Archives for category: Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration
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Growing Up in the South

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2012 //
1

A reader writes about growing up in the South. She brings back memories to me of growing up in Houston when it was segregated:

I don’t think PUBLIC schools should be catering to one ethnic or religious group either and I don’t think that schools that do so should receive public money.  I grew up under segregation.  My high school integrated when I was in the 11th grade.  The chemistry teacher asked if I minded being lab partners with  “the colored girl”.  I was never a racist, even having grown up in Birmingham, so of course I didn’t mind and Portia Montgomery and I screwed up our lab experiments all year.

I can see why certain religious or ethnic groups with non-mainstream practices might want to have their own schools.  I don’t have a problem with that as long as we don’t pay for it.  There was a Hebrew School in Atlanta where many Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox     Jewish children attended. Many lived in the neighborhood around their school and synagogue They wore their special clothing and curled sideburns and hats.  They did not have school on Fridays because of the Sabbath.  I understood that as well as the Kroger grocery with its separation of foods, separate kosher meat department, rabbi butcher, and huge, about 1/3 of the store, Jewish section. The store was also decorated for Hannukah instead of Christmas and their school choir sang Hannukah carols at the store.  My tax money did not go to any of it.  It was fine.

What I cannot see is public schools bowing down to the needs of the religious right or even recognizing particular races or religious groups exclusively or nearly so.  Sometimes it was difficult in my early years in Atlanta Public Schools which, at the time were 90% black for students and 75% for faculty.  There was discrimination against everyone else.  A principal at one middle school made several stereotyped remarks against me as a white person and eventually got rid of me for teaching while white.  She also ran off ALL her white students who were not special ed. She had her eye on one of mine but did not realize he was biracial.  The schools were extremely Afro-centric, at least the ones where I was.  But because I was only at two where there was a problem with racism towards me and because I was liberal, flexible, older, special ed., and married to a black guy, it did not really bother me.  And I learned a whole lot of black history.

Categories Education Reform, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Some Parents Think Segregation Is Wrong. Me Too.

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2012 //
7

This post contains one of the comments on the Minnesota charter story that I missed while my Internet service was down.

It contributes more to the discussion earlier about whether segregation is okay if it is voluntary.

Let me add that I have never supported the creation of public schools (are charters still public schools?) that welcome one race, one cultural group, one point of view, one group to the exclusion of others. I got death threats twenty years ago when I criticized Afrocentrism, and since then I have criticized Hebrew-language charter schools and an Arabic-language public school. My view is that if there is a demand for a foreign language, it should be taught in public school, but should not be the focus of the curriculum; that way tends towards ethnocentricity. I think the way a multicultural, multiethnic society works best is if we all work together and to the extent possible, learn together. That breaks down fear and misunderstanding.

I know that racial and ethnic segregation exists and that many schools are overwhelmingly one-race or nonwhite. That’s a fact. I just don’t like the idea of accepting it and saying it is inevitable. I grew up in the segregated South. I didn’t like segregation. I thought it was humiliating. I’m always happy now to visit the south and see people and children of different races working together. I wish it had always been like that. I don’t want us to accept segregation as a new normal. It should not be. It’s wrong.

Back in January, I re-posted a tweet from Parents Across America founder Leonie Haimson that pointed to a post on a KKK-affiliated web site that cited this Bloomberg News article approvingly. The post’s author argued that the desire for separation was “natural” and praised the charter school movement for making this possible.Days later, still on vacation, I started getting calls from reporters at Michigan media outlets asking for my response to a vitriolic press release from the Michigan Association of Public School Academies (the main charter school trade/lobbying group in Michigan). MAPSA president Dan Quisenberry called my reposting “sickening,” “beyond insulting,” and “beyond outrageous.” Apparently, I had struck a nerve.I have not, and do not, accuse any charter school of breaking the law, though I am suspicious of the motivation of those who start charter schools designed to appeal to one ethnic or religious group. But as to MAPSA’s argument that “the claim itself has absolutely no merit,” they are on thin ice. A number of academic studies have shown that students in charter schools are likely to be in more segregated environments than their counterparts in local public schools in the same area.A recent policy brief on this subject: http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/chartering-equityHere in Michigan, we have charters that describe themselves as “Afrocentric,” that dedicate themselves to the study and celebration of the cultures of the Middle East, that have a clear focus on Latino students, and that advertise a “moral focus” (code for a Christian education, which they only abandoned under threat of lawsuit). How likely is a white family to enroll their child in an “Afrocentric” school; how likely is a Latino family to enroll their child in a school that focuses on Arab and Middle Eastern language and culture? How often will an African American family living in a small city choose to enroll their child in a charter focused on something like “aviation” which is located in a distant, mostly white, suburb and offers no transportation?I have no issue with celebrating different cultural identities and experiences, but I am very concerned that the headlong rush towards charters will only increase the segregation of our nation. We are playing into the hands of those, of whatever ethnicity or religion, who want to turn their backs on community-governed public education and provide segregated enclaves where children need only mix with those most like themselves. In doing so, we put at risk everything we have done to ensure justice, equal opportunity and equal protection for every American.

For those morbidly interested, the MAPSA press release, and our response, can be found here:
http://www.miparentsforschools.org/files/KKK%20COMPARISON%20PRESS%20RELEASE.pdf (MAPSA’s attack)
http://www.miparentsforschools.org/files/MIPFS_reacts_MAPSA_release.pdf (our response)
Categories Education Reform, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Is Segregation OK if It is By Choice?

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2012 //
8

I received a long response from Joe Nathan in response to my post about segregation in the charter schools of Minnesota.

My post included a link to an article by John Hechinger of Bloomberg News about charter schools in that state that are one-race or one-ethnic group.

The question Joe Nathan’s response raises is this: Is segregation in a public facility (remember, charter schools say they are public schools) commendable so long as the individuals there choose to be segregated?

My problem is that I am old enough to remember that segregationists in the South in the 1950s advocated “freedom of choice” as their answer to the Brown decision. They argued precisely what Joe is saying here. They said, let families choose, and let the chips fall where they may. Curiously, the chips fell where they had always been, with white children in this school and black children in that school.

This is Joe Nathan’s comment:

Bill Wilson, Former Minnesota Commissioner of Human Rights and first African American elected to the St. Paul City Council Presidency, and I responded to these questionable assertions in a column, a portion of which is below. Both of us support more excellent public schools, whether district or charter.

One of us (Wilson) responded several years ago at the Minnesota legislature to the charge that charter schools such as the one he founded were “segregated.” He differentiated between schools like his (Higher Ground Academy) and the segregated public school he was forced to attend in Indiana: “We had no choice,” he recalled. “I was forced to attend an inferior school, farther from home than nearby, better-funded ‘whites-only’ schools. Higher Ground is open to all. No one is forced to attend. Quite a difference.”

http://charternotebook.org/giving-parents-choice-among-various-schools-i

Here’s a bit more of that article.

After working in urban communities for a combination of more than 80 years, one of us serving as Minnesota’s State Commissioner of Human Rights and being elected first African American to serve as St. Paul’s City Council Chair, and helping produce major gains with low income and students of color, we vigorously disagree with a recent assertion on the Charter Notebook blog site that “…any achievement” by a group of students at a charter school that is predominantly of one race is “hollow.” (Rachel Scott, “Independent Charter Schools and Diversity, Part One: The Problem of “Resegregation,” January 18, 2012)

Imposed separation because of or on the basis of race or color is the classic definition of segregation. People choosing of their own free will to attend a public school is the exercise of liberty. The right to assemble and exercising freedom of choice is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. How then is choosing which charter school to attend not consistent with the right of assembly? Unlike imposed segregation, charter schools include all who apply or wish to come. Unlike segregated schools of the 1950’s and 1960’s, these schools most certainly do not exclude anyone because of their race or color of skin.

Minnesota’s largest daily newspaper, the Star Tribune has found for the last two years that the vast majority of Minneapolis-St Paul area public schools that are “beating the odds” are charter public schools. In September, 2011, a graphic appeared in the Star Tribune listing the 10 public schools in reading and math with high percentages of low income students that had the highest percentage of students proficient in reading or math on the official statewide examinations. See:http://www.startribune.com/newsgraphics/129810153.html.

The top eight of the ten schools listed in math were charter public schools, and the top nine of ten schools listed in reading were charter public schools. These were schools that “showed the highest percentage of students scoring at grade level or better, despite having a high number of students living in poverty.” To be eligible to be on the list, a school had to enroll at least 85% students from low-income families.

The vast majority of these high-ranking charter public schools enrolled 80% or more students of color. Many of the “beat the odds” schools enrolled 90% or more from one race. Bill Wilson, co-author of this blog post (and former Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights) founded and is director of one of these schools. US News and World Report also has listed the school Wilson helped start, Higher Ground Academy, as one of the nation’s finest high schools.

Denying the value of these schools, as Scott does in her recent blog post, reminds us of what Ralph Ellison wrote about in the civil rights classic, Invisible Man. Ellison wrote, in part, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Minnesota, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration
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