Brown v. Board unraveling? New Harvard study: Schools are Resegregating

MSNBC ^ | August 9th, 2002 | AP

[End The Hypocrisy]

The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found integration between whites and blacks to be decreasing or steady in all but a handful of the nation’s largest school districts over the last 14 years. The report is online at www.law.harvard.edu/groups/civilrights. Attorney Chester Darling, who represents parents fighting a desegregation policy in the NorthEastern town of Lynn, Massachusetts, questioned the study’s assumptions about diversity’s value, though. He also said any new push to create school diversity must be driven by parents and NOT government. “When you have a government involved in enforcing a particular form of diversity, then you have a government making decisions that are illegal,” he said. Another scholar adds: “People are stuck in the old paradigm of race.” “But that’s outmoded because we have some new legal realities to deal with.”

[End The Hypocrisy]

I don't disagree with the goals of racial integration, just the methods involved with supposedly trying to achieve it. Shouldn't the push come from the parents, rather than from the bureaucrats who actually profit by fomenting hostilities between the races? Or does this new Harvard study suggest that our society is breaking off into rivaling factions based on race in ways that will come back to haunt us? Personally I think that nothing can unify the races better than a strong economy which can result from lower taxes, a reduction in truly nonvalue-adding bureaucracy, and a revocation of federal civil servants' career tenure privileges which they snuck in on American taxpayers over a century ago, before we could do much about that abusive reform, what with the limited telecommunications at our disposal then.

[Dog]

Another one......

[Jeff Chandler]

Unless individuals are being assaulted, or otherwise terrorized, the government should butt out when it comes to race. It's a free country, and people are going to live where they want to live, and send their kids to school where they want to.

All this talk about celebrating diversity is just nonsense on stilts. You might as well celebrate the fact that the sky is blue. People come in different ethnic groups, big deal.

[beGlad]

Brown v Topeka BOE ended "separate but equal" policies, the segregation in Topeka forced a little girl to walk far past a "white" public school near her home.

Since that time the courts have done the same thing Topeka BOE was doing ...forcing kids out of schools near their homes only now to achieve balance.

[DoughtyOne]

It is human nature to wish to be with people like yourself. There's no malice in that. Place 99 people that don't know each other in a room equally made up of three groups. One group wears a black square, one a red triangele and one a green hexagon. I'd wager the occupants of the room would drift toward the other folks who had the same insignia.

If for no other reason, they'd think that they would be separated at some point, and wish to learn to know some of the other members of their group, since they'd probably be sharing a common experience at some point.

When schools are integrated, the attendees break out in groups based on race. That's what they prefer generally.

The only people that seem to wish to cram absolute total integration down everyone's throats are social malcontents that aren't happy unless they're micro-managing things clear down to how we brush our teeth.

I'm all for people having associates from all walks of life. But that's providing that people from all walks of life actually want that for themselves. In most cases it isn't important to them.

[RAT Patrol]

From a white kid's perspective, busing was not the end of the world. It was fun actually. From an AA kid's perspective it might be really awful. I went to an all black school once and it was scary. (3rd grade) They said "we're going to beat you up after school" every day. (They didn't.) I was overwhelmed with being different. If I were black, I am not sure I'd rather leave a school where most kids looked like me for a school where I'd be a minority.

In the 4th grade I went to a white school where black kids were bused in. We had one black girl in our class. I wondered, even as a child, if she felt the same way I did when I went to the all black school. (and there were 2 other white kids in my class)

In the 5th grade I was bused to what was an all black school. With busing, it turned into a nearly all white school in a black neighborhood. I loved that school to be honest.

Adults need to think from a kids perspective more often.

[PatrioticAmerican]

I know blacks that go to all black colleges. Funny thing: They also are surprised when they say that they are not part of "white america".