Racial segregation returns to schools
 

Racial segregation returns to schools
Ruling on racial isolation in Miss. system reflects troubling broader trend
By Stephanie McCrummen
The Washington Post
updated 8:47 a.m. ET, Tues., April 20, 2010
TYLERTOWN, MISS. - During her elementary school years in this rural Mississippi town, Addreal Harness, a competitive teenager with plans to be a doctor, said her classes had about the same numbers of white and black students. It was a fact she took little note of until the white kids began leaving.

Some left in seventh grade, even more in eighth, and by the time Harness, who is African American, reached Tylertown High School, she became aware of talk that has slowly seeped into her 16-year-old psyche -- that some white parents call Tylertown "the black school," while Salem Attendance Center, where many of her white classmates transferred, is known as "the white school."

"In my class of 2012, there's just seven white girls now," said Harness, raising her chin slightly. "The ones that left, they think Salem's smarter because they have more white kids, but it's not."

Last week, a federal judge ruled that a school board policy here in Walthall County has had the effect of creating "racially identifiable" schools in violation of a 1970 federal desegregation order.

Although the case is unique in some ways, it fits a broader trend toward racial isolation that has been underway for years in American schools and has undermined the historic school integration efforts of the civil rights era.

More than half a century after courts dismantled the legal framework that enforced segregation, Obama administration officials are investigating an array of practices across the country that contribute to a present-day version that they say is no less insidious.

Rights abused in practice?
Although minority students have the legal right to attend any school, federal officials are questioning whether in practice many receive less access than white students to the best teachers, college prep courses and other resources.

Department of Education lawyers also are investigating whether minority students are being separated into special education classes without justification, whether they are being disciplined more harshly and whether districts are failing to provide adequate English language programs for students who are not fluent, among other issues.

The Walthall County case fell under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department, which is still monitoring more than 200 mostly Southern school districts for compliance with desegregation orders dating to the 1960s and '70s.

Justice officials said they have sometimes found that local school boards have adopted policies that undermine those orders, a situation that some experts say reflects a misguided sense that civil rights concerns are somehow a thing of the past.

Studies have shown schools drifting back into segregation since the 1980s, when the federal government became less aggressive in its enforcement. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that school districts cannot make racial balance a policy goal unless -- as is the case in Walthall -- they are attempting to comply with a federal desegregation order.

"School boards are constantly under pressure from privileged parts of their districts, and if there isn't any counterbalance of civil rights enforcement policy, you can easily end up with a set of decisions that increase segregation," said Gary Orfield, director of the civil rights project at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Its studies that show that 38 percent of black students and 40 percent of Latino students attend public schools that are more than 90 percent minority.

'Who's hurting?'
In Walthall County, an area with sprawling green lawns and hot pink azaleas near the Louisiana border, the main employers are the county and small factories that make truck pallets and military uniforms. The school district has three attendance zones serving about 2,500 students, with 64 percent of them black and 34 percent white.

In recent years, the school board, which has three black and three white members, approved hundreds of requests from mostly white parents to transfer their children out of their zoned school, the majority-black Tylertown, to Salem, which has since the early 1990s become a majority white school.

White parents sometimes defended their requests by explaining that they live closer to Salem. More frequently, though, they employed the vague reason that their kids would be "more comfortable" at Salem, whose academic record and course offerings are similar to Tylertown's.

"I didn't realize it was getting to the point anyone should worry about it," said Jay Boyd, the school board president, who is white. "I just thought we need to do what's best for students -- if they're happy, let them go to Salem. Who's it hurting?"


A federal judge answered that question last week, ruling that the transfers created "racially identifiable" schools in the district. The judge also found that Tylertown's elementary schools were concentrating white students into certain classrooms, a practice some school officials have defended as necessary to avoid white flight from the county.

"We said we're going back to where it was before 1970," said Clennel Brown, who heads the local NAACP branch that complained to the Justice Department. "When the white parents say 'more comfortable,' to me it's saying 'I don't want my child to be influenced by black children.' "


Although the court ruling did not explicitly address the question of intent, Brown and others here noted that the transfers by white families gathered speed several years ago, after Tylertown, which was the official black high school under the old segregated system, got its first African American principal since desegregation in 1970. At Salem, which was the white school in the Jim Crow era, the principals have always been white.

Brown and others also noted that at Tylertown, white children and parents rarely attend graduation ceremonies, and that white students have often held a separate prom out of town. Until recently, Salem voted for separate black and white homecoming courts.

Boyd, the school board president, reluctantly acknowledged that racism probably played a role in the transfer requests. "I thought that was a thing of the past," he said. "You live and you learn."

The court order mandates that the white students who transferred to Salem, with some exceptions, must return to Tylertown next school year, a situation that has upset students and teachers.

Many say that despite the school board policy, both Tylertown and Salem remain more integrated than many schools across the country. Tylertown is 76 percent black and 22 percent white; Salem is 33 percent black and 66 percent white.

'Hillbillies from Mississippi'
Over the years, white and black students and teachers have formed friendships and in other intangible ways reaped some benefit from the very diversity that the court ruling is attempting to protect.

"I have felt we had something very special here," said Lyshon Harness, an African American who is an assistant teacher at Salem and a relative of Addreal Harness.

"Last night," added Judy Walters, an assistant teacher who is white, "I heard someone saying on TV that we're 'hillbillies from Mississippi,' saying we need to move on. But you go up north, and it's real bad."

Indeed, in a nation where housing patterns remained profoundly shaped by race, many schools could easily be categorized by the dominant racial group attending them. Walthall County got particular scrutiny because of its desegregation order and because the board adopted policies that had the effect of sharpening the racial identity of their schools.

The ruling has led some white parents in Walthall County to reconsider the systemic effects of individual choice. Roger Ginn, a white parent whose children graduated from both Tylertown and Salem, said he'd always considered the transfer issue a simple matter of student happiness, not race.

"But if all that adds up to segregated schools?" he asked, and then paused for a while. "That wouldn't be right, no."


© 2010 The Washington Post Company
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36660242...shington_post/

Just because you make a law that school systems can't discriminate doesnt mean the parents are forced to.

Diverse learning environments are important, its a lot easier to hate a group when you arent personally familiar with them.

Sometimes it also takes away from the learning when you force two deeply divided groups together as well.

There is no good answer here. The parents will just move and segregate themselves.

I wish I could find it, but there was a graphic of white and black population in New Orleans and it looked like a tornado in some areas. They chased or ran from each other in circles.

New Orleans just solved this issue by the white kids going to private schools.

Its everywhere people. Try living in deep south Georgia. I get to see racism every day (I even got called a racist the other day :lol:) and the high schools here are set up similar. The majority of white kids go to the county high school, the black kids go to the city high school. I dont think our local issue is so much that its intentional as it is the demographics. White rednecks dont live in downtown or very urban areas, and the black families dont live in the country or outskirts. You should have heard the screams from both sides when the govt was looking at making one big school out of the 2 tho.

Why can't it just be white families and black families?

If black kids want to go to white schools then do what every black person who wants to go to a white school does. Roam the streets, play football, and get adopted by white people.

I think a lot of the parents are just running away from bad performance. Black majority schools have a history of having ill performing students. I'm not saying it is race based but culture based. For example President Obama. He's black, smart, and a nerd. Do you think that Obama was never accused of "trying to be white" by accelling in the academics (vs sports)? Get rid of that black culture of "keeping it real" mentallity and white/asian/black/etc parents won't give a crap where their kids go.

But again a private school is the answer. Send your kids where they want to go.

EXCUSE ME???

I think you need to fix that quote, like NOW. I did not say that and changing my quote to something so blatantly ugly like that will get your ass vacayed in a hurry.

I think his point was about you saying redneck.

You are oppressing him

It doesnt matter. I am a redneck. Redneck is in no way as offensive the N word to myself or society as a whole. Inappropriate in the whole, warning given. Blatant racism of this manner is NOT tolerated on this board.

What are you yelling at me for?
I'm just stating the obvious that you..
How are you a redneck?

I am so offended by his post I am quite ready to ban him right now. I have never been so offended by someones post on this board. If it wasnt an abuse of my powers he would be on vacation right now.

You havent seen yelling.

I was born in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma, partially raised there but mostly in Texas, my family is rough, half of them dont half all their teeth, they live in trailers and are often seen on the "Walmart" websites and grow busted old cars on blocks in the middle of their 200 acres while the brand new shiny mud truck with the mudding tires is parked in front of the trailer with the 4 wheeler in the back and the old muscle car in the shed that dont run.

However, I have managed to cultivate a different appearance and speech than the rest of my family, it does not negate where I come from. I love my family and am proud to be a redneck.

I have never met a soul however who was proud to be the N word or called so.

If you actually read the article you'd see that the academic records of both schools are similar.

Impossible.
Its a black school so it must be ghetto with violence and poor performance.

I'm not sure what was wrong with what he said, unless you changed his post.

Don't get offended over the internet. Nobody dies...really. Life is too short.

i changed what he did to Rae's post in his quote of hers.

Minor confusion between slang terms and morally offensive terms.
Redneck being the slang term.

Then you have never been to MLK Blvd.

I see you are proud to be a "redneck". I am a technical redneck because I actually work out in the sun and my neck turns red (do you work outdoors?). But the term "Redneck" is derogatory to many people. It insinuates that they are a lesser people (as you described well in your little hissy fit) and not up to the standards of society. They are considered uneducated, dumb, ignorant, etc. It's the same idea behind the word ni... "N Word" except we haven't had Redneck beat into our heads as the ultimate no-no.

I was showing that if the roles where reversed in your statement then all hell would break loose (which it did and thank you for proving my point). You could have said simply that white families (or people) live in the outskirts of town while black families (or people) generally live in the town and your post would have been well understood.

Instead you wanted to justify why there are black majority schools vs white majority schools but didn't want to come off as a racist due to your white guilt and threw in a token "white rednecks" (why can't there be black rednecks, are you that racist???) to make yourself down with the homies. It's like a white person throwing in "i have a black friend" so that their statement is more justified. By the way, I have a black friend.

Just hush Smittie, you really dont know what you are talking about and putting words in other peoples mouths serves no purpose other than to prove your ignorance.

Keep pushing it...in all the years I've dealt with you guys, you are the only one I've ever considered banning for your racist and inappropriate comment.

I've seen the "N" word used on here before, why would he be the only one you considered banning?

His above post explains why he did it and your reaction proves his point.

Read up on the history of the word. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger

I know it is easy to single out Smittie as the racist whipping boy but his logic in this thread is sound.

His was deliberately changed to become highly offensive, racist and ugly. Not the spirit in which it was intended and not appropriate for any forum.

If I see it, it gets changed or deleted dude. End of story.

If it makes you all feel better feel free to poll the mods and see if Im alone in my thinking.

Either way, keep it up and you guys will see censorship like none before. Then you'll have something to bitch about.

Why so threatening?

Looking through your angry glasses, you seem to be missing the point.

I'm not agreeing with Smittie's tact or lack thereof but the word "redneck" can also be viewed as offensive and ugly. Will that be part of the censorship too?

I get offended when people claim to be rednecks (we'll just call it the "R" word) but aren't. Because of my job outdoors I have a "R word" so I can say it, but others can't. We should ban those who claim to be the "R word" or use the "R word" but aren't European-Americans with a neck of a reddish color.

By the way isn't power just oh so delicous?

By all means Smittie. Go back if you dont like it here. I will help if need be. :lol:

Redneck does not hold the connotation of the N word. You can argue it till your face turns blue but it is not even remotely the same and will never be treated as such. It doesnt promote racism or cause the ugly feelings the other does.

If the term redneck offends you, Im sorry. If being too PC offends you. Too bad. We allow alot of shit here but thats over the line and proves nothing other than someone trying to be deliberately ugly and offensive. You can prove a point without using derogatory racist comments.

End of story.

Yes it is. So much so that this discussion is closed. So go get all over tan, get rid of the farmers line and stop bitching because you have are an "R" word. They make sunscreen. You dont want to be an "R" word, use it. :dthumb: