This American Life about desegregation in schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
one generation requires that freedom to leap which does not happen if the schools are all poor people who still don't feel like they merit the investment of resources their wealthier counterparts do.

You know, there immigrants from Africa and middle East wasing up on the shore of Europe who would kill for the opportunities that you have, for the crappy books that you don't bother to read because they are not premium white kids books, for your free libraries, for your seat in a classroom that you often skip. Who wouldn't dream of dropping school.

If we bring a rural Chinese impoverished kid and put him in your place, he'll make all As. There are kids in India who started a school under a bridge because they feel education is their ticket out of slums.

And you sit here, entitled. And complain that you didn't get the best of everything and this is your excuse for failure.

I read a bit about Condoleezza Rice today. You know, the former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. She was a smart kid. Skipped 1st and 7th grades. She went to all black schools until her family moved and she started attending a mostly white school. At that school, a school counselor told her she was not college material. Her parents told her to ignore the counselor and to just focus on her studies. You take what you want from her story.

[Anonymous]

Candoleeza Rice had a family that supported her education and this is why she was so successful. Rice began to learn French, music, figure skating and ballet at the age of three.

She went to a private Catholic school, St. Mary's Academy (Cherry Hills Village), when she was 13 and that she graduated.

That's where the counselor told her she was not college material? It was not even a public school. Her parents chose to pay for her to go there. Why didn't they put her in a black failing school?

[Anonymous]

My grandmother was a single mom of 6 kids in rural India. Farming was the only source of income and it was modest income , hard labor, not many resources, no school in the village, no college within 10 miles. All 6 of her kids graduated from college (3 also finished masters). She instilled in them that they must study if they have to break this cycle, this was drilled into them everyday ( back in the 70s). Trust me when I say this, If she and her kids could do this, all AAs in this country can do this , you guys don't know what's it like to not have resources. It's time for personal responsibility people, lift your families, lift your communities on your own shoulders. Barack Obama became president because of the whites in this country, this country is ready for you, it's time to stop blaming the whites.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
one generation requires that freedom to leap which does not happen if the schools are all poor people who still don't feel like they merit the investment of resources their wealthier counterparts do.

You know, there immigrants from Africa and middle East wasing up on the shore of Europe who would kill for the opportunities that you have, for the crappy books that you don't bother to read because they are not premium white kids books, for your free libraries, for your seat in a classroom that you often skip. Who wouldn't dream of dropping school.

If we bring a rural Chinese impoverished kid and put him in your place, he'll make all As. There are kids in India who started a school under a bridge because they feel education is their ticket out of slums.

And you sit here, entitled. And complain that you didn't get the best of everything and this is your excuse for failure.

Let me see if I get you right... you think institutional racism is ok because other people have it worse? And you're calling them entitled?? LOL, I'd like to buy you a mirror.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My grandmother was a single mom of 6 kids in rural India. Farming was the only source of income and it was modest income , hard labor, not many resources, no school in the village, no college within 10 miles. All 6 of her kids graduated from college (3 also finished masters). She instilled in them that they must study if they have to break this cycle, this was drilled into them everyday ( back in the 70s). Trust me when I say this, If she and her kids could do this, all AAs in this country can do this , you guys don't know what's it like to not have resources. It's time for personal responsibility people, lift your families, lift your communities on your own shoulders. Barack Obama became president because of the whites in this country, this country is ready for you, it's time to stop blaming the whites.

That's an inspirational story. However, I must point out, as the African immigrant PP and others more eloquently put it--this is apples and oranges we're talking about. The experience of an immigrant coming to this country in the late 20th or 21st century is different from that of people who have lived here for generations under the enduring effects of institutionalized racism.

My dad is Indian, and I could also tell a similar story about how he made it out of his tiny rural town. However, the experience of your grandmother and my father are notable because *they made it out of poverty,* or their kids made it out. This is not necessarily the experience of the many they left behind.

Also, what about the history of the caste system in India, which was propagated during the British colonial regime? Even today with the caste system officially outlawed, are lower castes all given the same opportunities as those in higher castes? This is the closest--although still imperfect--analogy I can get to the experience of AAs here, and the systematic disenfranchisement that they've faced over the years.

[Anonymous]

Yes, yes, personal responsibility. Lift yourself up by your bootstraps. Make that bootstrap (singular) because I'm going to steal one of yours. But never mind that, keep lifting yourself up by your bootstrap. It's all about personal responsibility.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Let me see if I get you right... you think institutional racism is ok because other people have it worse? And you're calling them entitled?? LOL, I'd like to buy you a mirror.

You can't play racism card for all your life's failures.

The racist schools didn't lure all black students and failed them, one after another. It's time to take some responsibility for yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Even today with the caste system officially outlawed, are lower castes all given the same opportunities as those in higher castes? This is the closest--although still imperfect--analogy I can get to the experience of AAs here, and the systematic disenfranchisement that they've faced over the years.

Seriously? You're comparing AAs to a caste? What's stopping an AA students from studying really hard and becoming a top student in class and receiving a scholarship to college, like you did? Nothing. Nothing, but his own family and environment at home. That is the real problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Let me see if I get you right... you think institutional racism is ok because other people have it worse? And you're calling them entitled?? LOL, I'd like to buy you a mirror.

You can't play racism card for all your life's failures.

The racist schools didn't lure all black students and failed them, one after another. It's time to take some responsibility for yourself.

Are you willing to admit that some of the issue is not personal responsibility?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New poster here

Here is the elephant in the room

Why do many Asian and African immigrants generally break the poverty cycle in one generation while other populations don't

It's not SES because most immigrants arrive at the bottom of the SES stack so they have to attend a "crappy" school with parents working crappy long jobs but somehow the students make it

In all honesty, I hear this question over and over again. I know many Africans from different countries. I was an active member of African Society Union in college. I have never met one African immigrant who was impoverished. They may not have come to this country rich, but they were not impoverished in their home countries. The Africans who make it to the U.S. and Canada are not the poor Africans you think you know. They are not the Africans you see when you go outside your gated resort and walk and drive around the countryside.

Now I will readily admit that I don't know very many Asians, but surely the Asians who are paying thousands of dollars to get here to send their kids to TJ while another parent stays in the home country to work cannot be considered a poor immigrant. Where are these poor immigrants, outside of the Central Americans, that you speak?

NP here. When I read PP's comment I automatically thought of the Vietnamese boat people, who came to the U.S. in the hundreds of thousands as refugees at the end of the Vietnam War. Many of them were not the highly educated, highly motivated immigrants you mention, many were working-class or poor in Vietnam (and after years of war and months as refugees before arriving, some were malnourished, sick, and had PTSD). They as a group have done pretty well despite losing everything and arriving in this country only a generation ago, many without speaking any English. If they could make it without becoming criminals and drop-outs, I think AAs can, too.

And now someone will bring up the diaphanous specter of "institutionalized racism" that somehow doesn't affect refugee or other minorities, and only affects AAs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Even today with the caste system officially outlawed, are lower castes all given the same opportunities as those in higher castes? This is the closest--although still imperfect--analogy I can get to the experience of AAs here, and the systematic disenfranchisement that they've faced over the years.

Seriously? You're comparing AAs to a caste? What's stopping an AA students from studying really hard and becoming a top student in class and receiving a scholarship to college, like you did? Nothing. Nothing, but his own family and environment at home. That is the real problem.

Your deep understanding of nothing beyond your own navel is fascinating.

[Anonymous]

This is such a complicated issue, it's not even funny. Those calling for personal responsibility are 100% right and those cilaiming institutionalized racism are 100% right. No one I think would disagree there has to be some personal responsibility. But until the institutional racism is addressed/fixed, those who it is meant to keep down can never prosper in meaningful numbers that make a significant positive impact in the affected communities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I see is a bunch of parents (not the honor student from TAL episode, that's an outlier) who failed their kids by not enforcing education at home who made their own school a failing one by failing tests and failing attendance.

Now these parents relinquish responsibility for the failure and demand that it's school's fault they didn't make their kids succeed.

And you want to fix this at the expense of my kid? My kid is supposed to be a crutch for your failing kid? I don't think so. Your success is your job and you have to work for it. No one owes you anything.

The TAL story had more than a 1,000 kids whose parents enforced education to the extent of putting them a bus to ride 30 miles twice a day. How is that not "working for it"? Obviously, the two examples provided were not outliers when it came to valuing an education. The second student in the story who was bused to the suburban schoold ended up tutoring the "crutch" student whose sentiments mirrored what you're expressing here.

What the story posits is that integration is uncomfortable for everyone involved, but no one suffers. No student is exposed to violence or finds their own grades dropping because they're sitting next to a kid who escaped from a failing school. But the grades and the prospects of the transferred students do go up. Because the air is different, the vibe is different, there's running water, heat, air conditioning, roofs that don't collapse, cafeterias that don't flood, a staff that isn't bitter about their shitty working conditions and students who actually want to be there every day.

The Normandy school district made a deliberate attempt to make leaving their school difficult, yet paid more than $10 million in one year to transfer students clamoring to leave. The state, which allowed the school to operate in dysfunction for nearly two decades, changed the status of the school from unaccredited to non-accredited to force their return. Not so that the state could fix the schools or re-establish them as places where learning happens, but rather so that they could appease the racist asshole parents who claim that they couldn't stand any students with violent, brain-dead fail cooties coming into Lake Wobegon school districts, no matter what color their skin. Their fears had about as much reality to them as an 80s horror movie, while Normandy parents who believed their kids futures to be FUBAR were absolutely on the money.

People in this forum spend countless hours trying to suss out these types of interlopers (not saying anything about skin color) who cheat on residency to get their kids into better shcools, simultaneously don't care about education, AND bring down the quality of education for "good" people who care enough about their kids to spend a million dollars on a 1500 sf colonial.

We can't for the life of us or the success of our city figure out the achievement gap, but we are so on top of the poors here. Thank god.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Are you willing to admit that some of the issue is not personal responsibility?

I'm convinced that a failing school is labeled "failing" when students fail the tests and when they have low attendance. I've had crappy teachers in my life and I still got As because it was my responsibility to get a good grade, and a crappy teacher was not an excuse. So if I don't accept it as an excuse for myself, I'm not accepting it for anyone else.

I'm also convinced that no one opens a new school with an intention of sabotaging AA students and providing crappy education. I think it becomes failing as they fail academically and the funding is cut due to drop outs and lack of attendance.

I'm convinced that not all the teachers are crappy at black schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Are you willing to admit that some of the issue is not personal responsibility?

I'm convinced that a failing school is labeled "failing" when students fail the tests and when they have low attendance. I've had crappy teachers in my life and I still got As because it was my responsibility to get a good grade, and a crappy teacher was not an excuse. So if I don't accept it as an excuse for myself, I'm not accepting it for anyone else.

I'm also convinced that no one opens a new school with an intention of sabotaging AA students and providing crappy education. I think it becomes failing as they fail academically and the funding is cut due to drop outs and lack of attendance.

I'm convinced that not all the teachers are crappy at black schools.

And if you look beyond your own navel, you may realize that some people aren't you and have different (read: harder) experiences than you. That's not an excuse for them not to take personal responsibility, but it is a reason to work on the things that make life so privileged for some while taking from others.