Backdoor segregation of schools fueled by classism

Race-based segregation map. Segregation was required in the green states, permitted in the blue states, prohibited in the red states and there was no specific legislation either way in the white states. Image by blmurch via Flickr

Lately, the charter school craze has been widely criticized for reinforcing segregation. Researchers led by UCLA education researcher Gary Orfield have found that black students make up most urban charter schools in the US, but that in western states, white students are a near-majority of charter school enrollment.

Obviously, segregating schools based on race has been illegal in this country since Brown v. Board of Education, but segregating schools based on class is still permitted.

Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, says although public schools have become much more segregated since the Supreme Court changed the law in the 1990s, charter schools are vastly more segregated, and class, along with race, is a discrimination factor.

It’s segregation not just by race, but also by poverty; and that there are not only segregated black schools and some segregated Latino schools, but there’s also segregated white schools that overrepresent whites in some states, including California.

But class warfare isn’t just the province of charter schools anymore.

The board that controls schools in Raleigh voted 5 to 4 on Tuesday to begin moving away from a policy of busing children throughout the district to achieve economic diversity. Under the plan, subject to final approval this month, students would no longer be assigned by socioeconomic background, and “community assignment zones” would restrict busing distances. Wake County’s current plan, adopted in 2000, kept schools racially integrated but grew unpopular with parents.

In 1971, a Supreme Court decision stated that race-based busing was an appropriate remedy to segregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County. The court reversed that decision in 2007, ruling that race could no longer be considered in school assignments. In 2002, the Charlotte school system eliminated busing for diversification, leading to rapid repolarization of schools by race and income.

Income inequality and lack of state intervention (usually in the form of regulation) inherently leads to segregation.

Wealth disparity is a tricky problem. Middle class parents naturally don’t want to bus their kids all around the city (sometimes up to an hour away from their homes) in the spirit of integration. It doesn’t seem fair, say the slightly better-off, that their children have to wander the cityscape like angry, little nomads.

The flip side to that is without forced integration, the middle class get the better schools and the poor remain in the poor schools. Think: backdoor segregation. The bourgeois, who are overwhelmingly white, have their own school, and the poor go to “the other schools.”

Tough economic times usually means the underclass, who are really now the lower class and the middle class, are left to fight over the crumbs — in this case, the public school system. They bicker over meager busing funds without asking larger questions, namely, why isn’t there enough money to properly equip all schools regardless of geographical location, but there’s enough money for trillions in Wall Street bailout funds and the Forever Wars?

It’s sad to see hardworking Americans tear at each other’s throats trying to get their kids to school while Lloyd Blankfein rakes in a $9 million bonus this year for destroying the world’s economy.

The “Us Vs. Them” mentality should mean 99% of Americans Versus The Oligarchic Plutocracy, which raided the Treasury and hoards all power and wealth in its unyielding grasp. It should mean Poor Americans Versus Jim “Tough Shit” Bunning. Unfortunately, the “Us. Vs. Them” mentality manifests as the poor fighting the poor in tiny factions: blacks vs. gays, tea-baggers vs. Progressives, middle class vs. lower-middle class, etc.

By the time it comes to talk about where to send the kids to school, citizens are already entrenched in their respective camps. The upper middle class are pissed at the mooching poor, and the poor are pissed at the selfish elite. The Upper-Two Percent Uber-Rich, mind you, are no where to be found. They’re in the real private schools 99 percent of the population doesn’t have a prayer of getting into — the ones that mainline right into ivy league schools. They’re safely hidden in their gated communities and private clubs. They’re in their private cars and private jets. They’re miles away from real America.

The poor are left to fight over the available schools: the ones that churn out kids scoring far below the average of other developed countries.

The real crime is that research shows that students of all races and backgrounds perform better in diverse schools. Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, says that diversified schools typically have higher graduation rates, more college acceptances and fewer students in the criminal justice system.

Quite simply, kids gain a lot from being exposed to diversity. Communities might naturally diversify if they could reverse the wealth disparity through any number of policies: creating jobs programs, implementing a livable minimum wage, offering affordable health care, shaping progressive taxation, or ending eternal slavery by regulating the credit card industry. That would then remove the need to force integration because the rich would pay their fair share, and the poor could claw their way out of poverty. Communities could again find equilibrium. Call it: justice via state-regulated osmosis.

But admitting this is about wealth disparity means eyeing The Bigger Picture instead of just Friday’s problem, or Monday’s crisis. It’s easier just to let the folks bitch about bus routes then rethink this whole Capitalism business.