Michelle Obama Cites View of Growing Segregation
Today, by some measures, our schools are as segregated as they were back when Dr. King gave his final speech.
—Michelle Obama
Interesting that this should appear in the NY Times this week as I was just making mention of this to my wife and my mother.
Just this past week I had the pleasure of meeting the young man I’ve spent time corresponding with this past year. He is a student at a school west of Atlanta, where a friend of mine teaches 5th grade. The population breakdown of the community is about 50/50 black to white, but what I found most interesting was that the school where my friend teaches, based on my totally unscientific observation, has a white population of less than 5%.
According to my friend, who has been teaching in this district for quite some time now, the school district lines have been drawn and redrawn over the past several years so as to keep all the poorest children and children of color in the school where she teaches.
If you don’t think segregation is alive and well in the US you are greatly mistaken. It may not be as obvious as it once was, but it exists and it is, perhaps, more insidious than it ever was.