Reply to Help me Edit: Response to Brookings Report

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]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]

To an extent I agree with you and I acknowledge that I probably should have viewed things more in this light. However, with regard to this report, I think its research is extremely shoddy, doesn't support the conclusions, and both ignores and reveals the obvious. Because the research is so light and flawed, what stands out are the allegations that are repeated throughout the report about supporting segregation. Perhaps the authors could have made their point without using such a loaded term? Is there really any justification for using such a term toward people who have chosen to remain in DC public schools rather than fleeing for private or the suburbs? [b]Why antagonize the very folks with whom you must partner to find a solution?[/b]
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Jeff, this reaction is white fragility in action. You can do better.[/quote]

You may be correct that it is white fragility, but it is also reality. If people are interested in hard truths, it is a simple fact that this sort of language alienates your most likely allies. Why accuse people who didn't choose private schools and who didn't flee to the suburbs of supporting segregation? What solution does that help achieve?
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I think there are several items to unpack here, and I don't have answers for all of them.

1) There is no better word choice than "upholding segregation" if you want to talk have an honest discussion about how certain schools are discussed on this forum, and similar forums around the country. Individual families (including my own) often make choices that uphold segregation, and if we mask that term with euphemisms, it doesn't change the facts on the ground. Residential and educational segregation are real phenomena, and are frankly trending the wrong direction.

2) "Fleeing to the suburbs" feels like some defensive whataboutism here. Yes, Whitman is more segregated than Woodrow Wilson, but that's choosing an extreme outlier. The number of people who can just throw money down in-bounds for Whitman is pretty rare. More likely, among the DCUM types, are folks trying to decide between Wilson and B-CC, or between Kennedy HS in DC or Blair HS in Montgomery County. B-CC and Blair are both integrated schools like Wilson, and I don't think there's a moral high ground to living in upper NW over Silver Spring.

3) The puzzler here is whether you, as a forum manager, have any recourse if your product is being used to uphold segregation. I don't know the answer to that, but I think it is worth engaging with the question honestly and without defensiveness. We all swim in a white supremacist soup, and we (white folks) owe it to ourselves to interrogate our roles. You can't ban discussion of SWW or Janney, and I think you do a great job of swinging the Ban Hammer on flat-out racist posts. But it might be worth starting a separate thread to get real advice, maybe from BIPOC posters, about how DCUM can be anti-racist rather than just non-racist. [/quote]

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