to the Gardendale citizenry would help them to understand what behavior on their part would be right and proper -- and in their own best interests.
The problem, I fear, is that we speak different languages.
26
Alabama is the birthplace of both Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III. Both men's powerful allegiance to the "Lost Cause" of the Confederate States of America is evident in their Southern drawling politically partisan politically "racial" aka colored divisive rhetorical euphemism. But this is not and never was a Southern nor Alabama problem.
I am a product of the Chicago Public Schools K-12. And the CPS schools that were segregated by trailers, double-shifts, socioeconomics, politics and public housing placement back in my day are still segregated today by the same means.
I am a product of the Chicago Public Schools K-12. And the CPS schools that were segregated by trailers, double-shifts, socioeconomics, politics and public housing placement back in my day are still segregated today by the same means.
18
So, according to judge Haikala:
"History teaches that communities, left to their own devices, resegregate fairly quickly."
So, we've been trying to change the world for 60 years, and it's not changed? I went to integrated schools, and worked in integrated environments all my life, and although I've never had a problem with it, there have always been tensions between the races. I knew this the first time a black guy glared at me in school and said, "What you lookin' at white boy?" And I was once called a racist during a racial awareness seminar at work because I said my parents never allowed us to use the "N" word at home. Some black guy there called me both a liar and a "stone cold racist." But what I had said was perfectly true, and even at church we were taught never to be disrespectful towards black people - who were God's children, too. Some black people just can't stand white people and visa-versa, but most actually get along, and most of my own relations with black people have been friendly and mutually agreeable.
OTOH, the judge could be right, because the "communities" pretty much stay to themselves, and we do have our little Chinatowns, little Mexico's, and little Italy's, along with black and white neighborhoods in virtually every city of any size. So, maybe it's just that most people feel more comfortable with their own "tribe" so to speak? So, can we really change the world, or would it be better to just live with it? Who likes racial tension? I don't.
"History teaches that communities, left to their own devices, resegregate fairly quickly."
So, we've been trying to change the world for 60 years, and it's not changed? I went to integrated schools, and worked in integrated environments all my life, and although I've never had a problem with it, there have always been tensions between the races. I knew this the first time a black guy glared at me in school and said, "What you lookin' at white boy?" And I was once called a racist during a racial awareness seminar at work because I said my parents never allowed us to use the "N" word at home. Some black guy there called me both a liar and a "stone cold racist." But what I had said was perfectly true, and even at church we were taught never to be disrespectful towards black people - who were God's children, too. Some black people just can't stand white people and visa-versa, but most actually get along, and most of my own relations with black people have been friendly and mutually agreeable.
OTOH, the judge could be right, because the "communities" pretty much stay to themselves, and we do have our little Chinatowns, little Mexico's, and little Italy's, along with black and white neighborhoods in virtually every city of any size. So, maybe it's just that most people feel more comfortable with their own "tribe" so to speak? So, can we really change the world, or would it be better to just live with it? Who likes racial tension? I don't.
11
The onus to realise the blanace of race you say you seek is on the group that has been opprssing the others since the discovery of the americas.
Asking for black people, or Native Americans, to simply put it behind them and ignore the injustice IS RACIST.
You would never tolerate this towards yourselves.
Asking for black people, or Native Americans, to simply put it behind them and ignore the injustice IS RACIST.
You would never tolerate this towards yourselves.
11
The "onus"?
I hope you can actually see my response, because I can only see mine now if I calculate the time and scroll through a bunch of others until I come to the hour when I responded.
But why should there be any "onus" on me? I never did anything to black people, and if anyone of previous generations did, and I can ensure you that no one of my own ancestry ever did, there is no "onus" on me. I'm free. Are you? It looks like you aren't. But it also looks like you need to free yourself. I hope you do.
I hope you can actually see my response, because I can only see mine now if I calculate the time and scroll through a bunch of others until I come to the hour when I responded.
But why should there be any "onus" on me? I never did anything to black people, and if anyone of previous generations did, and I can ensure you that no one of my own ancestry ever did, there is no "onus" on me. I'm free. Are you? It looks like you aren't. But it also looks like you need to free yourself. I hope you do.
7
If you don't like the way you are being treated by someone, move away. The answer is not to force them to live next to you. You can't do that -- for long.
3
Gosh, we must at all costs protect our blond, white, knee sock-wearing, fragile young daughters from the danger. How do these people live with themselves? Oh yeah, they tell each other it is all about "local control", "individual rights", "freedom of association", and because they care so much about "their" kids that they just want what's best for them.
This is the heart of darkness in America - hiding behind white faces as always. It exists everywhere, not just in the South, but those attitudes are certainly well tended here. The KKK is always hiding somewhere, but the darkest hearts beat in the well-educated well-off people who have read the history, had good opportunities to understand the meaning of morality, but have chosen to stick with their core ugly.
Segregation to get away from "problems" is self-fulfilling - when you create school districts that are based on the tax revenue from specific neighborhoods and groups, then you perpetuate the problems associated with poor schools. "Those" kids have worse educations and fewer resources and opportunities. They have more difficult paths already made harder because of their skin color, and down the road, if they earn less, then they live in poorer neighborhoods with all the associated problems that certain whites are always running from and building their walls to hide behind.
Try funding schools equally and filling them randomly. All kids and parents would get a better education that way and not just through books.
This is the heart of darkness in America - hiding behind white faces as always. It exists everywhere, not just in the South, but those attitudes are certainly well tended here. The KKK is always hiding somewhere, but the darkest hearts beat in the well-educated well-off people who have read the history, had good opportunities to understand the meaning of morality, but have chosen to stick with their core ugly.
Segregation to get away from "problems" is self-fulfilling - when you create school districts that are based on the tax revenue from specific neighborhoods and groups, then you perpetuate the problems associated with poor schools. "Those" kids have worse educations and fewer resources and opportunities. They have more difficult paths already made harder because of their skin color, and down the road, if they earn less, then they live in poorer neighborhoods with all the associated problems that certain whites are always running from and building their walls to hide behind.
Try funding schools equally and filling them randomly. All kids and parents would get a better education that way and not just through books.
139
The new resegregation isn't about racism it's about parents who have lost faith in our public schools & are looking for alternatives. I can't blame them. I have two kids. For 6 years they went to a integrated public school. They loved it & so did I. There're very high functioning public schools with very supportive parents around the country. My kids went to one. We need more. But those schools are a minority, we all know that. But by the time my kids were ready for jr. high school, it was obvious they were going to get a poor education. Every parent I knew, who could afford to pulled their kids out of public school & put them in private. To not do so would have sabotaged their future. It's not our fault that the government is unable to run our schools effectively. When government policy continues to impose rigid personnel rules, regulations,& a mandate to use education to engineer social or political outcomes, a school cannot successfully impart the needed skills, knowledge, & perspective to its students. American students don't possess the communication & computational skills they need today to succeed in college & the working world. That is a fact beyond debate. The DOE says a huge percentage of students graduating from high school can't read or write on a college level. This is fraud. A high school diploma should mean something...it doesn't anymore. That isn't hyperbole. That's reality. You can't fault parents for running away from schools that doesn't work anymore.
4
Bob: I certainly understand your feelings about this topic, and I do not think that everyone is a racist in the South - I live here - but I also know that many are. Every one of the points you made I have heard locally for certain schools, even those in some extremely well-off suburb communities with good schools. Those folks clearly did not want to mix. The problems, as you have discussed above, are the result of underfunding some districts and the lack of teachers, resources, and support at the same level as those in districts with predominantly well-off people.
That underfunding and reduced quality of teaching and support is what perpetuates the problems. Until the funding, teaching, resources, and support are equalized by regulations and policy, the situation will continue. We are the government, so it is up to us to vote to implement such policies, but we don't. Why? You know the answer - doesn't apply to you, but you and I know that it does to a huge number of voters.
If all of the school districts were more equal, including distribution of the student body, then these problems would be reduced. That was what bussing was about, but some people pitched a fit. You can't fix this by self-segregating or old-school segregation. Until you break the cycle of poverty and poor education, we will be stuck in this loop. And until the parents are mixing at the PTA, school meetings, school events, and in school board meetings, no real change will occur. We the people own this.
That underfunding and reduced quality of teaching and support is what perpetuates the problems. Until the funding, teaching, resources, and support are equalized by regulations and policy, the situation will continue. We are the government, so it is up to us to vote to implement such policies, but we don't. Why? You know the answer - doesn't apply to you, but you and I know that it does to a huge number of voters.
If all of the school districts were more equal, including distribution of the student body, then these problems would be reduced. That was what bussing was about, but some people pitched a fit. You can't fix this by self-segregating or old-school segregation. Until you break the cycle of poverty and poor education, we will be stuck in this loop. And until the parents are mixing at the PTA, school meetings, school events, and in school board meetings, no real change will occur. We the people own this.
3
If whites in Alabama don't want their "sweet little girls" sitting in school "alongside some big overgrown Negro," they should set up and pay for private schools, taxpayers should not have to fund these pet projects.
25
No, blanket inteolerance due to race, sexual orientation, gender, culture, etc is not something you get to have as long as you have teh ressources, it is a scourge, and should be combatted vigourously by all fari minded people.
Children of the enlightment you are not.
Children of the enlightment you are not.
7
Lynn in DC: Washington DC is the most segregated city I've ever visited, and I've lived in the deep South most of my life. How many rich white kids live in SE or NE or poor black kids in NW? How about you clean up your own house before condemning mine.
6
"The state of Mississippi didn’t provide education for black children"
2
I grew up in New York City and attended public schools. while the schools were clearly integrated, they were segregated within the schools. The "advanced classes" were virtually entirely white, while the second level of classes were mixed, and the lower level classes were almost entire black and Latino. The was very little (actually almost no) interaction between the different groups. This was mostly true at the elementary level and much more so at the junior high level.
26
Most parents value the welfare and education of their own children, much higher than some progressive ideals of diversity - even if they voted for Obama and Hillary or Sanders.
67
Their schools are doing just fine. They don't need to change a thing. They're just being selfish.
3
And treating "some progressive ideals of diversity" as some random thing that lacks value and importance but is vital to a peaceful future, they doom their children to the world of their grandparents, a backward, never evolving society. Fools, all of them. We should have cut the South loose and never bothered with the Civil War. Their disgusting racism has infected other parts of this country because we didn't excise the cancer in the beginning.
12
And the schools that their own children were in were fine; there was not a single complaint.
And it's interesting that you consider not being racist a "progressive ideal of diversity," as opposed to just, say, morality.
And it's interesting that you consider not being racist a "progressive ideal of diversity," as opposed to just, say, morality.
11
Thank you for this poignant article. As someone who went to a naturally integrated school (there was only high school in town, so the 20% black and 5% Hispanic students also attended), I can attest to the benefits to all of being educated with a broad cross-section of Americans of different races, ethnicity, and wealth. I wish I could say it was 100% effective as there was still a large measure of "voluntary" segregation, but it sure beat any alternative I know.
As a generation, I was the first to grow up with integrated textbooks and TV. I see clearly the difference between my generation and my parents generation. My kids are even more open minded.
We also see this issue writ large in the national debate as bigots like Trump, Republicans, and their small town ilk are just like my parent's generation who simply had no real interaction with those who are different. Blacks only worked as servants in their homes (especially before WW II), but they didn't really mix with people of different race or economic background. It is easy to see how these people became bigots, continue to be bigots, and remain confused with the multi-cultural America that exists around them outside theirs bubbles.
As a generation, I was the first to grow up with integrated textbooks and TV. I see clearly the difference between my generation and my parents generation. My kids are even more open minded.
We also see this issue writ large in the national debate as bigots like Trump, Republicans, and their small town ilk are just like my parent's generation who simply had no real interaction with those who are different. Blacks only worked as servants in their homes (especially before WW II), but they didn't really mix with people of different race or economic background. It is easy to see how these people became bigots, continue to be bigots, and remain confused with the multi-cultural America that exists around them outside theirs bubbles.
10
This article was selective in its presentation of the facts, as several commenters have already pointed out.
We should, for example, have been given more information on what the parents in Gardendale have experienced with their children in the last twenty years. It's a sad fact of American life that the arrival of too many black children in a previously white suburb is typically accompanied by a decline in the quality of the school system. There are multiple reasons for this, but among them is a need to put more resources into remedial instruction and behavior management. Even if one accepts that these are cultural deficits brought on by decades of systemic racism, they still place a real burden on the school, and black activists are seldom willing to acknowledge this.
The author went looking for racism, and found it. Wow. That's like looking at the horizon and finding the edge of the world. It explains everything until you need to navigate to somewhere new.
We should, for example, have been given more information on what the parents in Gardendale have experienced with their children in the last twenty years. It's a sad fact of American life that the arrival of too many black children in a previously white suburb is typically accompanied by a decline in the quality of the school system. There are multiple reasons for this, but among them is a need to put more resources into remedial instruction and behavior management. Even if one accepts that these are cultural deficits brought on by decades of systemic racism, they still place a real burden on the school, and black activists are seldom willing to acknowledge this.
The author went looking for racism, and found it. Wow. That's like looking at the horizon and finding the edge of the world. It explains everything until you need to navigate to somewhere new.
88
But the courtroom testimony, as recounted in the article, proved that the quality of education was acceptable to the parents who wanted to secede! They had no complaints. Did you read the article?
31
Refusing to see racism where it is apparent is racism.
The children disadvataged by systemic racism should have as much opportunity as all other to acheive, even if it means a marginal degradation in "school quality", at least over timne the cycle will be positive, as the kids whom went though remediations, children will nneed it no more, rather than the nagative view you say was "missing" from the article.
Which it was not, it was the basic cover for racism argument used by the Gardendale seccsionnists (apt adjective)
The children disadvataged by systemic racism should have as much opportunity as all other to acheive, even if it means a marginal degradation in "school quality", at least over timne the cycle will be positive, as the kids whom went though remediations, children will nneed it no more, rather than the nagative view you say was "missing" from the article.
Which it was not, it was the basic cover for racism argument used by the Gardendale seccsionnists (apt adjective)
9
If one wants to find racism, one only needs to look at the text of this comment. Perhaps a community committed to both abusing and separating itself from its neighbors of another race is also possessed of some 'cultural deficits.'
5
I started 1st grade at Barrett Elementary School in Birmingham in 1967. During my first three years there we had one black student, Mary, the daughter of a doctor, in an entire student body ranging from 1st to 8th grade. I didn't know or understand the meaning or implications of a word like "token" back then. Barrett was finally truly integrated when I entered 4th grade, thanks as I now know from this article to the legal battle waged by Mr. Clemon and the Legal Defense Fund. This experience transformed my perception of black people, humanizing for me a community of "strangers" I had never had to interact with before, and I carry the benefits and hope of that experience with me to this day. It breaks my heart to see that, 50 years on, the same fear and, yes, loathing promoted by segregationist thinking still continues in my original hometown.
A little-known and even more rarely discussed aspect of the integration I experienced as a child involved not only the inclusion of black pupils throughout my school's student body, but also of African Americans on the teaching staff. As a result, we white pupils learned something that recent US history illustrates sends shivers down the collective spine of racists: We learned to accept and respect blacks in positions of authority. Parents and school boards choosing to "secede" from their public school systems, ostensibly concerned for their children's education, deprive those children of this important educational, social insight.
A little-known and even more rarely discussed aspect of the integration I experienced as a child involved not only the inclusion of black pupils throughout my school's student body, but also of African Americans on the teaching staff. As a result, we white pupils learned something that recent US history illustrates sends shivers down the collective spine of racists: We learned to accept and respect blacks in positions of authority. Parents and school boards choosing to "secede" from their public school systems, ostensibly concerned for their children's education, deprive those children of this important educational, social insight.
263
As you said your daughter goes to a magnet school. Race relations here between families with similar goals is not the problem and Knoxville is not b'ham. Tremendous difference in crime rates, education and history. The problems here are both complicated and simple, your commends though liked my many , comes across to me as judgemental
7
these comments are very reasoned, how are they judgemental
Does having blakc teachers not sensitise you to understanding authority in a colorblind manner?
Does having blakc teachers not sensitise you to understanding authority in a colorblind manner?
5
As a Southern school student in the 60's I could never understand why we had no opportunities to interact with our black peers. Even out-of-school activities were carefully segregated. My own children were blessed to go through a public school system that was desegregated via voluntary bussing because our communities in St Louis are very segregated. Although that system is usually praised for the benefits it offers the minority students - which is probably true - we found great value in having my children exposed to both classmates and teachers of other races and religions. Their education didn't suffer - both daughters graduated from college Phi Beta Kappa and are in graduate school at premier universities. They also enjoy wonderful friendships and working relationships with people across a wide spectrum of cultures and actively seek similarly diverse communities in which to raise their future children. Why can't people wake up to the benefits that desegregation in all areas of our improves lives for all of us?
7
In 1976 I graduated, with honors, from the whitest, and most prestigious high school in Huntsville Alabama. I got my comeuppance at a nearby Poison Ivy League college. My Alabama high school hadn't offered any AP classes. Despite nearly straight "A's" I was woefully unprepared in English and other college level subjects compared to students from almost everywhere else in the country. My high school focused on one subject: Athletics. Classes were consistently "dumbed down" to the lowest students. Smart students were scorned for "wrecking the curve." This in the Rocket City, home of 50,000 NASA engineers and scientists. You want your kid to get a decent education in Alabama, send 'em to private school. Or move!
53
Wade--Same goes for Arkansas, where I have some experience.
6
I've lived in Madison, Alabama for 30 years. When we formed our own school system about 25 years ago it was because our town was growing quickly and we didn't see that the county system would adequately support tha growth. We broke off, but included the nearby town of Triana (mostly black) in our school system. Madison and Triana both agreed to increase property taxes to support the school system. My children got to attend integrated schools in Madison, AL. We didn't feel forced to include Triana, we wanted to because their community was an important part of our community. At least that is how it always seemed to me. I don't remember hearing about any controversy. Madison schools continue to be great and prepare students very well for post-graduate education,
2
The New York Times should publish articles about actual racial segregation in school districts and private schools in cities, along with the nearby suburbs, in other states, such as New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Illinois, . . . .
Our English-only white children made excellent progress at excellent schools where 90% of the students were the children of poor families who spoke no English at home. This is analogous to choosing a racially segregated school. We just knew our children would be just fine at safe schools.
Our children are now making similar choices to send their own children to schools with racial, linguistic and cultural diversity.
All parents need to see information about how well individual students progress academically at each school, so they can make informed choices about which school their children should attend.
Parents could then make choices based on the excellence of the teachers and curriculums of the schools as shown in the data about the progress of individual students, not just snapshots of the average test scores in different schools.
Our English-only white children made excellent progress at excellent schools where 90% of the students were the children of poor families who spoke no English at home. This is analogous to choosing a racially segregated school. We just knew our children would be just fine at safe schools.
Our children are now making similar choices to send their own children to schools with racial, linguistic and cultural diversity.
All parents need to see information about how well individual students progress academically at each school, so they can make informed choices about which school their children should attend.
Parents could then make choices based on the excellence of the teachers and curriculums of the schools as shown in the data about the progress of individual students, not just snapshots of the average test scores in different schools.
9
Jane--Diversity can only help our progress as a nation. I feel that we are at a gigantic turning point, when most of us are sick and tired of the racists, and xenophobes, holding us back. We should make it our daily task to heap shame upon them, until they finally break down.
8
I think you've missed the point of the article. If you grew up outside the Deep South, and especially its black majority regions, you have no understanding of the decades that white communities spent trying to avoid compliance with Brown v Board for explicitly and articulated racist reasons. School choice does not exist within county school districts--hence Gardendale's (and other white majority communities) effort to secede and form its own, believing that their higher per capita school tax dollars should be used to educate their own children. This is nothing but an end-run around the desegregation order of Brown v Board. Until Americans understand that their tax dollars were never meant to fund their own causes, but contribute to the overall uplift of communities and nation, we will continue our march toward a society of extreme wealth that throws crumbs to the less fortunate. We're not likely to turn this trend around until grassroots efforts catch fire and Americans are finally willing to say enough to the divisive politics that denigrate our citizens of color and others who, because of residence in communities with virtually no tax base, fall further and further behind, which is not only unjust, but from a practical point of view, reduces our national prosperity. Sadly, I have lost faith in our country redeeming itself and fear for the generations of my children and theirs.
105
I'm sorry--what are you talking about? We have a history of racial segregation in this country, which resulted in a famous Supreme Court case that outlawed "choosing a racially segregated school" because there aren't supposed to BE racially segregated schools. There are only supposed to be schools that serve the districts that they're in.
Also, love your awesome implication that "diverse" "poor" students and schools exist to serve the educational needs of your "English-only white children." This kind of statement is just as racist as resegregation.
"School choice" is a coded, racist workaround of the goals of integration. And you know it.
Also, love your awesome implication that "diverse" "poor" students and schools exist to serve the educational needs of your "English-only white children." This kind of statement is just as racist as resegregation.
"School choice" is a coded, racist workaround of the goals of integration. And you know it.
9
Montgomery County, Alabama was released from Federal oversight in the nineties. The town of Pike Road, Montgomery County, Alabama formed a separate district. Pike Road incorporated first, then increased school taxes and now have their own schools. This article about Gardendale failed to take into account federal housing laws. Pike road has a large African American population that's made up of new comers and long term families going back to slavery. Many well off African American families moved to the new housing in Pike Road for the school system. Please return to Alabama and look for examples of the races working together and getting it right. Housing integration is far better than busing American children miles from their homes to sit next white children. In many of the battles fought by African American children to attend white schools the students had to walk or ride a bus to a school far from home. The system was separate and unequal in 1954. Imagine if the court had ordered money spent in African American schools to equal white schools in 1954. Then imagine that any parent who wanted to could move to the attendance zone of their choice; if they had the money. Whites send their children to mixed race schools in many districts across this country when the schools are high achieving.
6
Jefferson County, AL, is one of the most poorly-run, corrupt counties in the nation. And that includes its school board. So while I don't doubt that racism played a role in Gardendale's attempt to secede, I also don't blame the parents there for wanting to escape Jefferson County control. Please stop trying to paint the South and its residents as one-dimensional people driven ONLY by racism in everything they do. It's way more complicated than that.
49
so is there a reason for publicly funded private academies to exist that do *not* have to do with race?
6
If you folks elect Judge Roy Moore to the US Senate - guilty as charged. You have a real choice with the highly qualified Doug Jones. No excuse.
BTW - Today's Breitbart's featured a highly flattering piece on the Ayatollah of Alabama. Moore is a Nazi and KKK favorite.
BTW - Today's Breitbart's featured a highly flattering piece on the Ayatollah of Alabama. Moore is a Nazi and KKK favorite.
9
"Please stop trying to paint the South and its residents as one-dimensional people driven ONLY by racism in everything they do"
Nobody is "trying", the South is doing it all on its own. Until the South as a whole changes its ways, with its white people forcefully speaking out against racism and making meaningful change to address its own self-made history, the South will continue to look racist to the rest of the country. We aren't responsible for your reputation. You are and you're still not doing enough to change it. This article proves it.
Nobody is "trying", the South is doing it all on its own. Until the South as a whole changes its ways, with its white people forcefully speaking out against racism and making meaningful change to address its own self-made history, the South will continue to look racist to the rest of the country. We aren't responsible for your reputation. You are and you're still not doing enough to change it. This article proves it.
10
That this sort of thing is going on in Alabama, home of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, should come as no surprise to anyone.
20
Racism is an irrepressable meme and a wound to American society that will never heal. It demeans black children and teaches them to believe they are inferior to whites at an age too young to even know they are being brainwashed. It emotionally stunts white children to see themselves as superior to and separate from the broader community, even including other members of the white community, that is their only source for a life fully lived. Whites, thusly formed, are doomed to live life focused only on themselves and the individual pursuit of their personal desires. They can never, apart from some traumatic event that interrupts the solipsism of their life's arc, turn outward and grow into a life of service to all people. A white majority so formed spells the ultimate doom of the American experiment. "We the People" will never be able to agree on solutions to the essential crises that must be confronted of we are to survive as a nation because individually the white people of America do not see themselves as part of "We the People" as it truly exists, including blacks and hispanics and asians and arabs and all the other essential contributors to our nation's diversity. Differential fertility rates will eventually leave whites behind as a sad and irrelevant minority, but not soon enough to prevent the worst of what is to come in the next 50 years.
14
Thank you Jack for for the truth. I'm white, 60 & the product of public schools in Montgomery, AL, Baton Rouge, and Orangeburg SC--black majorities all. Not until 8th grade in BR, 16 years after Brown, did I attend school with black youth, bused downtown where poof! they were barely visible, displaced God knows where. In 1971, my New Orleans dad retired to O'burg, my mother's hometown, known in racist SC as its most racist town. I attended Orangeburg-Wilkinson HS, a combine of the formerly white and black, graduating in a vastly black class, most very poor. This was a watershed tho' difficult; I looked the lie and hatred of white supremacy in its face, which I had pondered silently in childhood as a gross violation of Christ's teachings. The dignified, loving women who worked in my homes, my magnificent French teacher who instilled a love for languages, my HS friends who have had careers (outside SC) that have eclipsed the accomplishments of OB's snotty white kids--all speak to the lie of black inferiority and criminality. Public school is more than academics; ideally, it offers lessons re our country in its myriad varieties, socializing kids who teach each another re the contrived structures of opportunity, and create compassionate adults who support a progressive society. This was MLK's dream, smashed by the right-winged racist backlash that has ruled w/vengeance since 1980. I agree Jack. White supremacy reigns and the oligarchy is its newest incarnation. I grieve everyday.
13
alabama should do everyone else a favor and secede again and take the other pitiful confederate states with you - then you can have all the statues you want.
11
hmm ... and the most segregated school system in the United States is New York City's.
12
Take away Alabama and "the other pitiful confederate states" and you've got no jazz, no blues, no rock n' roll, no cajun or creole cuisine, no Memphis or Carolina barbecue, no Tennessee Williams, William Styron, Flannery O'Connor, or Alice Walker, No Robert Rauschenberg, No Leontyne Price or Jessye Norman, no space program, no Dell computers, no MD Anderson Cancer Center or Duke University School of Medicine, no...
Basically, no America.
By all means, dump the bathwater, but let's keep the baby.
Basically, no America.
By all means, dump the bathwater, but let's keep the baby.
9
Alabamastan is, has always been, and will always be, a stronghold of ignorance-fueled bigotry, homophobia, racism and xenophobia. If you wish to live in a different kind of society, you will have to go somewhere else.
13
I live in Birmingham and disagree with your generalization...wholeheartedly. It is not perfect. But to say that it "has always been and will always be" is patently untrue. This is a remarkably different place to the one I moved to in 1995 and I continue to see change. I believe in the people of Birmingham.
12
makes you 1 of 1
4
Pulitzer Prize worthy piece.
12
They should not be given federal or state aid or certification to grant diplomas. Don't want to be part of the country don't get any benefits.
9
This article is peculiar because it deliberately sidesteps the fact Jefferson County, at the county level, is ENTIRELY RUN by an all-black political machine in which even white Democrats are not allowed to fully participate. That machine also controls the state Democratic party and has badly hobbled it, leading to a statewide Republican supermajority.
http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/07/want_to_see_racism_at_work_m...
Of course any majority-white municipality in Jefferson County is bound to want to secede from its school district and any other services it may provide.
http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/07/want_to_see_racism_at_work_m...
Of course any majority-white municipality in Jefferson County is bound to want to secede from its school district and any other services it may provide.
48
Good! Let them secede completely from the county and operate as a privately funded all-white fiefdom. Absolutely no tax dollars or state/federal funding of any kind should flow their way. Jeff Sessions can resign as AG and be in charge of all y'all.
4
I read the opinion piece that you linked. Firstly, it is an opinion piece, not investigative journalism, and accordingly is heavy on opinion and light to non-existent on research or data; consequently, it doesn't at all establish that Jefferson County, where I grew up, is "ENTIRELY RUN by an all-black political machine." Whether or not that is true, this opinion piece hardly supports that assertion. By your logic that "any majority-white municipality in Jefferson County is bound to want to secede from its school district," I suppose it would also be true that any majority-black municipality would want to secede from the state-wide, white "Republican supermajority." Oops, except that the statewide white Republican supermajority has all the resources. Finally, if you think that the reason Alabama became a "statewide Republican supermajority" is because of the leadership of the state Democratic party, I've got some Confederate monuments to sell you.
9
The day top ranked universities and colleges refuse to consider applicants from these white-only high schools, this nonsense will stop.
97
@MaxDuPont ..... Is it not NYC that boasts the most segregated school system in the country? Yes, it is.
12
I recall visiting an uncle in Birmingham in the summers of the early to mid '50s. (I was from Tampa, FL back then) I recall seeing couples, walking down the street, holding hands, wearing full KKK regalia, although the faces were not obscured by the pointy hat things. I knew nothing about the KKK then. Tampa was so segregated I never had any interaction with a black person except Laura, who was my sitter for a number of years.
I asked my uncle (Horace) about the robes and what they meant. His reply was something about good people keeping the n----- in his place. I found out years later that was the summer Emmett Till was tortured and murdered by some of those "good people" in Mississippi.
I live in Connecticut now, we're segregated by housing prices. However, last year, Judge Moukawsher issued a ruling in the case known as Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding v. M. Jodi Rell that may well finally end financially imposed segregation and oppression in CT public schools. Maybe, just maybe, what the late Justice Thurgood Marshall worked so hard for will come to pass before I do.
I asked my uncle (Horace) about the robes and what they meant. His reply was something about good people keeping the n----- in his place. I found out years later that was the summer Emmett Till was tortured and murdered by some of those "good people" in Mississippi.
I live in Connecticut now, we're segregated by housing prices. However, last year, Judge Moukawsher issued a ruling in the case known as Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding v. M. Jodi Rell that may well finally end financially imposed segregation and oppression in CT public schools. Maybe, just maybe, what the late Justice Thurgood Marshall worked so hard for will come to pass before I do.
22
Gone with the wind? I don't think so, Margaret Mitchell. The Old South continues to attempt to obliterate every legal effort to maintain its plantation-like apartheid culture.
19
My school district, in fact the whole town, in liberal Westchester, NY, split off from a multicultural one in the 1980s. As a result, the school is 90% white and one of highest performing in the country. The neighbor from which it split is dreadful, with low scores, poverty, and chain linked fences keeping kids in, while my school has been gut renovating the buildings and resurfacing the tennis courts.
But you know what? I moved to the district two years ago because it has good schools, as my job as a parent is to my kids first and foremost to maximize their wellbeing. If some big federal hammer were to force the districts back together, I would move or go private, as again, my kids aren't some social experiment but my responsibility. And by the way, none of this is driven by racial animus. College lists and ap courses are the key here, not demographics. Most of the best private schools are better integrated than the public, as they can choose the best performing students. Policies that sacrifice people's children as destined to fail, and always have.
But you know what? I moved to the district two years ago because it has good schools, as my job as a parent is to my kids first and foremost to maximize their wellbeing. If some big federal hammer were to force the districts back together, I would move or go private, as again, my kids aren't some social experiment but my responsibility. And by the way, none of this is driven by racial animus. College lists and ap courses are the key here, not demographics. Most of the best private schools are better integrated than the public, as they can choose the best performing students. Policies that sacrifice people's children as destined to fail, and always have.
102
What sort of morality is that? Your main job as a parent is not to steal from other parents to feather your own child's nest. It's to bring your child up to be a decent human being, and teaching them that segregation is OK as long as they benefit from it doesn't strike me as a good starting lesson.
84
couldn't agree more. I'm a Canadian, and my wife's family is from India. Our kids of course, are mixed. We live in a middle income neighbourhood, and our children's school looks like the united nations. It's about as mixed as you could possibly get. Our childrens closest friends are Black, White, Indian, Chinese, Korean etc... There seems to be some kind of notion here that 'mixing' either doesn't work, or that it's some sort of punishment for white kids to be in the same school as black kids. I honestly don't get it.
Our kids all play together. They hang out at each other's houses. We know their parents.
Fear of the 'other' just limits you.
As a small child, I grew up in a very small town that was predominately white. And as a kid, I saw the kind of small-town racism that you can get in a place like that. When we were dating, my wife would often remark 'when i visit your town, i feel like I'm the only 'chip' in the cookie'.... (which i still think is a pretty funny remark)
Now, 20 odd years later, when we visit my old home-town, it's changed. it's grown. It's much more multi-cultural. and it's BETTER. for everyone.
I honestly don't know if it's a Canadian thing or not. But for us, multi-culturalism isn't something to be feared. It's a fact of life, and a good one.
Our kids all play together. They hang out at each other's houses. We know their parents.
Fear of the 'other' just limits you.
As a small child, I grew up in a very small town that was predominately white. And as a kid, I saw the kind of small-town racism that you can get in a place like that. When we were dating, my wife would often remark 'when i visit your town, i feel like I'm the only 'chip' in the cookie'.... (which i still think is a pretty funny remark)
Now, 20 odd years later, when we visit my old home-town, it's changed. it's grown. It's much more multi-cultural. and it's BETTER. for everyone.
I honestly don't know if it's a Canadian thing or not. But for us, multi-culturalism isn't something to be feared. It's a fact of life, and a good one.
80
I would not want my tax dollars being used to support these de facto private schools from which certain people are banned. Let these parents pay for their own little schools. Unbelievable.
13
This article is, of course, not a shocking one to me but it is quite depressing. As a white high school student in central Pennsylvania from 1968 until graduation in 1971, I had black friends who were so-called "foreign exchange" students. They were from Alabama brought to our school to obtain an adequate education that they couldn't obtain in their segregated schools back in Alabama...certainly a foreign world to me. It is not as if racism wasn't alive in central Pennsylvania either. But, it wasn't quite so codified in law and culture. It was however quite present. Many students boycotted the prom which was held in a club that didn't allow black members. It is depressing but not surprising that the laws that require desecration of schools from that era must still be used today. One cannot ignore that the south of the present is not too far from the South of the past. The current federal administration has made is socially acceptable to reveal exactly how blatantly true that is. That is not to say that the racism is limited to the South. It is to say that the activism that I was part of in the 60's and 70's as a high school and college student must be part of life today. We cannot look past what is going on now and soothe ourselves with the idea that these are isolated incidents. Institutionalized racism is a real part of today's American culture and must be fought with all we, who believe in the Constitution, have. It is not somebody else's problem.
116
Institutional racism will go away when there are no more races.
1
I was a student at Penn State's main campus during precisely those years. The place as astonishingly white. I failed to make a nuisance of myself.
3
I spent vacations and summers in Clearfield County, PA, in central PA, a 99.9% white region. The rest of the year, I lived in Baltimore, MD, a socially segregated city of the first water in the late 50s and early 60s. Over the years, I witnessed more overt racism, tribalism, and clan-ism in Clearfield County, than in Baltimore. The presence of other races does not create racism. That there was not a black or brown face in sight in PA did not deflect my family's virulent bigotry to everything that was not white and Protestant. It is values and ethics--or lack thereof--that inform attitudes towards our fellow human beings. Love or hate begins in each and every home and propagates outward from there.
4
I have lived in the Deep South my entire life. Now I live in a peninsula of Birmingham surrounded by Hoover County, and routinely pass through the segregated enclaves of Vestavia Hills and Mountain Brook.
Make no mistake, the school secessionists in Gardendale have one goal - to kick black kids out of their school. That is, plainly, their only goal. They were so confident that they would get their way that they barely even bothered to drape a fig leaf over the proceedings. They went to court knowing that they would have to justify themselves, and even then could not offer any other plausible motive.
After all, the very first thing they did was make sure that every single person running their theoretical school system was white, heedless of their lack qualifications or the existence of obviously better candidates. Mr. Lucas won't say so, but "local control" has a pretty transparent meaning here:
White control.
And what was the net result of this cruel goal, and racist motives? Some of what they wanted, because the federal judge was afraid that if she did not give the white people of Gardendale a victory, they would take out their rage and frustration on the black children who have now been explicitly told that they are no longer welcome in their own public schools.
Brown v. Board of Education was 63 years ago, and I weep at how little progress we have made since, how bitterly it is begrudged, and how fanatically my fellow white Americans fight to undo it completely.
Make no mistake, the school secessionists in Gardendale have one goal - to kick black kids out of their school. That is, plainly, their only goal. They were so confident that they would get their way that they barely even bothered to drape a fig leaf over the proceedings. They went to court knowing that they would have to justify themselves, and even then could not offer any other plausible motive.
After all, the very first thing they did was make sure that every single person running their theoretical school system was white, heedless of their lack qualifications or the existence of obviously better candidates. Mr. Lucas won't say so, but "local control" has a pretty transparent meaning here:
White control.
And what was the net result of this cruel goal, and racist motives? Some of what they wanted, because the federal judge was afraid that if she did not give the white people of Gardendale a victory, they would take out their rage and frustration on the black children who have now been explicitly told that they are no longer welcome in their own public schools.
Brown v. Board of Education was 63 years ago, and I weep at how little progress we have made since, how bitterly it is begrudged, and how fanatically my fellow white Americans fight to undo it completely.
196
The country was built of racism. It's never going away yet we're always amazed when we see it.
Some things we need to accept and move on with.
Some things we need to accept and move on with.
5
I will never accept racism.
34
Says a white person.....
5
those who accept racism are those who benefit from it.
10
I have found that in my lifetime racism was always there. Maybe not out in the open but it was there. The South was the place where it was out there in the open there was no doubt it. America always was a racist nation. it has gotten better then a hundred years ago. I hope in another hundred years we can all be for each other. The one thing the military taught is we are all the same. In the time of battle we all bled red the same.
10
Yes, interestingly, I have seen research that shows that the most accepting people of interracial marriage are those in the military. Maybe time for universal inscription again?
1
So they got the county to pay for a high school building, then tried to steal it. Nice. The spirit of the Confederacy is alive and well - y'all paid for this nice Fort Sumter but we'd really like it for ourselves.
141
I picked up on that as well. Perhaps if they want to "secede" they need to take the debt for that school with them.
9
This is a heartbreaking if beautifully composed piece. Speaking as a white teacher working in a diverse school with few white children, it saddens me that many white people see no inherent value in diversity. My experience tells me that children who engage cross-culturally, cross-linguistically, and across class barriers benefit enormously from it, especially when their school openly affirms diversity. The benefits are not merely social-emotional, either: diversity encourages considering multiple perspectives, taking risks, and thinking critically.
75
Obviously "diverse" is just a code word for Black, since "working in a diverse school with few whites" is an oxymoron.
7
Joe, you need to get your head out of your sheet and realize that diversity includes more than just white and black. There are many colors and religions on this planet; white male christian is one of the smallest groups there is. Are you ready to take your place as a minority?
4
Thank you for your comments. I, too, worked in a multi-cultural school. Our student body had many students from extremely affluent homes and many from low-income backgrounds. Diversity can mean more than just race. All our students benefited from being with each other.
6
When is Beverly Hills going to give up it's legally segregated school district that makes Beverly Hills High School only 11% non-Asian minority and invite in the black and Hispanic masses who live in Los Angeles just to the south of the Beverly Hills border?
Instead, Beverly Hills has invented a hereditary privilege allowing the grandchildren of Beverly Hills residents to attend Beverly Hills public schools even when they don't live in Beverly Hills.
It would seem as if Beverly Hills is a more influential part of American life than Nowheresville, Alabama, but Beverly Hills' privileges don't seem to excite the media as much.
Instead, Beverly Hills has invented a hereditary privilege allowing the grandchildren of Beverly Hills residents to attend Beverly Hills public schools even when they don't live in Beverly Hills.
It would seem as if Beverly Hills is a more influential part of American life than Nowheresville, Alabama, but Beverly Hills' privileges don't seem to excite the media as much.
152
BINGO. Having lived the majority of my life in NYC and now residing in Atlanta, I have come to the realization that many of the things that I perceived as "black and white" (pardon the pun) while living in NYC are far more complicated than they initially seemed. The stark hypocrisy of some of these blue state inhabitants is utterly astounding. The fact of the matter is that many, many places (certainly including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, NYC and Washington D.C.) are starkly segregated as a by-product of socio-economics.
Also, as "Amanda" pointed out in another comment:
"This article is peculiar because it deliberately sidesteps the fact Jefferson County, at the county level, is ENTIRELY RUN by an all-black political machine in which even white Democrats are not allowed to fully participate. That machine also controls the state Democratic party and has badly hobbled it, leading to a statewide Republican supermajority."
Also, as "Amanda" pointed out in another comment:
"This article is peculiar because it deliberately sidesteps the fact Jefferson County, at the county level, is ENTIRELY RUN by an all-black political machine in which even white Democrats are not allowed to fully participate. That machine also controls the state Democratic party and has badly hobbled it, leading to a statewide Republican supermajority."
27
Not one word about the quality or usefulness of education in any of the schools mentioned in this article. Not one word.
13
That's because that's not the topic of the piece. Not one word about measles outbreaks in public schools, either, or the price of bananas in the cafeteria.
Maybe make a comment on the actual subject?
Maybe make a comment on the actual subject?
14
These are yet more examples of the roots of America's racism sadly alive and well in 2017.
5
I live in Gardendale, been here 12 years. Yes, the demographics are predominately white and working class, and they feel powerless . Do you think this Judge has spent any time in this community. The court quoted Facebook post and flyers, squeaky wheels get noticed, not the majority which are the blacks and whites that are busy living their lives and have formed honest caring relationships with oneanother. Jefferson county is fighting hard because if they loose Gardendale the county will loose test scores that keeps them from a failing system and the state would then get involoved. Lastly I wonder why the court is involved in a city where home prices are not a barrier to integration, but signed off on cities that are affluent and then lectures us on brown vs board of Ed.
43
I am sure there are plenty of people who support the re-segregation of Glendale using much of the same rhetoric, but when it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, and quacks like a duck, the standard should be high indeed to prove it is not a duck.
The argument here appears more like anger that those who did wrong before (when there were no effective opponents and a bigoted judge) got away with it and Glendale is not getting away with the same illegal act.
That rings hollow to me and I would welcome an aggressive and competent Justice Department to force the other communities to re-integrate. Of course, that is unlikely to happen now that we have a confirmed racist as the head in Former Senator from Alabama Jeff Sessions.
The argument here appears more like anger that those who did wrong before (when there were no effective opponents and a bigoted judge) got away with it and Glendale is not getting away with the same illegal act.
That rings hollow to me and I would welcome an aggressive and competent Justice Department to force the other communities to re-integrate. Of course, that is unlikely to happen now that we have a confirmed racist as the head in Former Senator from Alabama Jeff Sessions.
7
"Do you think this Judge has spent any time in this community."
So local laws should be tailored to whatever prejudices pass as tradition for each community regardless of what the Bill of Rights and 250 years of SCOTUS decisions have to say? Should little Johnnie be allowed to go to school wearing his dad's KKK outfit or his Nazi armband?
So local laws should be tailored to whatever prejudices pass as tradition for each community regardless of what the Bill of Rights and 250 years of SCOTUS decisions have to say? Should little Johnnie be allowed to go to school wearing his dad's KKK outfit or his Nazi armband?
1
Oh, the irony: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III and Jefferson County, Alabama both continuing in the proud tradition of their namesake and hero, Jefferson Davis!
2
First of all, thank you! From the bottom of my heart, thank you. It took some time to read the entire article but it was worth it. I believe that you covered, in this writing, one of the most profound, yet overlooked issues in America, education, equal education.
My only hope is that you would team up with Ms. Ava DuVernay and make a documentary and include everything in this article.
Thank you again!
My only hope is that you would team up with Ms. Ava DuVernay and make a documentary and include everything in this article.
Thank you again!
17
Due to a Family situation I went and lived with my Great-Grandmother
for a Semester when I was a boy.
She had been born to Slaves and had only received a Sixth Grade
education before she had to go to work.
I attended a Segregated School for that Semester.
All the teachers were as good as any teacher I ever had.
I suppose they might have become Doctors/Lawyers/Engineers
had they been given the opportunity.
I did not feel I received an inferior education though my books
were from the 1920's, and we sat two to a desk and water sometimes
came through the roof.
Our teachers cared deeply for us and demanded much from us.
I think of my grandnephew who barely attends Public School in California.
He walks out of school after first period and returns for 7th period.
No one stops or questions him. He does none of his homework yet
he passes his classes, not because he is brilliant, but because it is easier
to pass him than hold him back.
We were held responsible for everything we did in school.
I don't know if that is true or not anymore.
As for attending Schools with "White Folk"
I stand with Nora Neale Hurston, an African American writer, who said:
Why does everyone want integration - what I want is equal facilities
and equally qualified teachers. I don't need to sit next to a "White Person"
in order to feel equal, I am equal and most time more than their equal.
The Supreme Court was naive in 1954.
It should have ordered equal funding for all schools in Brown vs Topeka.
for a Semester when I was a boy.
She had been born to Slaves and had only received a Sixth Grade
education before she had to go to work.
I attended a Segregated School for that Semester.
All the teachers were as good as any teacher I ever had.
I suppose they might have become Doctors/Lawyers/Engineers
had they been given the opportunity.
I did not feel I received an inferior education though my books
were from the 1920's, and we sat two to a desk and water sometimes
came through the roof.
Our teachers cared deeply for us and demanded much from us.
I think of my grandnephew who barely attends Public School in California.
He walks out of school after first period and returns for 7th period.
No one stops or questions him. He does none of his homework yet
he passes his classes, not because he is brilliant, but because it is easier
to pass him than hold him back.
We were held responsible for everything we did in school.
I don't know if that is true or not anymore.
As for attending Schools with "White Folk"
I stand with Nora Neale Hurston, an African American writer, who said:
Why does everyone want integration - what I want is equal facilities
and equally qualified teachers. I don't need to sit next to a "White Person"
in order to feel equal, I am equal and most time more than their equal.
The Supreme Court was naive in 1954.
It should have ordered equal funding for all schools in Brown vs Topeka.
104
it's a nice thought -and I love that author of "My Eyes Were Watching God". But think of practicality. Many areas have a hard time financing quality educational facilities as it is. Your proposal expects them to duplicate everything, while keeping quality intact, for no other reason than some people want to separate from anyone that doesn't look like them? What a terrible waste of scarce resources just to accommodate what is essentially racist.
3
When you base your racial superiority on a lie then those forces who maintain that lie will do all they can to make sure the playing field is not equal as they know the real truth if it was level.
1
Where are your grandnephew's parents? Where is their supervision, and attention to him? Mine kept up with us and did not let us slack off. There is the first and best line of defense against lack of motivation.
1
"The fragile progress of racial integration in America" is not what I see in this excellent piece on The Resegregation of Jefferson County, AL. Rather, retired Judge Clemon - who has seen it all - confirms 60 years of racial intransigence, despite his efforts and the efforts of others to seek equal educational opportunity for black students. The progress, such as it is, seems to be in the deceptive methods and language employed by the whites to preserve by every means available and imaginable white dominion and control of local public education. I wonder if Abraham Lincoln would see "progress" in this disheartening account of educational opportunity in Jefferson County, AL.
31
Sad, I agree. more than sad, actually, outrageous! I am learning a lot.
2
As a parent in Knoxville, I have one child in a wealthy, mostly white high school, and one in an inner-city, 87% black high school. The latter is part of Knox County's magnet system, and almost all of these schools are in Title 1, inner-city schools; a sort of reverse-desegregation attempt in a district that has become segregated by socioeconomics since the implementation of Brown. The decision to send my white daughter to this school has been met with incredulity and derision. Yet she is thriving in this environment, both academically and socially. Black people are much more welcoming of outsiders into their communities than white people are, it seems, at least here in the South. The most surprising discovery is just how much educational opportunity there is in low-income schools. These dedicated educators hustle for every grant and benefactor they can get. My daughter has significant scholarship opportunities, a lower teacher-to-student ratio, (1-15, vs 1-35/40 that my son has), new equipment, and access to many more extracurricular activities. This is the crux of voluntary segregation: there is the thought that color alone determines quality of education; that wealthy white parents will make up the resource deficit with a robust tax base. But in politically conservative areas like Knoxville, these parents vote consistently against the higher taxes that would support that theory. In the end, it's the children who lose; both the black and the white.
324
Knoxville demographics - over 70% white. Knox county Tennessee is Over 90% white. I would wager your family is employed by the University as you seem to make racial generalizations In b'ham black and white Parents just want out of the drugs and mismanaged school systems. They need hope.
9
They need money.
2
Ha. I am not employed by the University. I'm a single mother, working multiple jobs in radio and as an LMT. Hardly well-paid professions. I'm not making generalizations, just giving my perspective on the two very different educational experiences my children are having. As for drugs, they are in both schools. The white kids can just afford better ones. My argument to anyone who has questioned my decision to send my daughter to an inner-city school is this: Austin East High School (inner-city, daughter's school) did not lose a single student last year, to violence or drugs. Farragut High School (affluent, son's school) lost 3 to suicide in just one semester. Kids are suffering, regardless of socioeconomics.
19
This is pure insight into the status both in many decades past and now. We are all protective: of ourselves, those we love dearly and of who share the same race. We do not seem to be able to integrate fully. It would seem for that to be our human nature. What is left for us to do is realize this and, the, if somehow possible, make proper adjustments. Maybe there are adjustments there to make. We should, however, also consider that maybe there are none.
4
Nice rationalization. But, I don't believe true. There wouldn't be so many like me if it were. ME? I look white, but, am 1/4 Native American. If your rationalization were true there wouldn't be so many mixed race people in the world (humans are everywhere, so can't say just this country). Why can so many love one of another race, enough to marry (usually), & have children? If it is against human nature? It seems it's either a belief that all humans are one. Or that my race are the only true humans there are. The bigots believe that. Now with DNA testing we all can know that we are all the same race....human. NatGeo has a project going into ancient DNA, we all have some. They have tested many hundreds of thousands so far & found no one who is 100% white, not even in Ice Land. Which is easy to figure as our ancient ancestors all came from Africa. Most are on average 2% Black (unless Black), & 2% Neanderthal. Many scientists fought that finding, having based careers on says 'we wiped out the Neanderthals'. We didn't we procreated with them. As a friend says, we are not homosapiens, we are homosleepwithanyones. But, after sequencing Neanderthal DNA, then this project, we know. One group does not have Neanderthal DNA. A small group in Sub Saharan Africa has none, or any white DNA. Not to say none migrated, but, none came back thousands of years later & married back in. They are the only pure group in the world, so far, they are 100% Black. They have never mated outside the group.
6
There are some facts about Gardendale forming a city school system that are left out of this article I would like to bring up, to give readers more information.
First,
If you go to the Alabama school district rankings on schooldigger.com,
you will see that 19 of the top 20 schools listed are local city school systems of various sizes and racial makeups. You will find the Jefferson County School system rated 81st on the list.
Second,
In the Judges ruling, on page 165, it says that Gardendale separating from Jefferson County would result in a net increase of only 1.8% minority students in the racial makeup of the county system, the smallest impact of any city that has ever left.
Third,
As you can see from the pictures included in the article, Gardendale schools are already racially diverse, and are made up of about 25-30% non-white students. As mentioned in the Judges ruling on page 160, Gardendale would already constitute a racially diverse school system if allowed to separate.
"The student populations of the schools in the Gardendale zone are reasonably desegregated..."
Lastly,
As a longtime resident and parent of children currently attending the Gardendale Schools, and a new member of the Gardendale City Council, I can tell readers that Gardendale is a very welcoming, friendly, inclusive city, and that the desire of city leaders is to create a diverse, highly funded, highly ranked school system that serves ALL of the students that live in the city.
GO ROCKETS!
First,
If you go to the Alabama school district rankings on schooldigger.com,
you will see that 19 of the top 20 schools listed are local city school systems of various sizes and racial makeups. You will find the Jefferson County School system rated 81st on the list.
Second,
In the Judges ruling, on page 165, it says that Gardendale separating from Jefferson County would result in a net increase of only 1.8% minority students in the racial makeup of the county system, the smallest impact of any city that has ever left.
Third,
As you can see from the pictures included in the article, Gardendale schools are already racially diverse, and are made up of about 25-30% non-white students. As mentioned in the Judges ruling on page 160, Gardendale would already constitute a racially diverse school system if allowed to separate.
"The student populations of the schools in the Gardendale zone are reasonably desegregated..."
Lastly,
As a longtime resident and parent of children currently attending the Gardendale Schools, and a new member of the Gardendale City Council, I can tell readers that Gardendale is a very welcoming, friendly, inclusive city, and that the desire of city leaders is to create a diverse, highly funded, highly ranked school system that serves ALL of the students that live in the city.
GO ROCKETS!
47
Looks like you'll tell yourself whatever it takes to sleep at night.
5
Give me a break. My sister lives in Alabama near Birmingham, but out in the countryside. You can use whatever PC codewords you think people want to hear to describe why Gardendale wants its own school district, but they can't hide the fact that racism is rampant and still prevalent in the state of Alabama and is likely the motivating factor for school district secession. The last time I visited my sister we spent an afternoon boating on Smith lake....4 hours out there on a busy summer afternoon and didn't see one single boat with anyone of any other race besides white. Not one. Coming from multi ethnic San Francisco, I was shocked. Children become much better people and learn a lot more about the world and life in general when they are exposed to folks of other races and cultures. By trying to segregate your children you are depriving them of a full education and exposure to life. (oh, and not to mention the hypocrisy of waiting until the new multi million dollar high school was built before your community filed its secession request...I believe that was paid for by ALL the residents of Jefferson county, not just those in Gardendale!)
16
Yes you are welcoming, you will welcome anyone with a costume party - you all dressup as "ghosts" using bedsheets, and light nice fires for marshmellows.
Granted crosses are not the best for roasting marshmellows, but its tradition!
Granted crosses are not the best for roasting marshmellows, but its tradition!
5
I was a community organizer in Virginia in the mid '60s. As a native Californian I had grown up in desegregated schools and attending the Riverside and Berkeley campuses of the University of California where I met students across national and racial lines. In Norfolk I saw a world where the white middle class attended private schools. The public schools were frankly inferior. Further, nobody seemed to care whether black kids attended school or not.
I feel the current school system in Birmingham is pathetic.
I feel the current school system in Birmingham is pathetic.
20
The problem starts at the federal level, where there needs to be incentives for consolidation of school districts. As the article clearly states and demonstrates, secession out of a county school district creates an outlet for white communities to create their own school district, dictating on unconstitutional and racist terms who is acceptable. Larger school districts will also erase lines that have been drawn to isolate African American neighborhoods and communities. Because in regards to housing, neighborhoods are just as segregated if not more, compared to fifty years ago. This is not only a problem in Alabama, it is all over the country. Unfortunately the federal government the next three years will be doing nothing of that sort.
Larger school districts will allow for greater state and federal funding because of a broader tax base in the pool. Cheaper procurement, purchase order, etc. and lower administrative costs compared to a school district with a town like Gardendale that only has 14,000 residents. The hardest animal to kill is a high school mascot, but money talks.
Larger school districts will allow for greater state and federal funding because of a broader tax base in the pool. Cheaper procurement, purchase order, etc. and lower administrative costs compared to a school district with a town like Gardendale that only has 14,000 residents. The hardest animal to kill is a high school mascot, but money talks.
3
Best would be 1 national school district. All grades, all over the country taught from the same books, on the same schedule, with national tests every term (questions not delivered until the morning of the exam, so teaching to the test would be impossible, different questions every year). No proctors allowed (they can give out answers or help students) so all exams will be video recorded to check for cheating. Any cheating & the whole class fails the YEAR & stays back. It will be to the students advantage to turn in all cheaters. If all 'Black' schools fail, all the white schools in the area will automatically fail. It will be to their advantage to see that Black schools are up to par or better. Only then will schools be fair & unbiased. Mostly Hispanic, Native American, Asian, & 'other' schools will also be included as they are part of ALL public schools. All private schools will be forced to send to their local schools 5 times the money they use on their private students every year. Not fair for the rich to get better education just because they have more money. No private religious schools allowed. After school religious schools taught at places of worship would of course be allowed. As they are now. Students not to be bused to them by public school buses. No home schooling. It creates unsocialized kids, & they should not be allowed to participate in public school events if they don't go to school there. No more 'some are more equal than others.' Pigs don't rule here.
2
I would assume most white doctors or lawyers would prefer their blonde daughters go to school with the children of black-skinned or Asian doctors or lawyers rather than with white pupils from the working class. (For marriage, I would be less sure, but all of that should be surveyed already).
A separate school system for a wealthy neighborhood provides for other pupils of the preferred background (more than for skin colour) and probably also allows a better relation between taxes and expenses on schools. So it is not all about races.
A separate school system for a wealthy neighborhood provides for other pupils of the preferred background (more than for skin colour) and probably also allows a better relation between taxes and expenses on schools. So it is not all about races.
42
Joe, re-read your post! Its racism runs deep.
Plus, one cannot so neatly disentangle race and class. As to your opening question, many whites would rather have their children go to school with other whites, even working class, where they could excel rather than tolerate mixing with other ethnicities and races.
Concluding that racially-segregated schooling based on class is a good policy simply perpetuates savage inequalities and racism!
Please reconsider your stance!
Plus, one cannot so neatly disentangle race and class. As to your opening question, many whites would rather have their children go to school with other whites, even working class, where they could excel rather than tolerate mixing with other ethnicities and races.
Concluding that racially-segregated schooling based on class is a good policy simply perpetuates savage inequalities and racism!
Please reconsider your stance!
14
Your assumptions are wrong. In America Wealthy Neighborhood translates to White Neighborhood 99.9 % of the time.
8
Yes. But it just happens to be the case that there are very few children of black-skinned doctors or lawyers because there are very few black-skinned doctors or lawyers. And that situation exists because black-skinned people haven't had access to the education, experiences, and opportunities to enable them to become doctors and lawyers.
2
Wow. What a worthwhile read. As a white child that grew up in mid-integration Alabama it was a history lesson.
11
Wow. Maybe I'm out of touch- then again it is Alabama, but I was unaware any public school systems in 2017 had children attending classes in trailers.
Apparently I also need to look into this process of communities "seceding" from their current school districts and forming their own. The article stated the population must be at least 5,000. I don't know the particulars of what public school systems receive in federal aid (if any), but I know in NY state they get an allotment per student per day, along with other benefits I'm sure.
You would assume that communities creating new school districts ends up sapping more state funds for education than keeping the districts together would, then again, school district plays a major role in property value so it's also an economic move by these communities as well.
Interesting read. Also extremely heartening that one of Obama's appointees read directly from Brown v. Board of Ed.- an act that was astonishing even to a lawyer who has fought for civil rights issues since the 70's.
Keep doing your thing your honor!
Apparently I also need to look into this process of communities "seceding" from their current school districts and forming their own. The article stated the population must be at least 5,000. I don't know the particulars of what public school systems receive in federal aid (if any), but I know in NY state they get an allotment per student per day, along with other benefits I'm sure.
You would assume that communities creating new school districts ends up sapping more state funds for education than keeping the districts together would, then again, school district plays a major role in property value so it's also an economic move by these communities as well.
Interesting read. Also extremely heartening that one of Obama's appointees read directly from Brown v. Board of Ed.- an act that was astonishing even to a lawyer who has fought for civil rights issues since the 70's.
Keep doing your thing your honor!
10
There's plenty of schools with kids in trailers for classrooms right here in New York State. In particular in NYC, even in some schools that are not deeply poverty-stricken. Welcome to NYC getting the short end of the funding stick from the NYS legislature in Albany. Also, racism. Because why shouldn't 'urban' schools get less money per pupil (that's the new dogwhistle word, isn't it?).
13
We have kids in trailers in Hoover because a judge won't sign off on redistricting - a plan that has been blessed by every group you can imagine (including the NAACP) and that will not change the racial makeup of any of the schools more than 1% here and there. So yeah, we have trailers at a couple of elementary schools because the schools haven't been allowed to place children in the school that has room for them. Very frustrating - and all within the Hoover school district.
5
Perhaps also because Alabamans refuse to vote for higher property taxes, and in most places pay such a pittance in property tax that there is not enough money to fund the public schools. Just a thought.
3
The ethical consideration is whether or not ones obligation is to ones own children , or to a larger "community." The only way to make the answer the "community" is to truly produce a school system in which all children have a quality (and safe) educational experience so that one is not forced to sacrifice the welfare of your own for the wider good, or to sacrifce the wider good for the benefit of ones children. None of these choices concern the upper 2% who insulated, but it does affect nearly everyone else.
27
You make the argument of the defendants. Their pleadings was that they did choose "community". A "community" isn't an objective thing, its a personal determination by individuals. Before choosing "community", every individual has to choose who are included and excluded in their "community". And when social race is what determines that choice, as the judge's ruling says, the result of choosing "community" will be racial segregation.
2
I share the disappointment of Mr. Clemon. The roots of racism continue to flourish. However, the fight is not for naught for acquiescence is an impossibility
21
Here is how the rich get richer and promote their "white supremacy":
"Gardendale, too, had considered secession for two decades but was deterred when feasibility studies showed that the town of nearly 14,000 could not support an independent school system, partly because the tax base could not generate enough revenue to replace its old and sagging high school. Gardendale lobbied Jefferson County to build a new multimillion-dollar high school, which opened in 2010, within the town’s limits. Gardendale High, which the county schools designed to draw students from several communities, ended up being one of the few truly integrated high schools in the county. Two years after the high school opened its doors, Gardendale activists made their move, starting a campaign for secession."
It is simply criminal. Not surprising, however, from the supposed "christian" state of Alabama. Each day I am more and more embarrassed to be "white". People from outside the supposed prestigious "Gardendale" should take wheel barrows full of manure and dump them all over the lawns and town. Show them what you think of their "specialness".
"Gardendale, too, had considered secession for two decades but was deterred when feasibility studies showed that the town of nearly 14,000 could not support an independent school system, partly because the tax base could not generate enough revenue to replace its old and sagging high school. Gardendale lobbied Jefferson County to build a new multimillion-dollar high school, which opened in 2010, within the town’s limits. Gardendale High, which the county schools designed to draw students from several communities, ended up being one of the few truly integrated high schools in the county. Two years after the high school opened its doors, Gardendale activists made their move, starting a campaign for secession."
It is simply criminal. Not surprising, however, from the supposed "christian" state of Alabama. Each day I am more and more embarrassed to be "white". People from outside the supposed prestigious "Gardendale" should take wheel barrows full of manure and dump them all over the lawns and town. Show them what you think of their "specialness".
116
Well, I would certainly hide behind a fake name to recommend that people spread feces on other people's lawns.
To have a judge berate a witness from the bench about whether or not he read Brown and hand him a copy is unprofessional, to say the least. It would have been nice if the Times had considered their language more carefully, too. To call the movement "resegregation" is unprofessional. To ascribe unspoken motives to race rather than take people at their published words is unprofessional. To write an entire story without considering ordinary school achievement markers such as safety and achievement is unprofessional. And to dismiss arguments promoting small schools when elsewhere in NYT education coverage it is received wisdom that small schools are better schools is unprofessional.
To have a judge berate a witness from the bench about whether or not he read Brown and hand him a copy is unprofessional, to say the least. It would have been nice if the Times had considered their language more carefully, too. To call the movement "resegregation" is unprofessional. To ascribe unspoken motives to race rather than take people at their published words is unprofessional. To write an entire story without considering ordinary school achievement markers such as safety and achievement is unprofessional. And to dismiss arguments promoting small schools when elsewhere in NYT education coverage it is received wisdom that small schools are better schools is unprofessional.
16
We all have this bias in us. Maybe we have to admit it, and move on.
5
Wow. Feel better? I'm sure that a well reasoned and thought out response like that will solve everything.
6