Roughly a month ago, a federal judge terminated a 29-year-old mandate that demanded Chicago Public Schools racially integrate. U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras absolved the so-called desegregation consent decree which was enacted three decades ago after the U.S. government sued CPS for discriminating against African-American and Hispanic students. According to the opinion written by Korcoras, "the vestiges of discrimination are no longer." While this may not necessarily be true, there is opportunity buried within this mess.
As it stood the decree was flawed. Under its parameters, magnet and selective schools had to have a racial make up of 65-85 percent minority and 15-35 percent non-minority. Currently, only eight percent of the student population is white, systematically over representing white interests in selective schools. Furthermore, questions abound as to whether the decree actually fulfilled its purpose of desegregating schools. And the end of the decree could not have come at a worse time. Applications for the 2010 school year are just around the corner, giving district officials little time to devise a new method for selecting students.
That was the mess. This is the opportunity: socio-economic factors.
It would be foolish - and downright na've to claim that racial tension is a thing of the past and that what truly separates us is something else, such as class. However, such an audacious statement isn't so far from the truth. Class inequality is just as influential a factor as race in keeping society segregated. And in today's materialistic society where we judge each other's worth based on possessions and not character, class is probably a more understandable solution of segregation than someone's skin color.
In 2000, the Society for the Study of Social Problems published an article titled "How Segregated Are Middle-Class African Americans?" As the title suggests, the authors of this study examined the integration of middle-class America, focusing on the three most segregated cities: Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit. Their report concludes that middle-class African-Americans are less segregated from whites than poorer African-Americans. To be fair, they also found that in these integrating situations, blacks were less well off than their white neighbors.
However, these types of findings should spur more research and in turn more creative approaches to solving or alleviating segregation. Which brings me back to my focus: socio-economic factors. CPS should devise a system for selecting students that weighs socio-economic factors heavier than other important measurements. This isn't to suggest that the richest and poorest students should be thrown into the same school and hope that centuries of inequitable differences will disappear.
But, by creating the right diverse mix, CPS can create a self-motivating, self-critical system. While poor white kids and poor black kids may have sufficiently met the previous racial integration guidelines, it didn't create a diverse enough environment that encouraged taking on challenges and overcoming obstacles. But, maybe mixing low-income students with poor and high-income students will bring different results: increased determination to succeed, more peer role models to aspire to, more ambition.
Centuries of discrimination and oppression will not be reversed because of a change in ideology. However, this may be the starting point of a much larger, more successful process. If all goes well, perhaps we can start working on the real facilitators of segregation: culture and socialization.
Be the first to comment on this article!