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Saturday, June 30, 2007

Discrimination is Good?

The headline reads Supreme Court Quashes School Desegregation. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot decide who goes to school where solely on the basis of race. It's a bad thing. We all know it. Or, at least, to hear the public outcry it is. According to the NPR story, it's "a clear blow to the concept of racial diversity."

The case stems from, for one, an event at a school in Seattle. A white family moved to a neighborhood to get their white child into a particular school. The school refused to allow the child into their school, requiring instead that she travel half an hour across town to go to another school. This, the protesters claim, is racism. Wait! No. They're proclaiming that it's discrimination against black people. Hold on. Once again, I'm confused.

I'm confused about the argument that government should discriminate on the basis of race. That, they say, is the right thing to do. That, they say, is more non-racist than the reverse. I don't get it.

I'm confused because from my observation most people who live in particular neighborhoods populated by particular ethnic groups do so by choice. Chinatowns are not Chinatowns because Chinese people are forced to live there; they live there by choice. Korean neighborhoods are typically Korean neighborhoods by choice. White people live with white people because they want to, and black people live in black neighborhoods because they want to. Admittedly it's a generalization, but I think that for the most part it is true. Most people prefer to live with those with whom they are most comfortable, and most people are most comfortable with people like themselves. That also means that rich white people prefer to live in rich white neighborhoods rather than middle-class white neighborhoods because the rich white people are more like them than the middle-class white people. It's not racism; it's xenophobia. Look it up. Human beings are, largely, xenophobic. They are afraid of the foreign -- anything that is not like them. If it's not a different skin color, it's a different language or a different religion or a different income level. It's not "white" -- it's human. The primary reason that predominantly black schools are predominantly black is not due to racism, but because black people have chosen to congregate in an area. The same is true in predominantly white schools.

I'm confused because I went to an "integrated school". In high school I was in a school that was part of a racial integration plan. Hispanics were bussed from the Hispanic area and blacks were bussed from the black area and rich whites were bussed from the rich white area and me ... well, I was a middle-class white boy who lived near the school, so I went there, too. What I observed, however, was not integration. What I observed was self-imposed segregation. Sure, we all went to school together, but the Hispanics hung out over here and the blacks hung out over there and the rich whites hung out across the way and the middle class whites hung out someplace else. Me? I was never given the proper training. I didn't know that I was supposed to be part of a cliqué. I didn't know I was supposed to discriminate on the basis of race or income. I had friends in all groups. Three of us in particular hung out together because we knew each other from church. There was me, the token white kid, with Clarence, a blind black kid, and Dan, a kid whose mom was from Columbia and whose dad was from Chile. They teased us, of course. They called us "the United Nations". I didn't think that was a bad thing. So we were friends through high school. We weren't "integrated" because of bussing. We were integrated because no one remembered to tell us we weren't supposed to be.

I'm confused because it appeared that the complaints center around "diversity". Apparently, and without telling me, the concept of "diversity" has become an absolute moral imperative. It is "good". It benefits everything it touches. Any attempt to block it is "evil" and anywhere that it is not will suffer loss because of its absence. I, of course, have never figured that one out. We don't want "diversity" in the arrangements of public bathrooms. Men's rooms should be for men and women's for women. We don't want diversity there. It's odd that most people are quite sure that women should be allowed to play on men's teams, but men are not allowed to play on women's teams. Wouldn't diversity be good there? When you're an engineering company designing a technical product, would it be good to have a white and a black engineer instead of two white engineers? I don't know what difference that would make. Now, don't misunderstand. I'm not against diversity. Exposing people in certain conditions to things with which they are not familiar or comfortable can be a good thing. I'm just saying that the present perspective that "Diversity is always good in all circumstances and those who disagree are immoral and unkind" doesn't make sense.

I don't get it. I don't get it at all. The NAACP is upset because they are saying that government should discriminate on the basis of race? Is that really what we want to see? It seems to me that the way we stop racial discrimination is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. And now that they have ruled that in this case the government shouldn't discriminate on the basis of race, that's a bad thing? Someone ... anyone ... help me out here. I don't get it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stan,

As per your request, let me see if I can help you out here. The issue has never been solely about race. It has also been about social and economic advantages that an individual gets or doesn’t get because of their race.

Let’s look at housing first. While it’s true that rich white people do like to congregate together, the fact is that a rich white person who owns a mansion in Beverly Hills would have no problem purchasing a home in the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Los Angeles known as Watts. The reverse is not true. An African-American home owner living in Watts would be hard-pressed to purchase a garden shed in Beverly Hills.

In truth, home owners in Beverly Hills receive a whole lot more than neat places to hang their hat when they purchase homes in that neighborhood. Typically, there’s no shortage of money for police or fire protection and the repair of roads and utilities. Someone who lives in Beverly Hills can send their children to the neighborhood public school knowing that the school has enough funds to purchase new equipment, new textbooks and some of the best teachers available. And, if the public schools aren’t up to the standards of a particular parent, then that parent has the option of sending that child to an exclusive private school. They can afford the private school because they have sufficient income to qualify for a mortgage in Beverly Hills.

In the end, it’s all about the Benjamin’s. A child attending school in a well-funded district will have more opportunities to take college prep courses and participate in a host of extracurricular activities that won’t be available to someone in the inner city. Money means that when the Beverly Hills child comes home, there will be food in the fridge so he or she doesn’t have to study while hunger pains are gnawing at them. When the Beverly Hills student goes to bed it is with a reasonable certainty that the sleep won’t be interrupted by some kind of violence.

It has been observed by greater intellectuals than myself that money buys individuals the ability to choose. One of the ways people get money is through education. Inferior education eventually spells inferior paychecks. And the cycle repeats itself generation after generation.

In short, people don’t always congregate together out of choice. They congregate together because they are unable to accrue the finances needed to move to another location.

As for diversity: In predominately white neighborhoods an influx of minority students should help to dispel the many racial stereotypes that exist concerning different groups. On the other side of the equation, schools situated in areas primarily populated by minority groups inevitably wind up with more funding than they previously enjoyed. The white parents of white students bused into economically deprived areas are going to lobby their school board to start investing more money in schools that may have been subsisting on a pittance for years.

In Louisville, that investment has taken the form of “magnate schools” with programs that are enticing enough to lure students from safe suburbia to neglected neighborhoods.

In 1896 the US Supreme Court offered its ruling in the case of Plessey v. Ferguson, in which the court decided that separate educational facilities divided by race were completely acceptable, as long as the facilities were equal. Inevitably, schools situated in more affluent neighborhoods became more equal, when it came to funding, than their counterparts in low-rent neighborhoods. The decision stood until Brown v. The Board of Education in 1954.

I’ll be the first to agree that there are problems with the implementation of Affirmative Action, but I continue to believe that it represents a worthy goal.

Hope this clears up some of your confusion for you.

May the Grace of the Lord disturb you.

Father David Jennings

Stan said...

Thank you for your assistance. Let me see if I understand you correctly.

Race, among other things, determines social and economic benefits in this country. There are no rich black people in Beverly Hills. There are no poor white people in the Watts. Thus, solely on the basis of race (That was what the ruling was about.), it is important that we move these poor black children into rich white schools and bus the rich white kids into poor black schools.

I don't suppose I'm any clearer. And, in all seriousness, there is one thing I'm absolutely unclear on. Schools are funded by the state and federal governments. Isn't the funding basically distributed based on "numbers of students"? I understand that parents can buy a private education in richer neighborhoods, but in terms of public education, shouldn't the funding be equivalent when the state and federal governments are doing the funding? (That's not a question for you, Father David. It's just a question I don't get.)

I get Affirmative Action. What I don't get is why it is that people of one race must be penalized permanently so that a people of another race can receive benefits. It seems as if we're saying, "The other race is significantly inferior and cannot make it on their own, and it's the fault of the 'superior' race, so we'll make the 'superior' race pay to make up the difference because the 'inferior' race can't make it otherwise."

But, as we all know, there are lots of things I continue to be confused about.