Reply to This American Life about desegregation in schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The issues people are raising are definitely big-brother stuff, but they are definitely (depressingly) real.

Imagine a legal regime under which any parent who has two opiate-related convictions immediately has their parental rights revoked and any subsequent children will not be placed in their custody. Such a parent would have to petition the courts to restore those rights.

I would bet, sadly, that this would very likely create better society-wide outcomes for these children.  On the other hand, it is way across the line in a society based on freedom and family.

If you can't do things like this - what do you do?  Essentially, you try to make the parents better people, better at being parents and give them skills to earn more, which generally makes everything better. For the kids you try to help mend the harm and make them see the broader world and that there are ways out of the situation they are in.

For society, you break up concentrated poverty by encouraging mixed neighborhoods, mixed schools.  And don't forget, we somehow need to bring down the percentage of white people who don't want to live with with non-white people above percentage X, Y, or Z, when it's clear that this is leading to self-segregation and conversely concentration of poverty AND social groups at the same time.

I don't know why people don't see this as worth gazillions of dollars and crazy effort at things like school integration (WHICH WORKS!!!!).  They should!  If you take someone and bring them up to their potential, they are productive and bring us all up.  If you let them fester and fail, that isn't just a lack of productivity, it's a loss - so there's a double cost there.

So, I know i am coming in way down the discussion thread after a lot has already been said, but thanks, now I have said my piece.[/quote]

Ok, but again, did you listen to the show or read the transcript? Why do you immediately jump to the discussion of a family in which both parents are heroin addicted? What relation does that have to the kids that were the main subjects of the show? Don't you get it that there are a lot of responsible, sober black parents whose kids are screwed because they live in a school district that has been abandoned by the government (that is to say, abandoned by all of us)? Sure, heroin addiction is a pretty big barrier to effective parenting and in some cases, many cases, will require coercive government intervention of one kind or another, but that's a tiny minority of people. Immediately focusing on this most extreme example is a convenient way of ignoring the racism that puts up barriers for the children of very responsible African American parents, who despite their responsibility, are poor, and/or are shut out from living in high performing school districts. That is the point of this story and this thread, the incredible systemic racism, not the admittedly difficult question of what to do with drug addicted or abusive parents of any race.

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PP here again, I should have added, it is great to see you in favor of integration, and maybe I was one sided in my criticism, and should have directed it at other PPs who have focused ad nauseum on the worst situations as opposed to the generalized racism. I think the first couple paragraphs of your post were just the last in a string of those kinds of comments.

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