Guest Rant
Jun 4, 2024 at 10:00 am
The 70th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education Should Prompt Reflection on Our Role in Segregating Schools
Booooo.
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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
I always thought the case rested on I-200, the state initiative passed in 1998 that said race canāt be used as a factor for government related programs like admission to schools or government employment. That was more about a statewide electoral mandate than a minority group of Seattle parents that overturned the system.
@1 I-200 had no relevance to the Supreme Court decision. Racial considerations were still (narrowly) permissible under federal law until 2023.
Missing from this account was the reality of de facto segregation, the invisible Jim Crow practiced outside of the South. The schools were segregated because Seattle was de facto segregated, via the very simple expedient of not ever showing Black buyers houses north of the Ship Canal. Desegregating the schools in the short term therefore involved long bus rides for students, which all parents tended to oppose. (This de facto racist housing policy was also one large reason the Central District, once a Jewish neighborhood, became a Black neighborhood.)
The devil is, as always in the details. The solutions offered inevitably put the burden on a small group of families, and most importantly NOT the worst offenders. To wit:
The Lakeside Acadamies are not touched. The actual rich will continue to enjoy all their privileges.
This means you are really talking about making the middle class atone for the sins of the wealthy.
While no ethnic group is inherently inferior, it's also true that poor kids act out and have more issues due to poverty. And poverty in the US tracks with ethnicity. If it didn't, we wouldn't;t be in this discussion.
So, a subset of middle-class kids by luck of the draw end up dropped in schools that have worse outcomes due to poverty.
To repeat, the results of Brown were to force a subset of middle-class kids to bear the burden of the sins of the wealthy. So that in a generation or two everyone (except the aforementioned rich) will enter the promised land of overall (except for the aforementioned rich) of equity.
Anyone who couldn't see how this would explode is either willfully naive and clueless or just plain cynical.
Until we have a program that targets the actual rich, you will always have a backlash. Almost no parent views their kid as a sociological experiment and sacrifice for equity, especially when others skate.
Another reason for cheap housing in Seattle in the 70ās was people selling so they could get away from the āspecterā of bussing. The parents of a coworker of mine moved to Renton from Beacon Hill because they didnāt want their kids bussed.
And did you ever wonder why Seattle has so many private schools? Because of bussing.
As someone who was bussed from third to eighth grade, I never understood what all the fuss was about, but I had good parents.
Gentrification is making schools like Franklin much more diverse. Here are the latest stats:
33.0% Asian, 27.6% Black,17.4% Hispanic, 13.6% White, 7.1% Two or More Races, 0.6% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 0.2% American Indian/Alaska Native
Still a 2:1 Black to White ratio but Asians are at the top.