Schools’ Racial Makeup Divides San Juan Capistrano
H.G. Reza, Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2008
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Kinoshita and Del Obispo elementary schools are just an athletic field apart, but for many in San Juan Capistrano, the gap is a potent symbol of an issue that has roiled this south Orange County town in recent years: school segregation.
The schools are on the edge of a middle-class, mostly white neighborhood. But while Del Obispo’s students are about 55% white, Kinoshita’s enrollment is about 95% Latino. It is a disparity that former district teacher Gia Lugo said highlights the wide gap in race relations in this historic community.
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The new school year begins today, with the ethnic makeup of the town’s other two primary schools similarly skewed. Harold Ambuehl, east of Interstate 5, is 67% white, and San Juan, which is across the street from Mission San Juan Capistrano, is 89% Latino.
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Fifty-four years after Brown vs. Board of Education integrated public schools in the United States and 62 years after Mendez vs. Westminster School District outlawed “Mexican schools” in California, segregated schools are still a fact of life in the state.
A 2004 study by the University of California All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity found that 75% of Latino and 70% of African American students attended predominantly minority schools. The study found “a trend of school resegregation” that began emerging during the 1990s.
Race has long been an explosive issue in San Juan Capistrano and its school district. In 1994, white and Latino students at Marco Forster Middle School painted a mural with U.S. and Mexican flags in response to racist fliers targeting Latinos; the mural was intended to promote unity and understanding.
{snip}
In July, Kim McCarthy, whose daughter attends Marco Forster, complained at a board meeting that the school is operated “as if it is a Mexican public school.” The campus, with 55% Latino enrollment, is next to Del Obispo and receives students from that school and Kinoshita.
McCarthy also complained about Spanish spoken by Latino students and staff; Latino parents bringing their children on parent-teacher nights to act as interpreters; and the school mural. Supt. A. Woodrow Carter responded to McCarthy’s criticisms in a two-page letter in which he defended multiculturalism. “We cannot ignore our diversity,” he wrote.
{snip}
Privately, district officials—many of whom came of age during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s—say they are troubled by the schools that are mostly Latino. But they say that any attempt to redraw attendance boundaries would spark a backlash from parents, and that Latino and white parents don’t want their kids bused to schools across town to achieve integration.
District officials said their goal is to deliver quality education, but that socioeconomic barriers hamper students who live in the town’s two predominantly Latino neighborhoods: the La Zanja community, across from the Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano, and an area called Las Carolinas, near City Hall.
{snip}
American Civil Liberties Union attorney Hector Villagra, who filed a legal motion in 2005 supporting the redrawing of boundaries to integrate San Juan Hills High School, criticized the district for allowing segregation in grade schools.
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More often than not, poverty and “political choices” dictate attendance boundaries, UCLA education professor Gary Orfield said.
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Latino parents whose children attend San Juan and Kinoshita have the option of sending them to mostly white Ambuehl and Del Obispo.
Elizalde, former PTA president at San Juan, pulled her daughter out of Kinoshita to enroll her at Del Obispo, where she is a fourth-grader. She wanted her daughter, the youngest of five, to have an easier time assimilating than her older siblings, including the oldest, who is a university graduate.
{snip}
Email H.G. Reza at hgreza@latimes.com.
(Posted on September 3, 2008)
Comments
“Privately, district officials—many of whom came of age during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s—say they are troubled by the schools that are mostly Latino.”
I think a couple of words got transposed in the last part of that sentence. It should not read “they are troubled by the schools that are mostly Latino,” but instead “the troubled schools are mostly Latino.”
Yes, that reads much better now.
BTW, if even swallows know enough to find their way back to San Juan Capistrano, how come the mestizos there can’t find their way back to Mexico?
Posted by The Incredible Shrinking White Man at 6:16 PM on September 3
If we wanted to associate with huge numbers of Mexicans, we would relocate to Mexico. WE DONT WANT THEM HERE
Posted by at 6:34 PM on September 3
The race relations wouldn’t be so negative, if the legal citizens didn’t have to deal with the thousands upon thousands of illegals. These people have never been invited here, are not assimilated and therefore, largely not wanted. Neither the white kids, nor the illegal alien kids can relate to each other. Where is the mystery? Only in the muddled heads of school beurocrats, that’s where.
Posted by Bobby at 6:41 PM on September 3
One little sentence here….KEEP THEM OUT OF WHITE SCHOOLS AT ALL COSTS….BETTER YET….SHIP THEM BACK TO THE DUNG HEAP THEY CAME FROM THEY ARE ILLEGALS ANYHOW AND DO NOT BELONG IN MY COUNTRY…PERIOD!!
Posted by lydia at 7:47 PM on September 3
I see. The Marxists are complaining about the last few majority white schools in all of greater Los Angeles. I supposed the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of majority non-white schools aren’t enough. They want to take out the perhaps, at best, one hundred majority white schools in all of greater Los Angeles.
Posted by Ryan at 8:35 PM on September 3
Separate but Equal is the ONLY workable answer. Bring a large number of Blacks into a formerly all-White school and the quality of education ALL students receive… DROPS like a lead weight tossed from the roof of a ten-story building! But what is it that our loony toon politicians and foul joke of a Supreme Court can’t understand about this ugly little TRUTH?
Posted by Fed Up at 8:47 PM on September 3
“Mendez vs. Westminster School District outlawed “Mexican schools” in California”
Huh? This has happened before? I guess it’s true that everything old is new again. Let’s see if they’re outlawed this time around. Do we have any Mendezes who are up for a lawsuit?
Posted by GetBackJack at 9:47 PM on September 3
What a pickle! The vast unwashed hoards have run off so many whites that there aren’t enough left to insure “diversity”. Bummer. Wonder how they are going to fix that?
Posted by LA Refugee at 10:25 PM on September 3
Mexicans should belong in Mexico, not in a country they still think in their heart of heart is still their’s. It is a shame that we whites cannot even live in our homeland we created with blood, sweat and yes even tears without being guilt tripped that this country was originall Mexico’s. Why can’t Mexicans just develop their own country instead of trying to soak off on our beautiful white country? Mexicans need to go back and leave those white kids alone
Posted by Robert at 11:49 PM on September 3
Again, white children are being used as sacrificial lambs to bring up the “achievment levels” of students of color. This violates equal protection under the law and white parents should use any means necessary to stop it.
Posted by Skipper at 12:47 AM on September 4
In the fall of 1970 when Brown vs Board was fully implemented at our school in south Georgia neither the black students or the black teachers wanted it.I remember that . I had a model 210 ‘57 Chevy(355 bucks,financed it thru GMAC at 18 dollars a month-bet you wish you had a carpayment like that now ) , the black counselor who owned a ‘57 Fairlane that was like new, used to sit with me in my Chevy at dinner and expound to me why integration was not going to work . I was actually a very liberal conservative at the time and could not see what he was saying , but 38 years later-he was right .
Posted by at 3:33 AM on September 4
“Latino and white parents don’t want their kids bused to schools across town to achieve integration.”
This is the key to the whole issue in the above article. Citizens, parents, don’t want the government dictating where their kids go to school, they wish to choose themselves.
Liberal social experimenters invented forced busing in the 70’s. It was a disruptive social disaster from day one, embittering two generations of Americans right up to today, and it remains an offensive dictatorial practice.
Apparently Liberals in authority believe its their duty to override the will of the people (making themselves undistinguishable from what tyrants do).
Posted by Gary at 1:04 PM on September 4
Just thought I point out that the author of the article has an Iranian last name. There are at least one million Iranians living in California at last count.
Posted by Jupiter at 1:53 PM on September 4
How are schools “95%” Latino?
What non-Latino parent would send their kids to that school?
The other school is 55% white?
Do you want bet that percentage is going to drop like a stone?
Posted by Dennis at 5:06 PM on September 4
The white middle class in SAn Juan just had to have their cheap maids and gardeners, cheap unskilled construction workers and other workers and they are now reaping what they sowed.
Posted by at 2:36 PM on September 5
The white middle class in SAn Juan just had to have their cheap maids and gardeners, cheap unskilled construction workers and other workers and they are now reaping what they sowed.
Posted by at 2:36 PM on September 5
Sheer idiocy. The white middle class cannot afford these “workers”, especially in CA. The white middle class is also not at all to blame for the immigration crisis. This was created by elites for several reasons, not the least of which was to destroy the white middle class. What we are seeing is the intended result of almost five decades of war against the white population in the US. One group wants low IQ service workers, happy with low pay and govt handouts. Another bunch of elites hates the West and whites and just wants us gone. In the end it will all fail, it’s already failing. But conditions will have to get worse, much worse, before most whites realize they have been the unknowing targets of elitists who want to destroy them.
Posted by The Rest Follow California at 9:07 PM on September 5
You can’t blame them. I mean would you want your son being pressed to join a gang across town because he’s forced bussed into a barrio or your daughter to get pregnant with Julios sixth kid (your daughter gets to be mom #3) and have to deal with all that nonsense. It’s a loser and every white in San Juan Capistrano knows it.
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 12:53 PM on September 8
For all those people that are racist and want the Latinos to go back to were they came from, ya’ll can go to hell because America is a free country and we have just the same right to be here, if not even more. If ya’ll want to be racist towards Latinos then ya’ll better get used to us being racist towards you. Latinos can go to any schools they want just like white people can, so if you got a problem then deal with it because we are going to be here for a very long time, like it or not.
Posted by a Latinos, Frances at 12:48 AM on November 2