Bob Herbert writes about race and schools in today’s New York Times, specifically, about how “poor black and Hispanic public school students” will never receive decent educations until the “toxic concentrations of poverty” that exist in their schools are dispersed. But it is the students themselves who, together, form such “toxic concentrations,” and thus it is the students themselves who must be dispersed. This is only sensible, writes Herbert, because “the best teachers” won’t teach in “toxic” settings, where “expectations regarding student achievement are frequently much lower, and there are lower levels of parental involvement.” Send the black and brown kids to schools with white and yellow ones, or bring the yellow and white ones to the places where the black and brown ones spend their days, Herbert writes, and the black and brown pupils will absolutely learn more and become better people. But unfortunately, he continues, “despite all the babble about a postracial America,” such racial shuffling of students “has been off the table for a long time.” Herbert is mixed up, because it is precisely in a “postracial” society that race-based school assignments would be “off the table.” If the hypothetical society in question is “postracial” it cannot obsess over or even consider race in school-zoning questions.
—Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
Liam, I think that you are confusing a “post-racial” race-blindness with denial.
Just consider that it does not occur to you to challenge the terminology of “toxic setting” to describe a school in which students are both poor and of color. Nor the assumption that good teachers would have no desire to teach there, or the inevitability of “low expectations” or “parent involvement.” And the very existence of such schools that can easily be defined as black, hispanic or minority AND poor (not to mention low in achievement) points out that a good many things are determined for children prior to birth and race seems to figure in heavily. Hardly “post-racial.”
For the record, I am white. I understand how difficult it is for many of us to get our arms around the persistent realities of race in our society. But the reality still includes deeply ingrained impressions that when black people start to show up in numbers–in the neighborhood, at the mall, in the schools–whatever the place is must be in decline. A group of white teenagers may be annoying, but a group of black teenagers, particularly if they are male, feels dangerous.
And while “race shuffling” as we experienced it under court-ordered desegregation is “off the table” as policy, we still adhere to de facto and de jure policies that virtually guarantee that races will be held at bay. We rigidly tie school assignments to neighborhoods, with a sense of entitlement that says “he who can afford the priciest house deserves all the best education for his children.” And our states are cut up into districts that ensure that is the case.