Is Education Post-Racial?
I could have chosen a different article but this one hit home, literally. Emmanuel Felton spends almost 10,000 words describing a problem that should no longer exist in my home state, and in my own county. He discusses the city of Gardendale, 20 minutes from my home, and their attempt to create their own school district in order to better the education of the students in the district. The only problem is this new district would lead to rezoning, and rezoning leads to students getting left behind. These students that get left behind are usually of lower income and black. Though we would like to think this isn’t a race issue, it is, whether the Gardendale parents call it that or not. They seem to use this language of “our”. It’s ‘our’ school that we want better for ‘our’ children. We’ve seen it from the president’s tweets and we’re seeing it again here in this case, ‘our’ means white. The word ‘our’ seeks to exclude anyone and everything that causes a problem or disruption, and for some reason that is synonymous with minorities.
This article got me thinking about my own childhood education. I grew up in a predominantly white suburb in Birmingham, AL, in Jefferson county, though it was separated from the Jefferson County school district. This school I called my own had hallways swarming with white faces. Was I a part of one of those school district’s that shut out black students? Did I spend 13 years of my life benefiting from a school that had almost been successful in shutting out people who looked like me, if it weren’t for me? The sad thing is that I think the answer is yes. I took AP classes, and did after school sports at one of the best schools in my state, and I don’t regret any of it, but is this prized education I received the same one that Gardendale parent’s are asking for. They want their children to succeed, yet they seem to have little care for the students that get left behind.
The article’s protagonist is Leslie Williams, a black mother who just desires for her children to succeed, much like my own parents. Leslie grew up going to Gardendale High School, received a quality education and only hopes the best for her kids. Her desires are equal to those of the white parents, yet her voice isn’t heard and it’s possible that her wishes for her kids will be just hopeless dreams. Leslie wants to keep her kids at Gardendale, but what if she can’t afford to move into the area that is rezoned to be Gardendale City School’s, like my own parents could when they moved to Mountain Brook in 2002?
Stories like this alone point to the fact that we are not living in a post-racial society. There are still sprinkles, no shadows, of Jim Crow haunting places like Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. The shadows walk the halls of schools making victims out of innocent children, whose parents are just seeking a better life for them. The cost of education is no longer the $2 you may spend on a pencil. The fight is so much greater than that. the battle fought by parents like Leslie Williams is the one where they must go in front of the parents parent’s of their children’s classmates and plead for their child’s right to a good education. From the outside Gardendale’s attempt at a new school district is good, their intentions are to provide their children with better opportunities. But the cost is greater that a $55 million dollar high school renovation. The one’s who will sacrifice for the education of a majority of white students is minority students who call Gardendale High School home. So is it no longer quality education when it’s no longer quality education for all?
original article: https://www.thenation.com/article/the-department-of-justice-is-overseeing-the-resegregation-of-american-schools/
