Should there be white people in a school if there are no white people in the community?

 

 

Melinda Henneberger bemoans the continuing segregation in our society. She says, ". . .we may think we no longer need to engineer experiences that bring kids of different races together. . ." Her conclusion is that we do.

 

Melinda is upset that Mountain Brook School in Alabama is all white and Fairfield School is all black. Could that possibly be because Mountain Brook, Alabama, is 98.8% white and .3% black while Fairfield, Alabama, is 90.23% black and 8.9% white? Melinda conveniently left that little fact out of her argument. Would she like to force those kids to go to a school outside their own districts just so she'll like the color mix?

 

Melinda doesn't seem to realize that you can make people go to school together or work together, but you can't make them socialize when they're uncomfortable with each other. And that goes both ways in the racial spectrum. If Melinda were truly as colorblind as she thinks she is, she wouldn't be worried about how many black kids are in school x or how many white kids are in school y. She'd only be concerned that the kids in school x and school y were getting both getting quality educations.

 

"Ugly truths persist." The Dallas Morning News; June 17, 2013; p. 11A.