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May. 17th, 2004
Another Political Post
May. 17th, 2004 10:39 amSo today is the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.
I can't help but laugh at this, because... while it was important at the time, the fact is schools are almost totally resegregated and the current trend is actually towards MORE segregation among the races.
Are we committed towards desegregation of schools? Current politics seems to suggest otherwise.
Well.. let me back up a little bit.
I mentioned that schools have almost toally resegregated. Of course, I can't speak for all schools. I remember being told by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kareila a while back that the South is generally a little more aware than my own school was. So.. possibly so.
But let me tell you about life in Buffalo, which, as I understand it, DOES, in fact, mirror life in most cities around the U.S.
The current trend is still for middle-class white people to move out of the city and towards the generally better quality life a suburb can give. The last I don't know how many years has seen a great deal of this... people moving out of the cities and taking their money with them, leaving only those unable to make it out with them to live, survive and, hopefully, thrive where they are.
Huge cities are suddenly terribly underpopulated and desperately lacking in money. In order to make the budget work, they've had to resort to cuts.. cuts in police, cuts in fire safety, cuts in education. As more cuts are made, the quality of life for those who stayed decreases and more people try and get out of the city and to someplace where the quality of life is better. This is a viscious circle and it's very difficult to stop. SOME cities have come up with solutions but Buffalo, at least, has not.
So, in reality, what you have are a number of middle-class whites dominating the suburbs and lower-class other races dominating the urban cityscapes. Richer school districts able to give better educations to the white people in suburbia.. and poor school districts able to give not-as-good educations to the other races in the actual city.
Yes, fairly simplistic and I'm aware that there are, of course, some blacks and hispanics in the suburbs and some whites in the city, but in general.. this is true.
So, in terms of the reality of school districts, resegregation is occuring.
There are other forces at bay, through, than the simple hard facts of economic stratification.
To use an analogy I'm currently intimately familiar with, you can think of it like a few people trying to live in the same household. Everyone's marching around doing their own thing, living their own lives. They remain "Seperate but equal." They do their own thing and sometimes they get along and sometimes they really get on each other's nerves. But what they don't do is compromise. Ever.
Let me explain this in more concrete terms... what I am accusing EVERY race (and really it's not just race, but anything that makes us different from each other.. sex, race, sexual preference, body type, you name it) of doing is being so caught up in their racial identity, their racial pasts that they never bother to ask "OK. Now how do I get along with the rest of the people in the world?"
I am not putting down the right to your (racial/sexual/whatever) identity, but knowledge of this does not in any way equate to working towards getting along with everyone else. Nobody's even paused to consider this. They're still caught up in "Look at me. I have a right to be black! Look at me, I have a right to be female! Look at me, I have a right to be gay. Look at me. I have a right to be fat. Equal in every way to the average straight, skinny, white male."
Yes. You do.
Now what?
.. But I got off course here.
My POINT is simply that we're moving away from desegregation, away from open-minded acceptance of anyone else who is NOT LIKE ME.
So a toast to Brown v. Board of Education. It was a good idea while it lasted!
... But hey. What do I know? As anyone who's followed my journal for the last year knows. I'm just another small-minded racist, sexist white male.
Edit: Or, you know, i could just quote CNN who basically said what I said only better...
I can't help but laugh at this, because... while it was important at the time, the fact is schools are almost totally resegregated and the current trend is actually towards MORE segregation among the races.
Are we committed towards desegregation of schools? Current politics seems to suggest otherwise.
Well.. let me back up a little bit.
I mentioned that schools have almost toally resegregated. Of course, I can't speak for all schools. I remember being told by
kareila a while back that the South is generally a little more aware than my own school was. So.. possibly so.But let me tell you about life in Buffalo, which, as I understand it, DOES, in fact, mirror life in most cities around the U.S.
The current trend is still for middle-class white people to move out of the city and towards the generally better quality life a suburb can give. The last I don't know how many years has seen a great deal of this... people moving out of the cities and taking their money with them, leaving only those unable to make it out with them to live, survive and, hopefully, thrive where they are.
Huge cities are suddenly terribly underpopulated and desperately lacking in money. In order to make the budget work, they've had to resort to cuts.. cuts in police, cuts in fire safety, cuts in education. As more cuts are made, the quality of life for those who stayed decreases and more people try and get out of the city and to someplace where the quality of life is better. This is a viscious circle and it's very difficult to stop. SOME cities have come up with solutions but Buffalo, at least, has not.
So, in reality, what you have are a number of middle-class whites dominating the suburbs and lower-class other races dominating the urban cityscapes. Richer school districts able to give better educations to the white people in suburbia.. and poor school districts able to give not-as-good educations to the other races in the actual city.
Yes, fairly simplistic and I'm aware that there are, of course, some blacks and hispanics in the suburbs and some whites in the city, but in general.. this is true.
So, in terms of the reality of school districts, resegregation is occuring.
There are other forces at bay, through, than the simple hard facts of economic stratification.
To use an analogy I'm currently intimately familiar with, you can think of it like a few people trying to live in the same household. Everyone's marching around doing their own thing, living their own lives. They remain "Seperate but equal." They do their own thing and sometimes they get along and sometimes they really get on each other's nerves. But what they don't do is compromise. Ever.
Let me explain this in more concrete terms... what I am accusing EVERY race (and really it's not just race, but anything that makes us different from each other.. sex, race, sexual preference, body type, you name it) of doing is being so caught up in their racial identity, their racial pasts that they never bother to ask "OK. Now how do I get along with the rest of the people in the world?"
I am not putting down the right to your (racial/sexual/whatever) identity, but knowledge of this does not in any way equate to working towards getting along with everyone else. Nobody's even paused to consider this. They're still caught up in "Look at me. I have a right to be black! Look at me, I have a right to be female! Look at me, I have a right to be gay. Look at me. I have a right to be fat. Equal in every way to the average straight, skinny, white male."
Yes. You do.
Now what?
.. But I got off course here.
My POINT is simply that we're moving away from desegregation, away from open-minded acceptance of anyone else who is NOT LIKE ME.
So a toast to Brown v. Board of Education. It was a good idea while it lasted!
... But hey. What do I know? As anyone who's followed my journal for the last year knows. I'm just another small-minded racist, sexist white male.
Edit: Or, you know, i could just quote CNN who basically said what I said only better...
