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WORD COUNT
659
MAY 21, 2008
DESEGREGATION NEEDS A NEW ANGLE – by William A. Collins
Integration,
In our schools;
Needs a whole new,
Set of rules.
If America truly
believed in desegregation we would all be desegregated by now. But we
aren’t. And we’re already pushing 150 years since slavery and 60 since
Brown v. Board of Education. That should have been plenty of time.
Unfortunately as a
nation we continue to drag our feet. Indeed the Supreme Court recently
ruled against the desegregation we already have. It said that cities
may no longer bus kids for the purpose of racial integration. It’s
unconstitutional, they say. Who hired those guys, anyway? While plenty
of morally-grounded citizens winced at that decision, the press only
treated it very matter-of-factly, as though it were no big deal. No
protesters filled the
streets.
And so the
defendants, Louisville and Seattle, were ordered to stop assertively
mixing races in their schools, and you can bet parent watchdog groups
will make sure that similar retrenchment nationwide is not far behind.
No doubt inventive and moral school officials will dutifully keep
nibbling away at the malign effects of residential segregation, but
their sharpest tool, busing, has now been lost. Not that busing had
moved us remarkably far ahead anyway. Most of the country remains
nearly as segregated today as when the Brown lawsuit was originally
filed.
Our city offers a
classic example of how that current inauspicious system works. A very
mixed and reasonably high-minded place, its minority population runs
about 28 percent. But its minority school population runs 50 percent.
The causes of this disparity are no great mystery. Many white parents
of means, fixated on their kids’ education, send them to nearby private
schools. Others, when their offspring reach school age, simply move to
suburbs beyond the price range of blacks and Latinos. Presto! – a deeply
segregated system.
Progressive cities
with large school districts, like Louisville and Seattle, tried to cure
this poisonous problem with busing. Now that’s been overturned. Some
states that use smaller districts have tried inter-town magnet schools.
But not enough suburban white parents sign up to send their kids to the
city, no matter how good the school. And what can you do anyway in huge
places like New York and Chicago? Not much.
We do read from time
to time about heroic and inspired teachers, administrators, parent
groups, or researchers who make a real difference someplace. For a
while. But eventually they burn out or retire and the sea closes back
in over them. In any case no large scale systemic solutions have
emerged.
Thus it may be time
for a strategy change. Plaintiffs who sue school boards and governors
to integrate classrooms might instead want to cast a wider net. With so
many years of disappointing experience in hand, perhaps it’s time to sue
instead for the placement of assisted housing in every neighborhood. If
the courts recoil from mixing races in the schools, let’s mix them where
we live. Then the schools will take care of themselves. Our present
housing arrangements must surely constitute purposeful illegal
segregation. Discriminatory zoning rules are plainly the worst of
society’s ill-intentioned tools.
Other recent
high-profile events also demonstrate the biased result of malevolent
government actions. The response to New Orleans plainly shows racial
preference, as does the sub-prime mortgage collapse. Minorities were,
and still are, steered to the most vicious loans. And we already know
that drug law enactment, enforcement and incarceration are aimed at
minorities, as are second-rate medical care and voter identification
laws. Further, the average wealth for whites in our state today is
$179,000; for minorities, only $7,000.
There’s got to be
another lawsuit in there somewhere. And if all else fails, there’s
always the generous application of government money. Lots of money.
Food, heat, health care, and tutoring need to be provided to kids who
lack hem. Might as well start now. School integration lawsuits have
shown that they simply can’t do the job by themselves. It’s time to try
something stronger.
--
Columnist William A.
Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk,
Connecticut. A photo of Bill Collins is available
CLICK HERE
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