Racism...Forever?

It's roughly the 60th anniversary of the integration of Little Rock Central HS. This morning HBO aired a doc from 2007 for the 50th anniversary of the event. It's still a very good HS in Arkansas but depressingly it's still very segregated. The white principal has to encourage black & white kids to sit with each other. There's only 1 or 2 black kids in the AP classes. The AP classes are the lightning rod for the black kids. They see it as the separation point. The area around the HS was middle class back in the 50s but now it's rundown with boarded up houses. The black kids were even wondering in their AA history class if they were better off with segregated schools like in the old days.

Here's a clip:

 

Yep. The argument that desegregated school systems (historically or newly done) haven't helped Black students as much as hurt them has been around for some time. I can only imagine how it must feel to be one kid in an AP class with a teacher who doesn't think you belong there (my two HS AP courses were about 60/40 White, FWIW). Heard all about it from a bunch of ugrad schoolmates who came down from Philly or Connecticut or wherever to escape the facade of integration where they lived, and to experience having teachers who believed in them.

 

Funny you mention that. They follow home a number of black & white students to see where they come from. They show a young black guy being named class president. I was thinking - he overcame a lot and is going places despite where he lives (LRCHS does send a good number of kids to elite colleges).

Then later they show the fancy house he lives in in a totally white neighborhood. He picks up Chad and Ethan in his new car to drive to school & they pop in a hiphop cd (it was 2007) and jam together.

Look for the whole doc on youtube. it's a very interesting look back at history & what it's done (or hasn't done) in regard to inner city high schools.

 

Why did you think that?

I remember riding back home for Thanksgiving with a couple of guys from my hometown (block, actually- the three of us chose the same school) and one guy from Buffalo who was staying with the other two guys. He kept commenting on how big the houses were (I assure you, they were not- just a middle class IBM neighborhood). Last I checked, he lives here now, but I've long since lost touch with him.

 

I didn't know Little Rock was big enough to be considered inner city. As much as I know about its role in the Struggle, I never gave the population a thought.

Most of the school systems I know about are neighborhood/zone based. Every once in a while you'll get some gerrymandering of school zones, but usually you go to school where you live. If the school itself is upper-income, the Black kid's family probably would be as well.

His family lived in that neighborhood, so it couldn't have been totally White

 

I guess in the class president's case it was kind of a plot twist. His mom was making a sandwich in a bigass kitchen and I'm thinking "he isn't living where most of his black peers are" They said the HS neighborhood used to be more middle class & white but there were lots of boarded up houses in 2007. Most of the kids that have cars are white and those waiting for the bus are black. They follow a white girl home and talk to her mom who's thrilled at how good the HS is and the number of seniors who go Ivy League and are taking AP classes. Then they follow mom to a PTA meeting which is attended by white people with one black mom...sitting by herself.

 

My mom taught gifted children for a while, and I don't remember her commenting about her students' races. In fact, I haven't a clue about the racial makeup of her classes, and it was in a mixed-race school district. I doubt she was alone in not giving a shit.

 

It seems like at LRCHS they take their legacy seriously (it's the only active HS on the National Register of Historic Places). The self-segregation going on is definitely noticed and it seems like the administrators try to change things but are somewhat flummoxed on what to do.

 

Some history of LRCHS desegregation. The controversy didn't end when the 9 students entered the building:

History of the Event
As a response to the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which directed that “separate but equal educational facilities for racial minorities is inherently unequal violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the Little Rock School Board adopted a plan for gradual integration of its schools beginning with high schools in September 1957. Applicants for the integration process were vetted by members of the Arkansas NAACP and its president Daisy Gatson Bates. The students selected ranged in age from 14-17 and would come to be known as the Little Rock Nine.

On September 2, 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus announced he would be activating the Arkansas State National Guard to block any integration efforts at Central High School. A day later, Federal Judge Ronald Daviesissued a ruling that desegregation at the school would continue as planned on September 4. The nine students arrived at the school on September 4 and were met by the Arkansas National Guard who would ultimately block their entry to the school.

In the following weeks, Judge Davies began legal proceedings against Governor Faubus, and President Eisenhower tried to persuade Faubus to remove the National Guard and allow the students to enter the school. On September 20, Judge Davies ordered the National Guard be removed from Little Rock and he replaced them with the police.

The students were escorted by police into Central High School on September 23, but were removed due to rioting outside the school. The following day, September 24, President Eisenhower activated 1200 members of the 101st Airborne Division, placing them in charge of the Arkansas National Guard. The Little Rock Nine, escorted by the troops, attended their first full day of school on September 25.

The 101st Airborne Division remained in Little Rock for the duration of the school year. The Little Rock Nine completed their first year at Central High School while being exposed to harassment and violence from students, staff and the community. The following year in September, Governor Faubus closed Little Rock’s high schools pending a public vote regarding integration. The community voted 19,470 to 7,561 against integration and the schools remained closed for the entire year.

https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/?s=60+years+on&submit=Search

 

Speaking of which, at my daughter's school:

909042811726700545 is not a valid tweet id

 

Malcolm Gladwell has opined that desegregating students, but then firing the redundant (largely black) staff, may have done more harm than good in the long run since the gifted black kids were now being taught by racist white teachers.

 

I'm not sure it was intended to work for the better- more likely intended to quiet Black voices calling out for integration. Besides, you can't really integrate neighborhoods because once the Black population hits about 35% or so, the Flight begins.

None of the staff were redundant. You're shooting for the same teacher/student ratio you had before, then you keep all the teachers and spread them around with the students. What they did in many (most?) cases was close the Black schools and send the Black teachers to the White schools (in cases of HS, to teach the shitty courses and 9th graders) and the Black administrators back to the classrooms. Now, unlike places like New Jersey, they DO get hired to begin with, but the treatment still sucks.

The building my mom went to HS in 60 years ago remained the standard for schools in her town for another 30 years after she graduated. That's because White folks built it to be state of the art so we'd quit asking to merge. It didn't work.

I was tempted to scroll on by this sly bit of work, but I'll bite.
Good for her and for whoever she wasn't alone with. I mean... is there a reason for this post other than to offer dissent?

 

Yeah, that was my first reaction, that Gladwell was talking out of his ass.

 

My post wasn't intended to refute Gladwell's contention that Black teachers were let go (some were), or to argue that the White teachers were somehow freer of racism than the rest of the non-educator Whites (why would they be?). It was intended to point out that the Black faculty and staff weren't redundant. That's all.

The gist of the remarks paraphrased by QBJ3 is spot on (one poorly-chosen adjective =/= "talking out of your ass"), and I'm not the only poster here who can see that you've quoted me in poor faith.

 

I think all reasonable people can agree that Gladwell was talking out of his ass, as usual.

 

Well, if Gladwell said ALL of the white teachers were racist, then he was almost certainly talking out of his ass.

 

What a title.....White supremacy at its best.....

This is a hall of famer pic.twitter.com/PtLy0O7yzs

— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) September 19, 2017

 

Dylan Roof has asked the judge handling his appeal to replace his attorneys, claiming that because they're "Jewish and Indian", they're his "biological enemies" and therefore cannot act in his best interest.

 

Trump kid who tried to get an undocumented girl kicked out of America… has been kicked out of his college

After reading the article, I am unsure if the slapd*ck left or was asked to leave. I like the University. Tiny and oldest Uni west of the Alleghany Mountains I believe. Also, my centerback from HS went there. Damn shame about what the girl is going/went through.

EDIT: There are a couple of coffee shops around that area last time I was there. Maybe when we are visiting for the Holidays I can pay a visit to Mr. Ragg. I saw the pic of the guy...he looks 12. I grew up around these good ole boys and most won't say $hit unless they have sufficient numbers to back them up.

Here's a good pic of him.

 

This should go without saying; but since I make this mistake from time to time I suspect others do too. So . . .don't read the bottom half.

 

Always read the Comments. That's where you get the truest sense of what America is today.

 

Dylann: "You're my biolog- bolio- yew know whut Ah mean... en'mies. Yew cain't act in mah best interest! Ah wont somebody White!"
Sid and Vijay: "Works for me! <puts papers back in briefcase, walks off> I didn't want the L on my damn record anyhow..."

I don't see how they got on board the Dylann Dream Team to begin with. Nobody is required to accept his case.

 

Maybe. I dunno. I'm sure there are a lot of people who express how they actually feel online in a way that they never would face to face. I'm sure of it. But I'm also sure that some of the people who are (by my reckoning) dicks online are people who may not believe a word they're saying, but really really enjoy being dicks online. I have known a fair number of people (back to the alt.syntax.tactical days) who will say one thing one day in one forum, and then in a different forum the next day say the exact opposite, just for the thrill of getting a rise out of as many people as possible. And regardless, even if everything posted is an actual reflection of what that person really thinks, I don't know whether the set of people who post comments online is representative of the U.S. at large. Most people don't spend tons of time online posting political comments.

But the main reason I have to ration my exposure to that stuff is that for me, it gets so depressing that I start having thoughts that aren't healthy for me.

 

People that bother to post their own thoughts on a published article either enjoy the controversy or are dickbags.

Either way, not representative of the country as a whole unless you want to think that way.