Oh You Mean That Segregation

I got into anti-racism back in about 1989 and got more seriously into it somewhere around 1993. The original reason was, I swear to God, that it was the only politics I could see that I shared with all other blackfolks. On the whole, it has been frustrating and painful, which only means I have learned a great deal.

When I decided to be serious about the subject, I asked academic friends what I really needed to know. They answered 'Massey & Denton' and 'Oliver & Shapiro'. Oliver & Shapiro basically said that the most significant economic differences between blacks & whites was that of accumulated wealth. Now it's true that some blackfolks can't be motivated until you tell them whitefolks are doing something they can't do for racist reasons. But whatever the reason, O&S's bad news basically told you what to do. Figure out how to get wealthy. At least that was my attitude.

Massey & Denton were a different story, because their findings were a bit more astoundingly intractable.

Massey & Denton "During the 1970s and 1980s a word disappeared from the American vocabulary," begins American Apartheid ". . . That word was segregation." But the practice of segregation certainly has not disappeared, as Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton glaringly expose. One-third of all American blacks live in one of just 16 urban areas, in neighborhoods so racially segregated they have almost no chance at interracial contact. The authors argue that segregation--and disassocation from not only other cultures, but other ways of life--is at the root of many problems facing African-Americans today

So now we're hearing stories about Resegregation, as if Segregation never happened. Let's look to Omaha. Our first stop: Rosenberg:

My advice (not that anyone, as usual, asked) is that the question of whether the Omaha school district should be unified or somehow divided should be decided (like just about everything else, in my opinon), without regard to race. That is, if smaller, decentralized school district organization makes sense on educational or fiscal or other grounds, it should not be opposed simply because that might result in districts that are “racially identifiable,” and I say that even though apparent racial rabble-rousers like Ernie Chambers support such an outcome for racial reasons. On the other hand, a legislative intent to create “segregated” districts presumably would (and certainly should) be unconstitutional. As I said, it’s complicated.

Dell Gines wrote me:

Omaha is segregated already by virtue of economics and demographics with 28% of all the blacks in the city living in one zip code, and 72% living in four adjacent zip codes, so any break up (of the current district) would by default have a higher concentration of blacks unless you hopscotched demographically.

 

The fact is the current school system is a mammoth beast (45,000 with a plan to increase to 60,000), where there is no busing, and the schools in the black areas of town are already "segregated" if you will. Currently in the 'black' areas of the city, minorities are 15% to 20% less likely to have graduated and yet this same school system has skirted pre-existing minority concentration in the 'black' area schools, and wants to use the specter of segregation to maintain control and growth options.

It's not fair to compare Dell and John. Dell lives there and has read the legislation. And that's my snarky remark for the day. I had this doc in draft for several weeks and now that the blogosphere has forgotten it, I wanted you to know that I had something to say back then too.

Bottom line. So long as we have hypersegregation, by economics and race, pretenses to equality are..hmm how a word I never use.. risible.