60 years after Brown v. Board, how to stop schools from re-segregating

[struggle4progress]

By Beverly Daniel Tatum, Special to CNN
updated 6:59 PM EDT, Fri May 16, 2014
... When my father, an art professor at Florida A&M University, sought to pursue his doctorate in art education at Florida State University, the state of Florida chose to pay his transportation to Penn State rather than open its doors to an African-American graduate student ...

Schools are more segregated today than in the 1980s, according to a new report released by researchers at UCLA's Civil Rights Project, "Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and Uncertain Future" ...

As school districts move back to "neighborhood school" policies, white students will likely have less school contact with people of color than their parents had. Particularly for young white children, interaction with people of color is likely to be a virtual reality rather than an actual one, with media images (often negative ones) most clearly shaping their attitudes and perceived knowledge of communities of color.

For students of color, the return to segregation means the increased likelihood of attending a school with limited resources. Most highly segregated black and Latino schools have high percentages of poor children. At most highly segregated white schools, middle-class students are in the majority ...

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/16/living/brown-v-board-60th-anniversary-spelman-identity/

[JDPriestly]

1. And this applies even in California where we can't really speak of a racial majority

or racial minorities.

I know someone who was the only blonde in her high school graduating class. If the school had been truly integrated, there would have been others with her hair color as well as others with black, brown, red, etc. hair. It's not an important fact, certainly not a statistic, but it is a good indicator about how little we have progressed in terms of bringing races together.

Charter schools strike me as being, in some places, just excuses for dividing children by race or religion or some other criteria that separates people rather than bringing them together.

The article cited in the OP seems to accept the idea that white and African-American children schooled separately can, due to some change in the curriculum and/or some racial sensitivity program gain the racial understanding that children can learn in an integrated school. I disagree.

[Lancero]

2. hair color =/= race

[JDPriestly]

3. True, but you got the idea. It isn't a scientific measure, but in an integrated school

you will have enough of a mix that you get a couple of blondes in there somewhere.

By the way, it might interest you to know that the blonde girl i spoke of was an excellent student and yet was constantly the brunt of dumb blonde jokes. A fact that belies the idea that racism is just one way. The person who is different is likely to be singled out and maybe ridiculed or shunned. That's another reason for making sure that our schools are integrated to the extent possible. Separate but equal is not good for anyone. Not for any race.

In California, the segregation is mostly due to economic segregation.

[Lancero]

4. Again, hair color =/= race

Racism. You keep using that word. I don't think you know what it means.

Singling out for hair color? The dumb blonde jokes? That's a example of stereotyping. Not racism.

[JDPriestly]

5. Stereotyping becomes racism when the jokes are cruel, intended to make the person the brunt of

the joke feel inadequate and ostracized based on an immutable characteristic that is racially related. I have a neighbor child whose father is African-American and whose mother is of European ancestry. That little girl had blondish hair. If someone teases her about being a dumb blond, they are being racist. Her hair is an immutable characteristic that she received from her mother's European genes. It is genetic. The dumb blond jokes are racist. Just as Polish jokes are ethnic.

When African-Americans talk about the racism they have suffered, I know very well what they are talking about. I do not mean to minimize the personal pain and societal injustice that the widespread racism aimed at African-Americans have suffered. I do not mean to diminish or downplay that wrong.

But, we all have racial characteristics. Someone in my family had her DNA analyzed. The report would surprise people who look at us and see our race and guess at our ethnicity. Like many Americans who have been in the country a long time, we aren't just one thing. Genes from one area of the world predominate in our DNA, but they are not the whole story. That is probably even more true of many African-Americans than of many people who appear European.

In California, race is still very much a factor.
There is still lots of ugly racism although economics is becoming more the arbiter of opportunity than race as we move toward a society in which no specific race is in the majority.

How do you define racism?

How does your definition apply in a state like California that pretty much does not have majorities and minorities although some races are represented in larger proportions than others?

[Lancero]

6. Racism is against nationality, stereotyping against a specific characteristic

http://www.differencebetween.net/miscellaneous/culture-miscellaneous/difference-between-racism-and-stereotyping/

[JDPriestly]

7. Is it unthinkable to you (and many other DUers) that a white person could suffer from

racial discrimination?

Racism is not against a nationality. It is against a race. And it often focuses on a particular aspect of the despised, ridiculed or diminished race. Racial caricatures focus on the traits of a race that are despised. Stereotyping can be an aspect or expression of racism.

Stereotyping is often a tool of racism. And expression of racism is the best wording I can find.