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Louisiana school ordered to cease segregated black/white only classrooms.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/13/AR2010041302867.html?hpid=topnews

On initially reading this I was unpleasantly surprised. However, is there an argument here that due to the population imbalances the 'segregated' classrooms could have just naturally occurred? Is this a case of 'My God, I thought we'd left this behind 50 years ago' or is this being portrayed in a certain way for that precise reaction?

15% more white?

If this is deliberate segregation, purely based on skin colour or ethnic background then it is clearly unnaceptable.

However as MGS said could this just be an unfortunate coincidence? I'm not sure how classes are worked out in the states but in many UK schools a set system is used where by the brightest students are kept together in "top sets" and less inteligent or disruptive students are placed in other sets. Could this be the case here? It is possible that the "top sets" just happened to contain all white, or all black students.

As for sending students to other schools this may be more down to parental wishes than that of the schools themselves.

squilverine wrote:I'm not sure how classes are worked out in the states but in many UK schools a set system is used where by the brightest students are kept together in "top sets" and less inteligent or disruptive students are placed in other sets. Could this be the case here? It is possible that the "top sets" just happened to contain all white, or all black students.

Well that could open some nasty doors of thought, but the obvious answer there is where are the black students going home to? Are they returning to less educationally nurturing environments than the white students? If as I suspect, the black students are demographically from poorer homes and areas with higher unemployment/crime. The division therein comes because the black students are being handicapped in their education by poverty.

This in turn says something ugly about the continued system of employment on the wider scale in that area and racial discrimination.

(sweeping generalisations I know...)

Pathetic. Clearly someone would have noticed something weird about it if it wasn't intentional.

No suprise here. People still feel threatened by others of any difference, and will do things to ensure some measure of security and safety. You would still have the blame the administration even if they weren't truly at fault, as they should of seen the population shift in the schools once the numbers clearly showed a dramatic shift in who was and wasn't in the school.

Isn't it equally racist to deny people the opportunity to transfer to another school because one school is "too white" and another "too black" if they are the "wrong colour"?

Lee required county schools, starting this fall, to bar student transfers within the district except in cases involving... reduction of the racial disparity in both the child's old and new schools.

So you can only transfer (yes, there are other exceptions, I know ) if you are black moving to the "white" school, or white moving to the "black school?

I know nothing about these schools other than what is mentioned in the article - what if one school is better at, say, sports than the other, and a child wishes to attend the one where their athletic ability will be pushed? Or if one is better at the arts, or sciences... or is just closer to where they live?

"Oh, I'm sorry, that school is too white Mr Snow, your child will have to go to the other school, even though the one you want to go to is closer, etc..."

Louisiana has always had race issues. the same thing is happenig in my home town, of Columbus GA. All this does is make sure kids of different races don't learn to mingle.

SilverMK2 wrote:Isn't it equally racist to deny people the opportunity to transfer to another school because one school is "too white" and another "too black" if they are the "wrong colour"?

Lee required county schools, starting this fall, to bar student transfers within the district except in cases involving... reduction of the racial disparity in both the child's old and new schools.

So you can only transfer (yes, there are other exceptions, I know ) if you are black moving to the "white" school, or white moving to the "black school?

I know nothing about these schools other than what is mentioned in the article - what if one school is better at, say, sports than the other, and a child wishes to attend the one where their athletic ability will be pushed? Or if one is better at the arts, or sciences... or is just closer to where they live?

"Oh, I'm sorry, that school is too white Mr Snow, your child will have to go to the other school, even though the one you want to go to is closer, etc..."

No.

That's like saying it would be wrong to lock up someone who illegally locked up someone.

Racism can only be countered by making children mix equally from the earliest possible age so they learn that skin colour differences are trivial and meaningless. Religious sectarianism is the same kind of problem.

It is essential to prevent parents and the authorities from perpetuating racism and sectarianism by profiling and streaming schoolchildren on face colour or religion.

If one school offers better sports, or better languages, that should equally affect all races. You don't need an artificial, exact conformance to the demographic profile of the district. You do need to be clear that racist streaming is wrong.

Kilkrazy wrote:That's like saying it would be wrong to lock up someone who illegally locked up someone.

Denying one group of people the ability to choose their school based on their race, and the racial mix of the school they are applying to kind of seems racist to me.

A black child can't move to that school because the school has too many blacks, but a white child who wants to go to that school gets a free pass, or vice versa. That is just wrong.

Racism can only be countered by making children mix equally from the earliest possible age so they learn that skin colour differences are trivial and meaningless. Religious sectarianism is the same kind of problem.

I agree with this totally. Though you should not do this by busing in kids of different colours from all over the place just to make up some artificial mix of races, nor should you deny parents/children the freedom to choose (within a certain extent) where they are educated, just because of race/religion.

It is essential to prevent parents and the authorities from perpetuating racism and sectarianism by profiling and streaming schoolchildren on face colour or religion.

It seems from the article that most of the issue was actually with the schools classing systems, rather than the transfer of students from one school to another. The predominantly black school has 3/4 black pupils, which granted is a high ratio (and I can't comment on the area itself as to what the population make up is), but that still means that there are 1/4 non-black students. Out of 1,700 pupils, that is a lot of non-blacks to mix into "all black" classes. It should be even easier to mix pupils in the other school, given the ratio of black/white students is much closer.

If one school offers better sports, or better languages, that should equally affect all races. You don't need an artificial, exact conformance to the demographic profile of the district. You do need to be clear that racist streaming is wrong.

Of course, but as mentioned in the article, the boundary lines for each school are drawn such that some pupils in one of the schools will actually live closer to the other school - that, perhaps more than the racial mix of the schools - could account for the large-ish number of transfers. As you and it also mentioned, the districts that the schools draw from will also skew the proportions.

Though as you say, actively streaming the schools to be racially "representative" is wrong.