smooth

Yeah, well the difference is I wrote two full pages about the problems endemic to one of our primary social structures that is supposed to guarantee equality of opportunity, and you wrote one sentence.

I wrote a historical analysis of what actually occurred, no theory at all as a matter of fact, and you wrote, "If you want things to be equal it's not about dominant institutional practices, it's about fairness to everyone regardless of color, creed, etc."

If you think that's a "fix" to the problem outlined above, please explain how it addresses fundamental inequality in our schooling system.

It's interesting to me that you speak of paradigm shifting yet even in this last response you still conceive of racism as an interpersonal act...of something that someone is currently doing to you as a function of your race. If you want to practice paradigm shifting, try to shift out of that modality and into this one where we are speaking about racism as it permeates social institutions regardless of people's actions and thoughts.


It's not theory Cyn, it's historical fact that blacks were restricted from accumulating capital by law. This didn't happen 100 years ago, when you and I were attending primary school, Black families in Detroit could still legally be prevented from buying homes and were not allowed to bus their children to the better schools in white neighborhoods.

Even today you can't just choose to send your child across the street if it happens to be a top-notch school with current textbooks and enough desks for its students IF you are not in the same ZIP code.

And if you think that's a mere coincidence, realize this: if you look at a top-down map of Los Angeles, what you'll find is something that looks kind of like doughnuts of ZIP codes. Where the hole in the center is a wealthy zone, and all around it is poverty stricken zones with depressed housing prices.

This came about literally because small groups of wealthy whites moved closer together and successfully lobbied their local politicians to give the area its own ZIP code. So you literally end up with a shit-hole school on one side of the street that services 20,000 students, even though the local tax dollars can barely keep the teachers paid to say nothing about buying textbooks. And on the other side of the street you have a bad-ass state of the art school with a teacher to student ratio of 20:1 since it only services about 3,000 children, with not only textbooks, but also each student has access to a brand new, state of the art, computer lab.

Let's ignore the fact that all of the kids are toting laptops and iphones. You don't need them to learn. It's a lot easier and more fun, but you sure don't need them. But you certainly need a textbook and desk to learn effectively. I'd argue that you need a computer, too, these days, but I can accept that some people wouldn't agree.

It'd be nice if our public library system could help. You know, like if there were even 10 computers and 10 copies of a current chemistry and algebra book on the shelf. I mean, it'd be a clusterfuck trying to get everyone access to such limited supplies, but the problem is that public libraries are funded similarly to schools so they don't even have 10 of anything...in fact, public libraries are shutting down in impoverished communities.

And you're right, this no longer affects just black kids. It's a big fucking problem for poor white people...you don't have to go any further than Southern Oregon to find out what happens when poor white kids' schools shut their doors and public libraries can only stay open for 8 hours per week.

It's a huge problem. But when I talk about something like that, I am often accused of "class warfare." But the exact sequence of events that I'm describing that happened to blacks historically, is the same reason that roachboy made the comment earlier that schools perpetuate the class structure in US society. They don't really lift you out of deprivation, they make the problems the parents face those of the children generation after generation...until someone is lucky or crafty enough to send their kid across the street to that nice new school in Beverly Hills. Usually by lying about where they actually live, but sometimes because certain schools actually reach out and bring in a few promising students each year.

Cyn, it's a scientific fact that the first few years of childhood development are critical to that child's cognitive abilities that will affect him or her over the entire lifespan. There's a separate social fact that the school you take your degree from has a direct effect on the places that are open to you for hiring. Given that, we have to address the problem, whatever the cause, that puts some kids in classrooms with 200 students while other students are sitting in classrooms with 20 students and prepares some students for community college while the others are prepared for CalTech; some will learn geometry because the school had enough books and classroom space and a teacher actually able to teach the course...while in the other school everyone will learn geometry. Some will be lucky if their school offers Spanish, while at the other school the kids have the option of learning not only Spanish, but Chinese, Russian, and German. Some are going to be struggling to take a class on English composition simply as a function of the rooms available, not because they can't handle it. Meanwhile, every student in the other school has a choice to take drama, 3D modeling, animation, and film making.

To their credit, major corporations have long since realized that racism-schmacism if kids keep dropping out or graduating totally incapable of working the tools of a modern economy, we'll fall even further behind the rest of world as our workers are unable to compete in a global market. Hence, microsoft, apple, SUN, adobe, for example, have long assisted inner city schools with free and reduced pricing on current products. That's not too effective if the school can't hire teachers capable of actually teaching C++. Some companies even send out reps to teach, knowing this is a problem, but I think you can do the math...they're barely scratching the surface.

We haven't even scratched the surface, Cyn. We still haven't discusses what happens from a development standpoint when one student gets adequate rest and a full breakfast, while another goes to bed slightly hungry. We haven't added in the problems of a school system that can afford to hire guidance counselors and give them a caseload of 10 students they are responsible for tracking over the course of their educational career. Meanwhile, a guidance counselor at an inner-city school, if they can even afford any, is charged with "guiding" 3,000 kids. Is it any wonder that the best intentioned counselor at such a school will only notice if one of those 3,000 kids is getting straight F's for a few semesters? Basically if you totally fuck up or just ridiculously excel, you simply won't be on anyone's radar as a basic function of numbers. Totally nothing to do directly with race at this stage of the game. But will that excelling student have MIT recruiters talking to his class? Will he or she even know that MIT exists as something to strive for unless someone in his or her life actually thinks it's worthwhile to say something about MIT? That's a lot of ifs...

We have to address this entrenched inequality if we claim that we are concerned, as a nation, with equality of opportunity because public primary education is the gateway to the opportunities kids will be faced with for the rest of their lives. Adequate training is a pre-requisite for remaining competitive in the global market.

How do you propose we address it?

__________________
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