Sunday, May 13, 2012
And We Thought That Segregation Was Gone...
Leilan Nishi
Post #4
Topic: Education
"Why Don't We Have Any White Kids?" by N.R. Kleinfield
Published May 11th, 2012
Length: 11 pages
The fact that people today are so unaware of segregation when it stares them right in the face is unnerving. Isn't that something of the past? The reason that people think that segregation is no longer an issue is because of a lack of education on contemporary social issues; that is what makes this article's focus so ironic: a school, which should be teaching their students about segregation, suffers from that exact affliction. The Explore Charter School is predominantly black, with some students of minority race, but with no white students. Was this segregation unintentional? Or was it deliberate?
According to Tim Thomas, a white fundraiser who lives in the area and who wrote a blog about the neighborhood, most white families don't want to send their children to Explore. They say that this is because they "don't want to be guinea pigs." Some black families don't want to enroll their kids anywhere else because "it's more comfortable to be with people of your own race than to be with a lot of different races." However, the tension does not stop with the parents and families. At Explore Charter the staff is 61% white and 35% black. This makes the black families uncomfortable at having their children taught, and the school manage, disproportionately by whites as opposed to people of their own race.
So who's at fault here, the white parents who feel uncomfortable with sending their white child to an all-black school, or the black families who seem to prefer the segregated learning atmosphere? Both sides need to change their views on segregation in the educational environment if they don't want to set back the Civil Rights movement half a century. We do not want to have Ruby Bridges' show of defiance against racial tensions in schools lost in the pages of history. In case anyone forgot, she was the girl who went to an all-white institution to be taught, despite facing intense and disgusting hatred from the racist community on the way to and from school. But we haven't forgotten... Or have we?
Read the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/education/at-explore-charter-school-a-portrait-of-segregated-education.html?pagewanted=1
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The Explore Charter school has mostly black, some minorities, and no whites, but are taught mostly by whites. It seems that whites do not want their children to attend due to fears, and blacks do not have much desire to have their children attend a very diverse school either. Some black families are unhappy about the unequal racial ratios of black to white in students and in teachers. Both blacks and whites play into the continued segregation.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing the way that schools hardly touch on the subject of segregation anymore when it continues to be a prolonging issue in our modern society. I believe that it is wrong to assume that segregation and discrimination is a thing of the past. As stated in the article, many schools continue to have a racial tensions especially where races are not equally distributed throughout the school. In order to subdue racial tensions in schools and other public facilities, everyone must open there eyes and see people for more than the color of their skin.
ReplyDelete