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heygrady
Hopefully we have a broader debate about these things as a country. While many of the overtly racist laws have been gone since the 60's, racist local policies continue. We should take the chance to look past racism and see the classism evident in Tuscaloosa. Rich people shouldn't segregate themselves from the poor people in their communities any more than white people should segregate themselves from black people. We're all better off when we help each other.
cookiecaper
I think a discussion about the realities that cause people to organically isolate along "segregation lines" is more valuable than pontificating about a new set of edicts. Declaring something by law is rarely actually effective if it contradicts the natural, logical course of action. Most areas that were racially segregated in the 60s are still effectively racially segregated (see "white flight").

If indeed "we're all better off" with an unsegregated situation, why is there an almost universal instinct to remain in these specific insular groups? Humans are social animals and surely a natural connection would be made between these segments unless there is a strong incentive against it. I for one don't really buy the "everyone is a bigot" line that's normally used anymore, so I'd like to have a discussion about what motivates rational people to self-segregate.

heygrady
In a discussion about schools I've commonly heard parents arguing they want the best education possible for their kids. It makes sense and it's true that going to a smaller, more affluent school is a big advantage for a student.

I imagine that there's a minority of white parents that like the segregated schools simply because they don't like black people. But, I also think that the majority of the white parents sending their kids to economically/racially segregated schools are simply seeking and advantage for their own kid.

The problem comes from the long-term effects on the community. We've ended up with concentrated black communities that are less economically developed and harboring students with fewer opportunities for advancement. There's no good reason that a black student should be denied the same opportunities as a white student. We'd all be better off if black people had the same opportunity to achieve as a white person -- because white people would be better off if poor people (even poor white people) had the same opportunities as rich people.

Self-segregating is normal but doing it purely along color lines is abnormal, or at least irrational. I have friends of all races and from most continents (I don't have a friend from Antarctica and I can't remember an Australian friend) but I don't have many impoverished friends. People hang out with similar people but it's short-sighted to see it as a race thing; it's a socio-economic thing.

We're all better off with highly integrated schools because we're all worse off with a large and growing class of second-class citizens that have fewer opportunities. Poor people with fewer opportunities commit more crimes, make less money and cost more public money to support (even if you only consider prison costs). People with a good education and good access to career opportunities commit far fewer violent crime and pay way more taxes and increase the prosperity of any community they join. We're better off being integrated.

cocksparrer
My foreign city doesn't have any of these issues, and was recently declared "Most Asian city outside Asia" with 43% of residents having South Asian heritage. No segregated schools or prisons, even the criminal gangs here are multi-ethnic with one group actually going around calling themselves the UN to point out their diversity in membership. I don't live in a utopia there's obviously racism here but it doesn't seem to be institutionalized like in the US or some European states like Hungary.
guylhem
"Rich people shouldn't segregate themselves from the poor people in their communities"

Says who? On which authority?

What if poor people want to segregate themselves?

Live and let live. Individual freedom is more important than society considerations

gress
> Live and let live. Individual freedom is more important than society considerations.

Not if that leads to going back to serfs and kings.

heygrady
Me. But with no authority. My individual opportunities are far greater if I'm part of a society that ensures equal opportunity for all. Much like how having a large population of immunized individuals far outweighs an individuals rights to not receive immunizations, living in a population where no one is allowed to attend an inferior school improves my own life opportunity. Educated people live longer, healthier and more peaceful and productive lives -- I would personally benefit in a scenario where everyone in my community was educated fairly.

There is no way that poor people demand to live in slums. The self-segragation idea is insulting and couldn't be supported by even an uninformed hypothesis.

tomjen3
You end up in, essentially, an philosophical debate over what issues are most important - don't go there. Such debates cannot be resolved (in the same way that the halting problem cannot be resolved) because they rest on fundamental disagrements about axioms of morality.
heygrady
You're saying that the issue of "who's segregating from whom?" is unsolvable? Probably. It's also irrelevant.

Looking purely at the effects of segregation should answer if it's a good idea. For an individual it's possible to benefit from segregation but as a group we're worse-off. Arbitrarily picking out second-class citizens and lowering their opportunities is a short-sighted idea even if in the near term that means that more resources can be used to advance your own interests. It doesn't matter if people are choosing to be disenfranchised, it matters that we're all hurt by it -- suicide is roundly discouraged for the same reasons.

bjelkeman-again
Most of Europe has created a society based on this principle, that our society is better for all of us if we accept that a minimum standard of health care and education is essentially available to all. It isn't without its problems, but by and large it works well, and creates decent social mobility.
jjoonathan
Statistically inescapable cycles of poverty are freedom?

"Live and let drown" might be a more appropriate description that "live and let live."

bluthru
>Individual freedom is more important than society considerations

This is dealing with the public school system. It's inherently a society consideration.

judk
Most people who live in society disagree with you. Are you a hermit?
ryandrake
Exactly, this isn't a racial thing. This is [economic] class segregation, and the racial element is simply one of the more visible symptoms. The root of the problem is that public education is funded at the local level, causing the vicious cycle:

1. Schools in wealthy communities get more funding than schools in poor communities.

2. More money translates into better teachers, better facilities, more AP classes, better test scores, and measurably better education.

3. Better education translates into better future economic prospects for students.

4. Those better-off students can later afford to live in wealthy communities, start over at step 1.

Break the chain at step one. The quality of education available to you should not depend on how expensive a neighborhood your parents can afford to live in. Implementation details? Not sure--maybe fund schools at the state or national level, dividing the pie based on population (constant $/student)?

apsec112
California tried that. In the 1970s, the California Supreme Court ruled in Serano v. Priest that funding schools based on local property taxes was unequal, and therefore unconstitutional.

In response, a few years later, California passed Prop. 13, cutting property tax levels to almost nothing. This had untold negative consequences on local and state government, on the housing market, and on education (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(1978... for a summary).

judk
What were the consequences for education? The court said that rich kids and poor kids must have equal education, and rich californians decided to take their kids' education private to avoid paying toneducate poor kids. It exposed the selfishness of wealthy folk, but didn't make anyone's education worse
MisterBastahrd
While school systems are usually funded by millages, schools themselves are usually funded by the number of students enrolled. Administrative costs don't necessarily go down when there are less students, but the total amount of money the school gets to spend on education certainly does.

Personally, I would welcome a complete ban of private schools at the K-12 level. Force those people to send their kids to public schools and they'll suddenly be screaming from the rooftops for the school systems to improve.

rayiner
> 1. Schools in wealthy communities get more funding than schools in poor communities.

This is kinda but not really true. I grew up in one of the richest counties in the country (Fairfax, VA). Total expenditures per student in the public school system is about $13,500. In nearby D.C., it's $18,700. Baltimore City Public Schools is $14,700. Prince Georges County Public Schools (a lower-income district) is $14,000.

It's probably true that rural school districts suffer from both low income and low school expenditure. But many of the poorest, most heavily-minority school districts (in the large cities), are also the best funded.

> 2. More money translates into better teachers, better facilities, more AP classes, better test scores, and measurably better education.

It's quite questionable whether this is true: http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/04/07/study-no-link-betw.... The U.S. spends more on education than all but a handful of countries with high costs of living (Norway, Switzerland, etc): http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/america.... Yet our school performance lags.

AlexandrB
> It's quite questionable whether this is true: http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/04/07/study-no-link-betw.... The U.S. spends more on education than all but a handful of countries with high costs of living (Norway, Switzerland, etc): http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/america.... Yet our school performance lags.

I've read this before too and I find it baffling. Is there any research into why this is? Either money is getting spent in fundamentally different ways or the US education problem is not attributable to schools and is caused by some other factor.

rayiner
Segregation never went away. I grew up in Fairfax County, VA, in the 1990's. While in theory desegregation occurred in 1964, I can't remember a single black student in any of my classes until 8th grade.

It's not just local policy. Society itself is racist at a pretty fundamental level. The government made de jure segregation illegal, but all that happened was an exodus from the racially mixed cities into racially segregated suburbs. When people can't achieve segregation by moving to a particular zip code, they look for other ways to do so. Check out the city-data.com forums sometime: http://www.city-data.com/forum/#u-s-forums. You'll quickly run across the codewords ("ghetto" or "urban").

When peoples' kids are involved, the pretense of tolerance evaporates and everyone just wants to avoid sending ended up in a predominantly black or hispanic school district. Why else would student racial demographics be featured prominently, in graphical form, on the front page of each school profile in the DC public school system (http://profiles.dcps.dc.gov/Barnard+Elementary+School) and Chicago (http://cps.edu/Schools/Find_a_school/Pages/findaschool.aspx)?

dkarapetyan
Separate and unequal has been the rule for a while now. Honors, AP, electives, etc. It's even more fundamental than race.
russellsprouts
However, these programs all happen within the same school. The trouble in the article is due to a single school with a wide range of options being split into several smaller schools, and the predominantly black school getting worse funding.

Programs such as Honors, AP, electives, etc., are the cheapest way for any student -- regardless of socio-economic background -- to receive high-quality education. Without those programs offered at public schools, I suspect that even more upper-middle class families would transfer to private schools or schools in the suburbs.

Consider sports electives: were they not offered at public schools, the only option would be club programs, often costing thousands per year. At a public school, somewhere around $50 is all that's needed for a year's worth of participation, with coaching that can be comparable to exclusive club teams, and scholarships available for even that amount.

edit: Also, because AP programs are standardized across the country, a student that passes AP Statistics at any school will have the same chance of getting college credit at any school that offers it. This levels the playing field a lot.

cwisecarver
Why not just add a separate tax for private schools that drives money directly into public schools. They will increase their tuition accordingly, because profit, and more affluent families will think twice about public schools. The rich would still be able to afford private schools and would help out funding public schools.

I'm all for the live and let live philosophy but education and healthcare are things that make a better society. Mostly I just want there to be less stupid people. That would, selfishly, make my life better.

QuantumChaos
The rich White/Jewish liberals who write these articles, and enforce these laws, could never stomach 1/10'th of the integration they force on poor and middle class Whites.
kelukelugames
I thought about this long and hard because I really don't want it to be true. A lot of states fund prized "math and science" and magnate high schools, and those usually try to represent the demographics of the state. Then I looked up one of the most famous of such high schools and saw the black student population is less than 2%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_High_School_fo...

lutusp
> A lot of states fund prized "math and science" and magnate [sic] high schools

Magnate : a person of rank, power, influence, or distinction often in a specified area

Magnet : a piece of material (such as iron or steel) that is able to attract certain metals

jgalt212
Bad education systems for poor people has a been a problem since the beginning of time. However, given the times we live in now, one can more easily take matters into their own hands and take corrective action.

e.g. if you have a bum math teacher, just log onto youtube and watch some Khan Academy lectures.

of course, the Internet is not a panacea, but it can narrow the education gap much more effectively than most anything other method. As cited, the internet is much better at helping rectify bad or lax teaching methods than creating a safe learning environment. i.e. It can't do much about bullies stealing your lunch money, or having to dodge stray bullets on the walk to school.