Maureen Downey, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 28, 2009
Black and Latino families in search of more affordable housing and backyard decks are flocking to the suburbs. White families in quest of crown molding and vintage claw-foot tubs are relocating to the cities.
A national snapshot of metro migration shows that the moving vans of white and minority families are heading in different directions.
{snip}
As America’s metropolitan areas embrace new residential patterns, one variable isn’t changing: Racial segregation in neighborhoods and schools.
While the South once led the nation in integrating its schools, it now has become the pace setter in the resegregation of classrooms, largely as a result of housing trends.
{snip}
Few people, outside of researchers, fret about the increasing resegregation. One is sociologist Amy Stuart Wells, director of the Center for Understanding Race and Education at Columbia University.
Wells spoke Thursday at Georgia State University about her research and her new book “Both Sides Now,” in which she interviewed students in six states who experienced school desegregation. Now adults, they told Wells that they thought they were being prepared for the real world, which they saw as an “ever-more-integrated society.”
But they graduated high school in 1980 to discover that while they were extolled to be color-blind, much of the country still saw the world in black and white. They moved onto college campuses with little racial diversity and eventually settled in largely segregated neighborhoods. And, despite telling Wells that they valued their experiences on the desegregation front lines, many send their own children to less-diverse schools.
Consumed with giving their children an edge, these middle-class parents are willing to suspend their belief that diversity matters in order to send their kids to the “best” schools.
{snip}
Most middle-class parents understand how low-income students benefit by transferring to higher-achieving schools than they would otherwise encounter in their neighborhoods. They realize that there are cultures in more affluent schools that enhance the quality of the education, from involved PTAs to parent-led chess clubs. {snip}
However, middle-class parents remain leery of the research that shows their children don’t pay an academic price for sitting alongside less-affluent peers.
{snip}
But color lines remain hard to cross. As one of the graduates of a desegregated high school comments in Wells’ book: “I have such warm feelings and memories of being with all these people, and we didn’t save any of it. . . . I’m not friends with them now. . . . I think I went off with my white world. . . . People live lives for the most part along color.”
Original article
(Posted on September 29, 2009)
Comments
“Consumed w/giving their children an edge, these middle class parents are willing to suspend thier belief that diversity matters in order to send their kids to the ‘best’ schools…”
How DARE these white parents consider their children’s safety and education to be more important than political correctness!
Black and Latino families in search of more affordable housing and backyard decks are flocking to the suburbs.
Let’s be clear from the start. Blacks and Latinos aren’t moving to the suburbs for inexpensive housing and decks. They’re moving to the suburbs to escape blacks and Hispanics and find the safety, comfort, and security white communities are known for.
Whenever blacks and Hispanic move to white communities, they make it clear what they are; white supremacists.
If St. Louis is an example, most whites who move back into the central city (only in neighborhoods that were never really heavily black to begin with) don’t have children, b/c they’re young yuppies. Therefore, the white enrollment in the city’s school system will not increase.
I don’t think whites should count on segregation of housing and schools to last forever. If we want to maintain ourselves as a distinct race we’ll have to develop culture and organizations to do the job. A white Euro-Christian religion is almost a must. Allegiance to a traditional white ethnic group like Yankee, southerner, Swede, Greek, etc. would provide a concrete historical reference within the overall Western experience. Develop your sense of alienation from the common, mass, pop culture and withdraw from it as best you can.
“But it’s a daunting challenge to create a ‘good’ school in a racially isolated learning environment where many children are dealing with poverty, a lack of health care, poor nutrition, housing evictions and job losses, and low IQ’s.”
Uh, well, I added that last item myself. It seemed missing. (For new readers, average tested black IQ is considerably lower than average tested white IQ. Surely that’s the MAIN reason that all the various schemes tried for decades now to raise black academic performance to the level of white performance have failed)
“As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall noted a half-century ago: ‘If the majority is educating its children and making sure every benefit is available, then minority children can also get those benefits if they can attend those schools.’”
You’d expect that deluded statement from a black who didn’t realize his own limitations.
Judge Henry Friendly made this comment about Thurgood Marshall in a letter he wrote to Justice Felix Frankfurter (Judge Friendly sat with Marshall on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals):
”I do not have the feeling that he realizes the difficulties of his job and is burning the midnight oil in an effort to conquer them; rather he seems convinced that the problems are pretty easy and that he is fairly well equipped to grapple with them – or rather to follow someone else’s grapple. All this makes life fairly easy for him, save when he is confronted with a difference of opinion, and then he tosses a coin.”
http://tinyurl.com/yfuk2df
That’s a description that will ring a bell with anyone who’s experienced arrogant incompetent blacks who think they are highly competent. Such blacks are currently a plague in every office and position.
Was Marshall’s silly statement part of the Brown desegregation decision that began this madness in 1954? It sounds like it.
“As America’s metropolitan areas embrace new residential patterns, one variable isn’t changing: Racial segregation in neighborhoods and schools.”
“While the South once led the nation in integrating its schools, it now has become the pace setter in the resegregation of classrooms, largely as a result of housing trends.”
Racism is like the ‘Where’s Waldo’ of all caucasian endeavors seemingly. A white family moved to the city, can you spot the racism? Oh, a southern family bought a new home can you find the racism?
I’m just trying to live my life and certain segments of the population see racism in every act. Perhaps the glasses are actually a mirror?
Madison Grant & all others, remember that the first victim of political correctness is the truth, always has been & always will be. NEVER FORGET THAT.
There is very little truth going around nowadays hence all the confusion in the once great USA.
Get rid of the political correctness & all the “labels” that attached to everyone & the country will start to heal itself.
I hope my comments are printed, The Suburbs and rural areas are the citadels of safety and sanity for white middle class families. My wife and I are first time home buyers trying to find a safe neighborhood and school district for our 4 yr. old little girl. This has proven difficult based on our lower middle-class salaries. I refuse to send our little one to an inner-city school, I refuse to have a ebonics speaking brat knocked up with a bi-racial baby at the ripe old age of 14. It wouldn’t be so hard if It were just my wife and I, as a loaded 12 ga. ensures any neighborhood is a good one.
“One is sociologist Amy Stuart Wells, director of the Center for Understanding Race and Education at Columbia University.”
Oh, please. A commie diversitoid is now an “expert” on the south.
Believe me folks, when the blacks were bussed into our neighborhood schools in Nashville back in 1972, they were no different from today. Wanting handouts, wearing ridiculous clothes, sleeping at their desks, fighting, et al. Now almost 40 years later the public schools are ruined.
“they graduated high school in 1980 to discover that while they were extolled to be color-blind, much of the country still saw the world in black and white.”
Years are wrong. I graduated in 1976 and had five years of “integration”. 1972-73 our white area kids were bussed to a horrific school in the black ghetto. Beyond belief; “I Could Write a Book”. Only 7th grade was diversity-free. Another thing wrong here is that direct exposure to blacks daily made all of us aware of their true traits. Color-blind is only for the naive or ignorant.
Why would any parent black, brown, or purple want to send their offspring to a school like Fenger if they had a dog`s chance not to? Not feeling guilty about keeping your kid alive and not gang raped is not racism but humanism. When a school becomes 11% lower class black it ceases to be an institution of learning and becomes a ware house and maximum security prison. Most places like Fenger resemble the sets of ” OZ “. The ethos inside has the same power groups one finds in Sing Sing. Feeling guilty your white daughter will never have been exposed to diversity is a small price to pay for not visiting her at the rape crisis unit or morgue.
Homeschooling allows my wife and I to send our children to a 100 % white school.
As one of the graduates of a desegregated high school comments in Wells’ book: “I have such warm feelings and memories of being with all these people
That’s called making the best of a less-than-ideal situation. I think you know that deep down. And you are actually one of the lucky ones who didn’t get involved with crime, gangs or drugs due to being in that less-than-ideal situation. I think you also know that deep down. That’s why you have no burning desire to expose your children or your future children to that same situation.
This article repeatedly refers to the middle class. Socialism will bring an end to the middle class and the relevance of this article.
”,,,people live lives for the most part along color,,,”
And what exactly is wrong with that?
Das Uber Seperatist (#9) wrote: My wife and I are first time home buyers trying to find a safe neighborhood and school district for our 4 yr. old little girl. This has proven difficult based on our lower middle-class salaries.
If you’ve been an AR denizen for any length of time, you know that there’s no such thing as a “safe” or “decent” public school anymore. Even if such a school were to somehow exist, the school board would quickly destroy it by importing minorities and/or sending the neighborhood kids to a minority hellhole. Further, even all-white public schools have become Marxist indoctrination camps.
So forget about public schooling. Either find an all-white private school that teaches conservative values or homeschool. As Capt. Jack (#12) notes, homeschooling guarantees a 100% white student body. Go here and here for homeschool curriculum information. Also see if any neighbors homeschool their kids and consider a homeschooling co-op. Go here for more information on that topic.
Very interesting article on re-segregation, more like cultural separation, there is class issue to this also. Thanks Harumphty Dumpty for the reminder on the infiltration of Affirm Action into SCOTUS with the addition of the dullwitted Thurgood Marshall. I find it interesting also that the Middle Class is starting to be aware of their danger before the thieves they the white leftist elected to destroy them.
However, middle-class parents remain leery of the research that shows their children don’t pay an academic price for sitting alongside less-affluent peers.
Of course they’re leery. They’ve learned though bitter experience what the truth is, and know that leftist academics will lie.
What is amusing about hand wringing articles like this one is that you know perfectly well, assuming Maureen Downey is white, that if she has children she would not want to send them to a majority black school. And “mixed” white and black schools have a way of becoming majority black within a small number of years.
