Racial integration in public schools--2011 edition

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Please read:

http://blogs.usdoj.gov/blog/archives/1268

and

http://newsroom-magazine.com/2011/executive-branch/justice-department/justice-moves-to-enforce-school-desegregation-in-cleveland-mississippi-schools/

Here are MY thoughts, and I look forward to reading what anyone else has to say on this matter.

Firstly, I do not consider myself a hateful person. I do not believe in "separate-but-equal." I do not believe it's right to administer justice one way for one person and a different way for another person based on ethnicity.

What does bother me somewhat, though, are the ideas some people have about integration and that certain things are not being accounted for in these and related court cases.

For one, there is a tendency for people to want to live with those "of their own kind," i.e. those with whom they share certain cultural values. This need not have to do with skin color or race, but very often it DOES have to do with race. If one group of people does not wish to associate with another group, for whatever reason, they are not forced to in this country.

In Cleveland, MS, as you might infer from the article, there is a set of train tracks dividing the eastern part of the city from the western part. The east side is predominantly black, while the western side is mixed. There are no laws in place whatsoever that prevent blacks, asian, middle eastern, or even Martians and vampires from living in so-called "white" neighborhoods. But neither are there any laws FORCING them to. What basically exists in Cleveland is school choice. It is possible for Eastside district parents, as far as I'm aware at least, to send their kids to Cleveland (and vice versa). Eastside parents, if nothing else, vote with their feet in that they show relatively little interest in sending their kids to Cleveland, either by choosing to or by moving to Cleveland neighborhoods.

I'm all too personally familiar with the situation in Cleveland. I attended 4.5 years of college at Delta State University majoring in music education, which is located in Cleveland, Mississippi. During my observation and field experience semester prior to full-time student teaching, I was assigned to Eastside. Sure, it was a little awkward being the "white dude," but I had no real problems with the kids, nor them with me. I was there to observe and assist (but not teach). I did my required hours and I was done. I might add that predominantly black school bands have a distinct "style" that is culturally relevant but objectionable to more "academic" sensibilities. If you've ever seen the movie "Drumline," you'll get a heavily "cleaned up" version of what I experienced. The impression I got back in the late 1990's was not so much that black students bemoaned their situation and longed for a "white" education, but rather they like where they were and the cultural spirit of the place. They did not wish to be "integrated" or "assimilated" into any other culture, and their teachers were just as qualified as anyone else, no need for skin color considerations at all.

Leake County is where I grew up, and I am also familiar with their situation as well. They don't want integration, either. I feel differently about my hometown, though, than what's going on in Cleveland. I grew up east of Carthage, MS, just barely a mile or two from the Lobutcha Creek bridge, the boundary between the Carthage district and the Edinburg district. When I came home after completing my master's degree, I had to quickly find a job and got no argument from my mom and stepdad living with them for a couple of months until I got a job and could relocate. At that time Edinburg was seeking an elementary music teacher and were considering possibly hiring a band director. I was excited about the prospect, but I never heard from them again until after I'd signed a contract with someone else just days before. When I went in for the interview, I got my first real opportunity to see the school. I never attended public school since my parents sent me to Leake Academy. For a virtually all-white area, the school was remarkably run-down. I also interviewed at South Leake, a predominantly black school but was remarkably modern and well kept. Now, what I can tell you about Edinburg students and parents is they love the school and they are active and enthusiastic about school activities. But I happen to know an Edinburg education is the bare minimum for a basic college prep curriculum. They don't really offer that many opportunities such as well-rounded arts programs, music, band/orchestra, and so on. Nor are Edinburg parents very concerned about it. It's a school that exists only to really serve the interests of "white" parents who want to keep their kids away from the influence of black culture. I know this because my stepfather, an adamant racist, graduated from their, all but one of his kids attended Edinburg, and virtually all of his grandchildren attended or attend Edinburg, and from kids I grew up with that attended Edinburg, the attitudes are still being reinforced. Maybe not by the school itself, but Edinburg parents don't seem to be doing anything to stop it.

Carthage, on the other hand, is the best of all possible worlds with a massive band program, as many student activities as there are students, about any sports activity you can think of, on and on... It's a GREAT school, well-maintained, well-funded. It's actually even better in a lot of ways than my alma mater, LA, because of more diverse opportunities. I actually begged my folks to get me in Carthage even though I lived in the wrong district, and it wasn't uncommon for parents in my area to fib about their place of residence in order to attend Carthage. Integration will likely mean better opportunities and more of them available for all involved in the Carthage/Leake County situation. Closing Thomastown and Edinburg will mean that students can learn with access to better teachers and better facilities while South Leake will enjoy more diversity.

The Leake County situation, as with the Cleveland/Eastside situation, has opponents on both sides as you might expect, and with good reason. People tend to vote with their feet, meaning they choose to live where they live in order to provide the best educational opportunities for their children. For some, living in the Edinburg district is a matter of convenience. But for others, it's a choice because they see the opportunities in Edinburg as superior to that of Carthage (I disagree, but I'm not the one making the decision). Still others want to avoid what they perceive as harmful black influence, whether or not this attitude is driven by racist motivations. What is about to happen in Leake County over the next two years has been a long time in coming because Leake County refused to comply with integration laws and the DOJ has finally been called to step in and take action. Edinburg (and Carthage to a lesser degree), just like Cleveland, amounts to little more than a "white flight" school. Yet there are no laws that make white flight illegal. There is no "forced integration." So why is it the DOJ is effectively breaking up white flight schools just because they're white flight and forcing them to send their kids to schools in different geographical districts? Sure, Leake County probably deserves what's happening to it, and for as long as I was school aged I never could make sense of the Leake school districts. But do parents really not have a right to live where they want in order to get their children what they think is the best education?

This should be interesting.

Add in the three kids who want to shoot marbles at recess but are forced by the teacher to be the last three chosen for the relay race teams.

Nature abhors Green Monkeys and dissenters. And paraphrasing what someone said in the paper last year, Democracy means people do not get to do what they want.

Indeed. And well said!

I think I have some confusion about the situation, but I do have some general opinions.

1. I do not believe in separate but equal. I think that history has proven that the "equal" very frequently was anything but.
2. I do not support a being with "their own kind" philosophy. I think education is supposed to prepare you for life and life isn't really like that any more. Short of moving to an area with zero racial diversity, you can't have a say over who your neighbor is, who teaches your child, who serves your meal in your favorite restaurant. That's life. I think it's best to not shelter your child from the fact that there are people out there who are different from them. That said, if you really can't stand the idea of mingling with "the other kinds" there are the options of private schools, moving to an area of zero diversity, or home schooling.
Not knowing the area, or the neighborhoods that feed into these schools, it's difficult to say if people are choosing to live where they do based on income, or a real preference to "live with their own kind".

That said, I don't think that redrawing school districts based on ethnicity is right either. Say you're doing it to more evenly disperse tax monies, if you want... At least that seems reasonable to me, but I think I understood this to all be within one school district, so it's up to that district to distribute monies appropriately. This is where the whole "separate but equal" idea fails. I think that all schools should offer appropriate AP courses, but if for some reason it can't be justified at one school (which I think is BS), the student should be encouraged to transfer schools with appropriate curriculum for that student. If these high schools are in fact within the same district, perhaps the school board should find a way to share teachers, or offer courses in an extra-curricular type setting... If I go to school A, and want to take French, but it's only offered at school B... I should either be allowed to transfer or the school district needs to find a reasonable way to offer French to the students at school A, such as an after school class.
This, to me, would seem to be an adequate way to nullify most of my arguments against the way this school district seems to be currently conducting it's business.
There is, however, another interesting education system I was vaguely introduced to during the year I spent in Canada (and perhaps it would be good to get a Canadian's opinion on the matter ) Where I lived, high schools were goal oriented (I'm sure there's a better term). There were AP high schools, and vocational high schools, and (I think) general completion high schools. These were intended (not sure how it really worked out for the students) to give kids a head start on whatever they planned for their future. Introducing a system like this could be a positive thing for the area you're talking about.
Another thing I really appreciated about the Canadian system was that as a parent you have the option of sending your child to public school, or private and the government still paid for it. Catholic, Montessori ... all paid for. I thought that was really cool.

I think I'm really on the fence in this issue because of a real lack of understand of motives on the parts of everyone involved. Does the DOE just want to see numbers that reflect racial diversity or do they see a serious injustice being done when comparing schools? Are the people, white and black, choosing to live where they are because they want to segregate themselves, for financial reasons, or simply because that's where they're expected to live.

I don't know.

I don't really understand the issue. What is stopping people from going to the other school? Self segregation?

Apparently yes, at least in the first case. In the first case, there was a mostly white K-12 school, an almost entirely black K-12 school, and mixed K-7 and 8-12 schools. The Justice department is shutting down both K-12 schools, presumably sending all the kids to the K-7 and 8-12 schools.

That must mean the racially more segregated K-12 schools must have been smaller, if all their students can be accommodated at the other schools. So yes, it does seem like self segregation was involved there.

I have mixed feelings on the question. On the one hand I like to see parents have the choice about which schools they send their kids to. On the other hand I can see the argument that the state might have an interest in raising children in a more racially integrated environment to avoid racial tensions when they become adults, and these are state funded schools. On the gripping hand, the state funding comes from taxpayers, after all, and it's also unclear that racially integrated schools reduce future racism rather than exacerbating it.

Which is absurd. School integration seriously impacting racial tensions is wishful thinking. The schools as they stand are full of cliques and cabals ingroups and outgroups. The various layers of Green Monkeys in my several schools were no less green for being mainstreamed.

My purpose in starting this thread was not to take sides, but really to see what people think about this kind of thing even today. It concerns me because it affects people very close to home. I live in Greenville, MS, which is less than an hour's drive from Cleveland. Leake County is in a completely different part of the state, not just in distance but in geography. You can wiki Mississippi Delta if you like. It's a weird place in a lot of ways, not just the Cleveland/Eastside issue. Leake County is in the central, hilly area of the state which is also a weird place but the people there at least seem much more normal to me than Delta people. I'm not saying that as a negative thing--but the Delta is distinct to the point it might as well be its own little nation.

As far as how I feel personally about the matter, Philo pretty much summed up what I think. I admit the situation really can be confusing, so I'll try to answer any questions if it will help.

Yes. Absolutely. One of the problems back in the Civil Rights era was that they tried to maintain segregation, rationalizing the education system as equal since whites and blacks really did both have access to public schools. However, what is questionable is how qualified their teachers were (for one). White teachers would be disinclined to teach in black schools. But black teachers didn't tend to have the best education themselves, and the quality of education suffered. It wasn't that black teachers are inferior teachers, and no doubt many of them really were brilliant. It's just that not having appropriate access to education doesn't prepare you for the field. "Being black" is not good enough reason to deny someone access to education. It's a catch-22, you see. To get a good education, you have to have well-educated and prepared teachers. To have well-educated and prepared teachers, you have to have access to good education. But you can't get a good education because of... Well, you get the idea. But worst of all is that while they SAY separate-but-equal, the environment itself was NOT being given fair and equal treatment. If black schools really were funded and maintained on par with white schools, the argument would have been killed right there on the spot.


For what it's worth, I agree. But that's the thing. People ARE willing to move to areas with zero racial diversity, and they do. I'm going to be honest here. Rural northerners pick on us southerners for being racist and such. But it's hard to fairly make that kind of judgment call if you yourself aren't directly affected. Black/white culture in the rural north is much more homogenous when and where it occurs, and it has to do with a significantly lower black population. In places like the Delta and in big cities, you have the "problem" of two solid blocks of culturally divergent mindsets. And when you get enough people on both sides together, sooner or later you're going to have a clash, and a lot of it has to do with limited exposure to each other and people making up their minds based on stereotypes, cliches, and very limited experience. It's easy in a situation to condemn the entire population when that's all you know, and both sides are guilty of this. The rural north tends to live a life sheltered from this kind of existence, which makes it easy to point fingers and say that southern whites just need to get over it. We feel like we've done all we can, that we've held out the olive branch far too long. The ball is no longer in our court, and we've moved on. When certain areas or certain sides of the tracks become hostile and dangerous to us, we're going to move somewhere more friendly. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with that.


To clarify, Leake County Schools are administrated by a single school board and a single superintendent. The districting just has to do with which schools students attend based on geography. As I'm sure you've figured out, the lines "just happened" to be drawn such that whites went to Edinburg and blacks went to Thomastown and South Leake. It's up to the board to decide who gets what money, although there's no stopping individual schools from applying for grants based on the needs of the community. South Leake is really a nice school, and arguments to the contrary focus on who goes to school there. Edinburg is merely a "machine for learning in," essentially a haven for rednecks. I've never once set foot in Thomastown, so I have no idea. All I've been told is that it's a black version of Edinburg, maybe even worse. Carthage is your typical small-town city school, but at least the numbers of white-black students are closer to an even split than elsewhere.


You would think. But that's unreasonable, especially given the transportation demands that causes. What they're trying to do now that the DOJ has stepped in is let go of teachers they don't need or can't pay, put the best ones from all schools where they'll be most effective, and give all students better access to the best available education. What's supposed to happen is that South Leake will have a higher white population, while Carthage will still be a fairly even split once you get both Edinburg and Thomastown districts together. However, that all means that Carthage has to figure out where to put them all. So that means bond issues and new buildings. They JUST built a new modern elementary school, but I don't think they were counting on something like this happening! Back to the drawing board... What my stepfather says is Leake Academy will have to build new buildings. Somehow I doubt this is necessary. It won't be 1970 all over again. Carthage is hands-down a better school than LA. But I do think you'll see a number of white families moving out, maybe eastward to Philadelphia (either Philadelphia or Neshoba County schools) or to Scott County. Kosciusko is to the north of us, and it's a fine school (I used to drive up there for clarinet lessons back in the day; I remember when they opened the new facilities). They WON'T go to Canton. Rankin county has some really nice schools. And we're only talking a TINY number of people who harbor a deep hatred for consolidation.


Is that like magnet schools? I'm not sure, but I think Cleveland experimented with that. Apparently, if I understand my information right, it didn't work too well for them in the end. The problem with magnet schools is that "certain" students will "just happen" to be drawn to certain areas because it means avoiding certain "other" students. Now, I have heard of magnet schools that do extremely well. Mississippi does have a publicly funded "Math and Science" school as well as a "School of the Arts." I helped a former student of mine get into that one. To my knowledge there's no de facto segregation going on there, but in the private school where I am now all the Asian parents ever talk about is getting their kids in MSMS. No, I'm not kidding! And they'll tell you it's because they "hate white people." I'm not shooting your magnet school idea down, but they do take a lot of funding to work right.


Yeah! It blows my mind that they do it, though.


I think Leake County Schools have had this coming since the 60's, and it reflects poorly on their citizens that it has taken so long to bring this about. But if you want me to be honest, it's political, too.

What you WON'T hear about in the news is how all this got started. There was a school board member, and as far as I know he's still there, who represents the South Leake school district. I don't remember all the details, and it doesn't really matter, but he got in some kind of disagreement with another board member or some such and threatened to call the DOJ if he didn't get his way. So the general opinion in Leake County about this guy is really low right now, which is understandable. Apparently someone called his bluff and he got on the phone with the court. I'm not sure the DOJ really CARES. It just sets a bad precedent if you have one county school system that still hasn't conformed to Civil Rights legislation while everyone else has. There's nothing stopping anybody else from districting the way Leake County does, and that will create a legal nightmare for every federal court in the nation. Somebody gave them a reason to crack a whip, and they got to crackin'.


It appears to me that it's a little bit of everything you mentioned, and possibly some other reasons. I don't know. I just grew up here!

The thing is, blacks here still carry a lot of post-Civil Rights Era resentment against whites, and racial mistrust is pretty much only a residual attitude among those whites who were alive during World War II. Civil Rights workers in the south as well as blacks came to be viewed as trouble-makers, which to a small degree was true. And while I insist that I harbor no racial hatred towards anyone, it utterly confounds me that younger generations of black people behave the way the do towards whites. Just two weeks ago, my wife was shopping when two black girls walked in front of her, locked arms, walked extremely slowly and blocked her way, the whole time looking over their shoulders at my wife and giggling. My wife actually does not care and didn't say a word about it. But why behave that way in the first place? Why allow your actions to just confirm what some people already think of you anyway? It doesn't make sense to me. And to show you just how clueless I really am, I happened to be talking to some of my trailer-trash neighbors when it slapped me in the face that white people still use the n-word without saying it out loud--they've merely replaced it with another less offensive word: Ignorant people. And "ignorant people" do little to improve the perception of others as to who/what they really are and more to reinforce those negative attitudes and stereotypes. And I'm sure us crackers aren't any better. But it ends up creating a feedback loop not easily broken.

So blacks don't like whites, whites don't like "ignorant people." So it's no surprise they want to get as far apart from each other as they can. I don't know about financial reasons. I'm sure that's a part of it, but there are a lot of impoverished whites (like me and my family) living here, too. You'd expect more whites in predominantly black neighborhoods, but that simply isn't the case. Whites move more backwoods if they can't afford "safe" parts of town. But also there probably is some expectation. That has to do with upbringing and education. Their parents do not instill in them the kind of values that push them away from home into a different environment. They have no hope of getting out--not because no hope exists, but because they are, well, ignorant. Their parents keep them ignorant. Their schools keep them ignorant (I've worked in two predominantly black schools and know this firsthand. I could tell you stories that would make you cry). And with every new school year and with every election, they make it known they like their status quo and intend to keep it. I suppose blacks and whites have a lot in common, don't you think?


Neither do I. But isn't it remarkable that no matter what opportunities are open to us, how much we pay lip service to wanting to ease racial tensions and integrate schools, we really don't WANT to live together? You'd think after more than 50 years of this that the greater general population of America would be much more homogenous than it is. This IS America, after all, and the will of the people will always prevail in the end. I just think it's absurd that THIS is what we apparently want it to be.

I'm also sorry if I get fired up and opinionated on this. I hope I've helped answer some questions, and keep in mind I've seen two completely different sides of the issue. I don't WANT things to always be this way just because that's the way it's always been.

For many years in the classroom - in a major university teaching students with advanced racial views and in some cases international studies credentials, I was intrigued and amused by patterns of seating in my classroom. I never assigned seats.

People came in, selected from the openings available.

A few prople - early comers - had [as I always had] favorite seats.

A few people had friends they sat with - saving seats as needed.

But by and large, when there were adequate openings:

Men sat with men, women sat with women.

Whites sat with whites, persons of color [I never taught more than two Amerinds and relatively few Asians] with persons of color.

If there was selection by religion or sexual orientation I was notr privy to it. No clear patterns as to selection by age.

During a stay in an independent African country, I noted that in the cafeteria, if any white but two - me and one other - sat at a table no African would sit at that table. Nor with those same two exceptions would any white sit at a tsable where an African was sitting.