The Challenge to Care in Charm City: The Much Needed Re-Desegregation of Our Schools

Sunday, April 22, 2007

The Much Needed Re-Desegregation of Our Schools

If the desegregation of schools happened over a half a century ago in 1954, why is it that I have only seen three white faces in my Baltimore City classroom, which has housed well over 300 students? The Supreme Court has an upcoming case to review the constitutionality of “controlled choice” programs aimed at creating diverse school districts in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington – two cities which now have some of the most racially integrated schools in the country. Douglas Harris, Affiliated Scholar for the Center for American Progress, examines this case, as well as the history of school desegregation, in the article “Lost Learning, Forgotten Promises”.

The article posits that there has been overwhelming evidence proving the benefits of racially integrated schools. Integration not only improves the “quality of learning outcomes for minority students,” (“The Supreme Court and School Desegregation”), but the students also perform better in college attendance and employment than students of non-integrated schools. While the academic benefits of desegregated schools have been proven through studies and are unlikely to be contended, what I find to be equally important, though rarely referenced in such cases, is the values of tolerance and cultural awareness. These are two often underestimated factors in their ability to foster open-mindedness and critical thinking abilities, not to mention basic social functioning. Biologically, animals are enticed to reject difference, and this is the basis of the psychological tenet of in-group bias. By students learning to combat this somewhat natural feeling, they are learning to master their baser instincts and think critically about how they respond to any type of stimulus, racial or not.

Many teachers in Baltimore City actually take time from their content to teach tolerance and diversity. I have to wonder if this would this really be necessary if our students were simply exposed to other races in the classroom every day. Generally, this would be a racially bilateral solution to the problem of building tolerance among racial groups. I understand that the mention of dislike toward difference being inherent may be controversial, but, while unfortunate, it is a well-documented fact of evolution. I do not intend to say that this is a principle that we should in any way embrace, but nonetheless we need to understand it if we are to effectively combat it.

I was curious about the statistics of segregation in Baltimore City Public Schools, and I came across an article that references Baltimore as one of the examples of rapid re-segregation in the country. Of all school districts in the nation, Baltimore City was the 17^th most rapidly re-segregating district of black exposure to whites. Additionally, even though the white population of students in Baltimore City comprises just over 10% of the overall student population, the average white student attends a school with nearly 50% white attendance.

The achievement gap is undoubtedly the underlying cause of whites tending to group together, based on lower-performing African-American districts. This puts us at a catch-22. If controlled choice is struck down, we deepen the rift between opportunity for a decent education. This is why maintaining controlled choice seems to the only effective way to fight this uphill battle.