copyright © 2007 Betsy L. Angert. BeThink.org
The mantra may be “teach tolerance.” Yet, we teach our children intolerance. In America, we see Historic Reversals, [and] Accelerating Resegregation, so says a report released in August 2007. This study, conducted by Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee, of the Civil Rights Project, University of California, Los Angeles documents what is evident throughout the country; racism is alive and well in America. Indeed, racial discrimination grows stronger each and every day. The most recent Supreme Court decision, handed down in June 2007, endorsed further racial divides. Parents Involved in Community Schools versus Seattle School District Number 1 et al, sanctions school segregation. For the most part, parents and the population at-large embrace this ruling.
People now have permission to do what they have long done, discriminate. We can predict, with consent from the highest court in the land, prejudice will continue to grow. Fractures and fissures will expand and the achievement gap will widen. Currently, forty-three [43] percent of American school children are not Caucasian. The education they receive has been sub-standard for decades.
Many segregated schools struggle to attract highly qualified teachers and administrators, do not prepare students well for college and fail to graduate more than half their students.
Integration in the few schools that have worked to improve opportunities for all, equally, has helped to a degree. However, for the most part non-whites cannot or are not easily enrolled in the better schools. Proximity and policies hinder any efforts to secure equivalent scholarship for students of color. The Supreme Court decision will only serve to exacerbate a dire situation.
In its June ruling the Supreme Court forbade most existing voluntary local efforts to integrate schools in a decision favored by the Bush administration despite warnings from academics that it would compound educational inequality.
“It is about as dramatic a reversal in the stance of the federal courts as one could imagine,” said Gary Orfield, a UCLA professor and a co-author of the report.
“The federal courts are clearly pushing us backward segregation with the encouragement of the Justice Department of President George W. Bush,” he said in an interview.
The United States risks becoming a nation in which a new majority of non-white young people will attend “separate and inferior” schools, the report said.
Even when the schools are supposedly integrated, they are not. Attitudes separate the races; reason and rational thought are but clouds, passing swiftly through the mind. Hearts and souls struggle to survive when segregation exists around every bend and under every tree branch. Subtle talk of lynching remains strong in society. We see it in the schools; children act out what adult say they reject; yet in reality project. We need only consider the circumstances of the “Jena Six” to support this notion. It’s still about race in Jena, Louisiana.
Last week [July 2007] in Detroit, the NAACP held a mock funeral for the N-word. But a chilling case in Louisiana shows us how far we have to go to bury racism. This story begins in the small, central Louisiana town of Jena. Last September, a black high school student requested the school’s permission to sit beneath a broad, leafy tree in the hot schoolyard. Until then, only white students sat there.
The next morning, three nooses were hanging from the tree. The black students responded en masse. Justin Purvis, the kid who first sat under the tree, told filmmaker Jacquie Soohen: “They said, ‘Y’all want to go stand under the tree?’ We said, ‘Yeah.’ They said, ‘If you go, I’ll go. If you go, I’ll go.’ One person went, the next person went, everybody else just went.”
Then the police and the district attorney showed up. Substitute teacher Michelle Rogers recounts: “District Attorney Reed Walters proceeded to tell those kids that ‘I could end your lives with the stroke of a pen.'”
It wouldn’t happen for a few more months, but that is exactly what the district attorney is trying to do.
The Jena Six
Indeed the stroke of a pen may put six innocent children into prison. Young men, in the prime of their lives may realize what millions have known for centuries. In America, Black and Brown are not beautiful.
This is obvious as we watch the daily debate in the halls of Congress and on television screens. Immigrants of color are not welcome. Fences are built to “protect” white Americans from their own fears. African-Americans are ‘busted’ merely for driving while Black. White citizens within the United States are apprehensive. Statistics show, soon, Caucasians will be in the minority. Indeed, the Black and Brown population is increasing. This is true in public schools, in our cities, and in the rural countryside. Breeding, just as much in society, belies logic.
Almost nine-tenths of American students were counted as white in the early l960s, but the number of white students fell 20 percent from l968 to 2005, as the baby boom gave way to the baby bust for white families, while the number of blacks increased 33 percent and the number of Latinos soared 380 percent amid surging immigration of a young population with high birth rates.
Just as in centuries past, the poorest among us tend to congregate in ghettoes, not by choice, but in reality. The impoverished are often under-educated. They cannot secure quality positions in the workforce. Those that lack academic expertise and not empowered to do what might benefit them as individuals and society as a whole. Thus, they congregate in inner cities, live in substandard houses, and travel only as far as meager transportation systems allow. The disadvantaged do not have the opportunities the more affluent among us have.
As the indigent population increases, conditions worsen. Cities become more crowded, crime more prevalent, and students are less able to acquire knowledge. Division gives rise to greater discrimination. The cycle of separation is endless. Eventually, we spiral downward. Indeed we have.
The country’s rapidly growing population of Latino and black students is more segregated than they have been since the l960s and we are going backward faster in the areas where integration was most far-reaching.
Under the new decision, local and state educators have far less freedom to foster integration than they have had for the last four decades. The Supreme Court’s 2007 decision has sharply limited local control in this arena, which makes it likely that segregation will further increase.
Americans love to label their country a “melting pot,” a stew that combines races, religions, and creeds. However, this society is not nor has it ever been a delicious blend. Those that consider themselves cream, rise to the top. They take their friends and family with them.
The elite ethnic groups are well educated. Never would they wish to be identified as racist. Auspiciously, these affluent persons and those with less dollars, but beautiful pearly white skin write the books, prepare the dictionaries and define themselves, “color-blind.” Yet, we know, they are not. In Jena, Louisiana, we recall that a Black student felt the need to ask if he might sit under a tree. In America, even nature is reserved for the white persons to enjoy.
The next day, hanging from the tree, were three ropes, in school colors, each tied to make a noose.
The events set in motion by those nooses led to a schoolyard fight. And that fight led to the conviction, on June 28, 2007, of a Black student at Jena High School for charges that can bring up to 22 years in prison.
Mychal Bell, a 16-year-old sophomore football star at the time he was arrested, was convicted by an all-white jury, without a single witness being called on his behalf. And five more Black students in Jena still face serious charges stemming from the fight.
Caseptla Bailey, a Black community leader and mother of one of the Black students, told the London Observer, “To us those nooses meant the KKK, they meant, ‘Niggers, we’re going to kill you, we’re going to hang you till you die.'” The attack was brushed off as a “youthful stunt.” The three white students responsible, given only three days of in-school suspension.
In response to the incident, several Black students, among them star players on the football team, staged a sit-in under the tree. The principal reacted by bringing in the white district attorney, Reed Walters, and 10 local police officers to an all-school assembly. Marcus Jones, Mychal Bell’s father, described the assembly to Revolution:
“Now remember, with everything that goes on at Jena High School, everybody’s separated. The only time when Black and white kids are together is in the classroom and when they playing sports together. During lunch time, Blacks sit on one side, whites sit on the other side of the cafeteria. During canteen time, Blacks sit on one side of the campus, whites sit on the other side of the campus.
“At any activity done in the auditorium-anything-Blacks sit on one side, whites on the other side, okay? The DA tells the principal to call the students in the auditorium. They get in there. The DA tells the Black students, he’s looking directly at the Black students-remember, whites on one side, Blacks on the other side-he’s looking directly at the Black students. He told them to keep their mouths shut about the boys hanging their nooses up. If he hears anything else about it, he can make their lives go away with the stroke of his pen.”
DA Walters concluded that the students should “work it out on their own.” Police officers roamed the halls of the school that week, and tensions simmered throughout the fall semester.
Ah, that stew, and the cooks. When District Attorney Walters presumes and proclaims there are too many chefs. They have spoiled the broth and the soup must stand alone, it simmers on the stove, unattended. Finally, as the fire underneath the kettle heats the concoction, the mixture begins to boil. Sauce spills out and many are burned. Indeed, ultimately we all are. For as much as we wish to separate the parts, we are each part of the whole.
However, sadly, the scars show more on darker skin. Nonetheless, we all are wounded. The pain wrought by an authorized and artificial separation affects every one of us.
It is true. Education and the economy are inexorably tied. If pupils in any population do not receive an adequate erudition, the entirety suffers, economically. We all feel the effects of segregation. What is in our cities and in our country is palpable in our schools. Circumstances in educational facilities are felt fiscally.
What white persons may wish to consider without the fear that currently drives them, is that they are never separate from those they prefer not to see. What they do to beings with Black and Brown skin will ultimately have an effect on their lily white bodies.
Caucasian Americans have a decision to make. They can choose harmony or continue to allow their trepidation to hurt them, to harm us all.
We are in the last decade of a white majority in American public schools and there are already minorities of white students in our two largest regions, the South and the West. When today’s children become adults, we will be a multiracial society with no majority group, where all groups will have to learn to live and work successfully together. School desegregation has been the only major policy directly addressing this need and that effort has now been radically constrained.
The schools are not only becoming less white but also have a rising proportion of poor children. The percentage of school children poor enough to receive subsidized lunches has grown dramatically. This is not because white middle class students have produced a surge in private school enrollment; private schools serve a smaller share of students than a half century ago and are less white.
The reality is that the next generation is much less white because of the aging and small family sizes of white families and the trend is deeply affected by immigration from Latin American and Asia. Huge numbers of children growing up in families with very limited resources, and face an economy with deepening inequality of income distribution, where only those with higher education are securely in the middle class.
It is a simple statement of fact to say that the country’s future depends on finding ways to prepare groups of students who have traditionally fared badly in American schools to perform at much higher levels and to prepare all young Americans to live and work in a society vastly more diverse than ever in our past.
Some of our largest states will face a decline in average educational levels in the near future as the racial transformation proceeds if the educational success of nonwhite students does not improve substantially.
While throughout the nation adults discuss busing or income based integration in the schools, we must realize that Band-Aids will never cover the lesions that lie beneath the surface. What we do in our schools mirrors what is done in our neighborhoods. If we are to truly prosper, Americans must accept and acknowledge that no matter the exterior color, beauty is within. Skin is surface. Depth is what we create when we educate our children. An educated person, Black, white, or Brown benefits him or herself, as well as us all.
Currently, the dropout rates are extraordinary. When young persons are not stimulated to think and are not expected to perform there is little reason to stay in school. Dollars may seem more attractive and meaningful to those adolescents that receive little in their local educational facilities. Whether greenbacks are appealing or not, in our society they are necessary for survival. Possibly, money motivates more than the young. I suspect, adults quantify their decisions based on budget. Therefore, let us look at education as a pocketbook issue. Perchance, the purse and its strings will garner some attention.
Broad policy decisions in education can be framed around a simple question: Do the benefits to society of investing in an educational strategy outweigh the costs?
We [researchers at Teachers College, Columbia University] provide an answer for those individuals who currently fail to graduate from high school. The present cohort of 20-year olds in the US today includes over 700,000 high school dropouts, many from disadvantaged backgrounds. We investigate the economic consequences of improving their education.
First, we identify five leading interventions that have been shown to raise high school graduation rates; and we calculate their costs and their effectiveness. Second, we add up the lifetime public benefits of high school graduation. These include higher tax revenues as well as lower government spending on health, crime, and welfare. (We do not include private benefits such as higher earnings).
Next, we compare the costs of the interventions to the public benefits. We find that each new high school graduate would yield a public benefit of $209,000 in higher government revenues and lower government spending for an overall investment of $82,000, divided between the costs of powerful educational interventions and additional years of school attendance leading to graduation. The net economic benefit to the public purse is therefore $127,000 per student and the benefits are 2.5 times greater than the costs.
If the number of high school dropouts in this age cohort was cut in half, the government would reap $45 billion via extra tax revenues and reduced costs of public health, of crime and justice, and in welfare payments. This lifetime saving of $45 billion for the current cohort would also accrue for subsequent cohorts of 20-year olds.
If there is any bias to our calculations, it has been to keep estimates of the benefits conservative. Sensitivity tests indicate that our main conclusions are robust: the costs to the nation of failing to ensure high school graduation for all America’s children are substantial.
Educational investments to raise the high school graduation rate appear to be doubly beneficial: the quest for greater equity for all young adults would also produce greater efficiency in the use of public resources.
America, you decide. Will we continue to cultivate practices that endorse separate and unequal, or will we invest in integration. Many parents applauded the Supreme Court decision that allowed their progeny to stay close to home. Granted, the transport of students to schools far from the safety and sanctuary of the suburbs is less than desirable. However, if we do not fully, adequately, and equally educate those that have less wealth and fewer resources we will continue to grow poverty. Perchance it is time to ponder; people need people. Blacks need Whites. Browns require Reds, Yellow, and those whose skin is olive Green. In actuality, each of us does best when we acknowledge we are one.
Pssst, someone please tell the Justices seated in the Supreme Court. Perhaps, they are too isolated to notice. Let us guide them to the window, ask them to look out onto the streets. People of all races, colors, and creed commingle in this country. If only they were encouraged to do so in the schools.
Schools, Segregation, Sources . . .
