
A School District That Was Never Desegregated (2015) - Tomte
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/a-school-district-that-was-never-desegregated/385184/?single_page=true
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ams6110
Nice way to pick on a small southern town. How about Chicago which has dozens
and dozens of all-black public schools, in one of the most racially segregated
cities in America. Or Detroit. Or pick any other failed liberal-dominated big
city.

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ceejayoz
Chicago's at least large enough to justify having multiple schools.

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openasocket
I think about desegregation in terms of physics. The basic idea is that, once
the legal barriers of segregation where taken down, different groups would
begin to mingle together, like in diffusion, and eventually the country will
become more uniform. There are, however, two problems with this. First,
diffusion will take a long time, I'm guessing on the order of centuries.
Second, in highly segregated areas people may not want to be the first to
cross those racial divides. I imagine it would be uncomfortable to be the only
black person in an entirely white school, and vice versa. So there's this
"surface tension" keeping some of the old barriers up. Cultural progress can
only do so much: the quickest way to create mixing is by introducing energy.
I'm not completely sure what the "energy" is this analogy refers to, but
perhaps some sort of incentive for a black person to move to a white
neighborhood, and vice versa. I'm curious to hear what other people's thoughts
might be on this.

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BlahBoy3
I go to what could be considered a fairly diverse high school, and in my
experience, your comment is pretty much right on the money- especially the
second part. Sure, there may not be legal barriers per say, but take one look
at the cafeteria and you'll realize that there's a clear racial divide
(Hispanics only hanging out with other Hispanics, etc.). Like you, I don't
really know how to change this, short of just calling everyone out (which
would probably only breed more tension).

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Jtsummers
You don't call anyone out. You just wait one to two generations. Once the
community is mixed, physically, social mixing and diversity will occur. By
keeping them physically separated you impede social integration.

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vermontdevil
A small town of 12,000 has two high schools! That is the problem it seems.
Merge them into one.

My town has over 85,000 and only one high school.

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mikekchar
Census data seems to indicate that about 3.5% of the US population is between
15-19 years old. For a town of 12,000 that's 420 students or 140 students per
grade.

I've taught classes of 42 in high school. It sucks. 30 is doable. 20 is great
and is what I would recommend to every school. You are right that you could
easily get it down to 1 high school with 5 home rooms of 28 per grade. It's
not optimal but not terrible either.

1 high school for 85k people is insanity. I know this is common place in North
America (I think the high school I graduated from had 1250 students in my year
and I knew of high schools with 3-4 times as many students). I don't have a
huge amount of experience in education, but I know enough to say that you are
paying for this "economy" with people's futures.

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bryanlarsen
There are 917 students in the two high schools. So either the residents of
Cleveland are remarkably fecund, or else they're pulling in a large number of
rural students from outside town.

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throwanem
The article seems to go out of its way to imply that East Side is the
maleficiary of structural discrimination. But:

> A mile away, students at the racially mixed Cleveland High have these basics
> [textbooks, lockers], even though the school receives more than $3,000 less
> per student each year than East Side does, according to the school district.

$3k/student seems like it should be enough to buy textbooks and lockers. I'd
be interested to know first whether the school district's claim is accurate,
and second, if so (and given this is the Atlantic, were there evidence of that
claim being false, I would expect to see it mentioned), how it comes to be
that East Side receives more funding than Cleveland High but seems to be doing
less with it. I'm not sure that forcibly upheaving the existing arrangement
wholesale is the most effective available solution here.

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jbattle
There are probably two tax districts in the town

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Overtonwindow
We will be having this argument twenty years from now. The sad truth is that
in America people don't want to live around those who are different from
themselves. No matter how hard we try to integrate society, it will naturally
desegregate itself, for a variety of reasons.

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jawilson2
This really isn't just an American thing. There are plenty of xenophobic
European countries, and Japan and China are awful this way as well.

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kuschku
Interestingly, it’s mostly those who have never seen the people they’d have to
interact with – once they have, they usually notice they’re the same as all
other humans.

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cm3
For the most part that's true but any tiny difference is used against a group
if it fits in some other group's argument. It's funny how Asian, Hispanic and
African descendant people in the US are singled out while all the Irish,
Italian and Jewish are only viewed separately on second inspection. I mean, if
it's all white-looking people in a place, they differentiate Italians, Jews,
Irish, etc., but before that it's the skin color (on level 1). I suppose this
is some natural reaction homo sapiens has had for millions of years and not
necessarily ill-meaning discrimination. Some anthropologist with more insight
here?

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Kristine1975
_> while all the Irish, Italian and Jewish are only viewed separately on
second inspection_

That used to be different in the past, though, e.g:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Italianism#Anti-
Italianis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Italianism#Anti-
Italianism_in_the_United_States)

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cm3
Yes, and given their cultural background and looks they mixed in more quickly
than other branches. Anytime I discuss this, I'm amazed by the way Britain has
integrated their African population and to some extent Indian and Pakistani as
well. Though, I'm not an expert on the British mainland demographics and
culture and I may miss the finer points.

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roboneal
After reading the article, it's quite clear the residents segregated
themselves.

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avs733
that is a, frankly, insane contortion of logic that ignores an enormous amount
of history in the south regarding housing, education, and racial equity.

These problems started years ago with forced segregation codified in law and
have never been solved. To say that they are self-segregating because the law
no longer compels them to is not the same as there being no barriers. What you
are reading as self-segregation (and this is partially the writer's fault) is
the paragraphs about 'both sides like it this way'. What is telling is the
reasons both groups give. The white/Cleveland parents give reasons like "just
leave us alone. Maybe that’s because I’m a sentimental fool, but I love
Cleveland High School and I don’t want it to go away" while the black/East
side parents give reasons like "[he] is likely to be East Side’s valedictorian
this year, [and] wouldn’t have a shot at that distinction at Cleveland High
'no matter how good his grades are.'"

>white families who "don’t want to be in a small minority,"

Oh really? why not?

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wtbob
>> white families who "don’t want to be in a small minority,"

> Oh really? why not?

Because race in America is (very, very unfortunately) a proxy for class, and
people of one class do not like being a minority amongst another class.
Particularly, people of a perceived-higher class do not want their children
acculturated in a perceived-lower class.

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Jtsummers
And that doesn't justify the way the 99.9% black high school is being treated.
Not enough textbooks, no lockers, until recently no ACT prep.

A desire to not brush elbows with those "others" here is specifically
_racially_ charged, and not _class_ charged. Being class based would be bad
enough. But the whites in this community are literally blocking improvements
for the community as a whole for the sake of letting their precious snowflake
children remain the majority in their school while they're the minority in the
town.

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pc86
They probably don't need two schools. But let's say for the sake of argument
that you want to retain the two-school structure. So they have one school with
a 50-50 racial split and one school that is extremely close to 100-0.

What's wrong with that? It's one thing to have a white school and a black
school. It's another thing entirely to have one school that is the most
racially integrated in the region and one that is entirely black, largely due
to population and demographics.

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Jtsummers
The problem is that the school that's nearly 100% black has problems like:

> East Side students didn't even science textbooks to bring home at night;
> there aren’t enough to go around. They don’t have lockers, either. Sanders
> and his classmates carry their books around in their backpacks all day.

While this article is focusing on racial balance, the problem with segregation
is more fundamental. Thanks to the historic (especially in cities like this)
difference in wealth between blacks and whites, the historically black schools
tend to get shorted in the resource distribution. The white families have the
money for booster clubs, they hold political sway within the community.
_Their_ kids certainly have textbooks to take home.

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qb45
It's worth noting that as far as resource distribution goes, East Side was
said to receive _more_ funding per student. Too bad they didn't investigate
where this money goes.

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yread
Some interesting discussion on r/AskHistorians about this

[https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hd4u7/what_w...](https://np.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4hd4u7/what_was_the_last_school_to_desegregate_in_the_us/)

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trhway
if i understand right, SF school district makes students bus across town to
avoid similar issue.

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wtbob
Bussing seems terribly bad for the environment when kids could walk to school
instead.

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Jtsummers
And along with my sibling comment, not all schools are walking distance. The
county I live in (unified school district, 4 (5 since last year?) high schools
with 1000+ students in each), is 30 miles or so in diameter (approximated as a
circle). You would need _many_ schools (and the necessary faculty and staff)
to make them walking distance for all their students. Urban sprawl is
certainly largely to blame here, but once it's set in it can't be undone by
mandating everyone move to within walking distance of their children's
schools.

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voodootrucker
"Good gravy"

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JustSomeNobody
That's southern for "WTH!?" for you northerners.

