I’m Not Racist, But My Kid’s Not Going There [On Segregation]
It starts the same.
“I heard what you’re saying about integration and everything, and I agree with you in general …”
“Yes?”
“And I hear you on fighting for all schools and not just mine …”
“Mmmhmmm.”
“And I’m not racist, but I don’t want to take my kids out of a well-resourced school so they can go to a school with gang violence.”
“Excuse me, what?”
“I don’t mean …”
Yes, you did.
If you’ve read any reporting from New York Times’ Kate Taylor in the last few months, any discussion around school segregation and integration in New York City has a “but I’m not racist” in it. Racism isn’t merely a set of feelings one has towards another, but also the systematic ways we view schools where the students predominantly attending are black.
Our school system, as a function of our country, moves with the best interest of rich white folks. Despite some pundits’ willful ignorance about education history, the real first opt-out movement was when droves of middle to upper class white people created private schools to avoid desegregation court orders. Segregation was always the ostensible representation of inequity, and its dismantling puts schools at odds with American laws, systems, and values. All too often, asking for any level of equity has been met with violence from firings of entire staff to the torching of bodies and buildings, all because some folks got used to black people not reading.
In New York City, the concurrent battles against Success Academy charters and rezoning I'm Not Racist, But My Kid's Not Going There [On Segregation] | The Jose Vilson: