Reply to Help me Edit: Response to Brookings Report

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]NP but it seems like common sense to me that Brookings is actually critiquing both the system and the actors, and you're interpreting it primarily as a personal attack ("they keep calling us segregationists").  When you try to turn a discussion about systemic racism into a conversation about whether or not you're a nice person, you're centering yourself in an unhelpful and unsympathetic way.  I agree with the PPs that say you should leave this alone or at least re-read and edit it when you're not so upset.  If you have to respond it should be about the weaknesses inherent in the methodology, the fact that boundaries were redrawn during the survey time, and the less outraged points.

Not to pile on, but I've reported enough overtly racist stuff on the schools forum to know that there's plenty of meat on the report's bones.  You've deleted most, though not all, of it, so I'm not sure why you're committed to arguing that racism doesn't play a role in the school choices made by posters here.  Stop looking at it as about you and start looking at is about the aggregate of posts.  The methodology is flawed but it's not like they're coming out of fantasy land.[/quote]

Directly from the report, "The conversations on DC Urban Moms illustrate what other research has also shown: When privileged parents choose, they tend to choose segregation." What is this saying if it is not saying that we are segregationists? Their description includes you, by the way. I don't know why I shouldn't take this misrepresentation of a website I own personally. I actually think I should.

As I have said, there are racists here. There are racists everywhere in America. Racism, whether conscious or unconscious, may play a role in school choices. But, I disagree with the report's conclusion that DCUM posters are choosing segregation. You are one of our posters. Did you choose segregation? The aggregate of the posts here are not racist. I don't know how many you have reported, but I guarantee that they are such a small percentage of the posts as to be almost unnoticeable. The report is doing a grave disservice by reducing a complex and nuanced issue to a simple accusation of racism. You know there is more to it than that. Why are you defending such their conclusion? 
[/quote]

Many, many conversations on DCUM do illustrate what other research has shown, that privileged parents choose segregation.  I am not horrified by this report because it rings true to me based on the comical amount of time I spend here.  The conclusion is overbroad, especially since you seem to be reading "the conversations on DCUM" to mean "every single conversation on DCUM," but the defensiveness (and trying to transfer the defensiveness to me?) is also overblown.  Their description doesn't include me, because I have not participated in the conversations that support their point other than to debate people who insist that SWW is the bees knees and Banneker is for problem cases with no dads (real thread!).

I think there are methodological problems with the report, and I think you've described some of them persuasively.  I also think the overly-personal reactions in other parts of your draft are inappropriate and you may come to regret publishing this while upset.  But this is your site, and it's your essay.  If that's the direction you want to go, I'm not going to keep arguing against it.  [/quote]

I also think that saying that "privileged parents choose segregation" is the same as saying that they are "segregationists" is a mistake, [b]because you make it an attack on your character rather than a statement about the ways in which everyone participates in a racist system.  There are no "pure" choices.[/b]  You can choose segregation without really meaning to, by not thinking about why things are the way they are, by not interrogating your own sense of what make a "good" school or a "good" neighborhood, by relying on "objective" measures, like test scores, that really aren't.

It's funny to me that parents who consider themselves liberal and progressive on race in many ways can be reliably counted on to get all their hackles up when someone points out that their choice of neighborhood or school for their kids was informed by racism (even unconscious) or entrenches racism, even if that's an unintended consequence.  Because you're doing what's "best for your kid," and that trumps every other obligation and consideration, and justifies anything.  [/quote]

yes, exactly. A lot of the books that have come out this year (How to Be Anti-racist, Caste) are about exactly this. It's really understandable that people get defensive when they think they are being "called a segregationist." this year has been a long journey of trying to get people to face instead that they are participating in a racist system. it's a subtle difference but maybe one that can relieve some of that defensiveness.[/quote]

You think white parents who choose DCPS need to be told that education in the U.S. is a racist system? Your comment and the report completely ignore the fact that any white parent who chooses DCPS is doing the opposite of perpetuating a racist system. They are the ones engaging the system and working within it. They [b]are[/b] the integration that is happening in DC, and it is troubling that the report ignores how far DC has come, choosing instead to hold it up as an example that they suggest is going in the wrong direction, when the opposite is true. Bumpy, uneven, sometimes even ugly, yes, but still integration of DC schools is moving in the right direction based on the numbers across the city. Even the most privileged parent who chooses, say Wilson, where white students are not even a plurality, could have gone private, or moved a mile away out of DC where there is cheaper real estate, better services, gifted programs, and in state college tuition (the big one). But they stayed. They chose integration in DC. They are a part of the solution. The only solution for DC is to get more white families to stay in DC public schools. Reports like this create a damned if you do damned if you don't social construct. It isn't helpful. Pretending these parents are actually choosing between Eastern or Wilson is a straw man. There are so few white high school students in DCPS that you cannot integrate even a quarter of the high schools. Calling parents who stay in that system and choose a school that is not even a plurality white "segregationist" because they didn't choose one of the other schools that also isn't plurality white, but is further away and has fewer course offerings, is really poor thinking.[/quote]

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