Editorial submitted to my local paper, The Brunswick News of Brunswick, Georgia, USA, July, 2011. Most references in the following works can be found in Jared Taylor’s White Identity.
Local preacher John Perry recently spoke at a School Board meeting noting a petition of hundreds of mostly black signatories. This group is disgruntled with the racial apportionment of promotion and hiring practices in our District.
Mr. Perry took the veil off racial issues percolating in Glynn County. However, with no pretext of improving student performance, this group chooses to use diversity as an excuse to bilk the system of scarce dollars.
Obama Administration Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently praised Finland where all teachers come from the top 10% of their college classes. Teaching there is not viewed as a government jobs program as “90% of folks (i.e., teachers) simply don’t qualify” to be in the classroom, Duncan said.
Failed attempts to close the “achievement gap” between black and white students include bussing and integration. James S. Coleman, dubbed “The Scholar Who Inspired Busing”, conceded that integration did not improve black academic performance. Armor and Russell reported in Beyond the Color Line that “there is not a single example . . . of a comprehensive racial balance plan that has improved black achievement.”
With the successes of black Magnet Schools, the NAACP too is shifting its view on integration noting that it has contributed to the destruction of the black community. Instead of admitting that the system is broken in Glynn County, we continue to squeeze gifted programs, expand programs for failing students and bicker about the skin tone of new hires.
Distributed to those listed below, July, 2011, in Brunswick, Georgia, USA.
To: Annie C. Polite (NAACP)
Venus Holmes ([only black] School Board Member)
Claudette Whing (Retired black ‘teacher’ & Protester)
Michael Hall (Brunswick News beat reporter)
Dr. Rev. John Perry (black preacher & citizen spokesperson for petitioning group supporting the hiring of more blacks & the NAACP)
SEGREGATION REVISITED:
Last week, John Perry, a local preacher speaking for coalition of hundreds of local black signatories, took the veil off racial issues that have been percolating for years. This drove me to do a little research on integration and education in America. I found that there is no evidence of black performance improving because they sit next to whites; there is no evidence of black performance improving as per student spending improves; and there is no evidence of black performance improving with an increase in the percentage of black teachers and administrators. However, there are proven solutions available to us without our continuing to waste taxpayer dollars on capital expenditures like a new mega-high school. We need only be honest with ourselves.
We can only help ourselves by talking openly about race and examining the facts. Unfortunately the facts, indeed the very subject of race, make most whites and blacks uncomfortable. While the School Board ignores facts, our white talk radio host, who claims he “loves to take your calls” on any issue, will not entertain the issue of race relations. Typical of most whites, he is either afraid to talk about race or afraid he’ll lose his job – or both.
It is easy to point out the fact that the educational power structure in Glynn County is so white, the School Board is headed by a man named “Snow”. However, our failure to talk openly about race is to deny the fact that race is a significant component of gaps in school performance as well as income demographics and crime. The facts revealed by honest research shows that this will not improve in America’s future. To our detriment, or eventual demise, the PC police enforce their demands for diversity only when a community is “too white,” whites continue to be the only race who denies that race doesn’t matter, and blacks too often use diversity as an excuse to bilk the system of scarce dollars – all to the detriment of the lowest achievers, minority students.
The Tainted History of Integration
The theoretical basis for integration was set out in An American Dilemma, in 1944 by Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal. Contours for the debate about race were set by such oft quoted passages as: “White prejudice and discrimination keep the Negro low in standards of living, health, education, manners and morals. This, in its turn, gives support to white prejudice. White prejudice and Negro standards thus mutually ‘cause’ each other. . . . Thus, if white attitudes could be reformed, oppression would ease, the status of blacks would rise, white attitudes would improve further, and blacks would find yet more opportunities for success turning the vicious cycle into a virtuous cycle.” (Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 75.)
School integration, mandated by the federal government in the South by Brown v. Board of Education, became the political reality of so-called “contact theory” whereby white children whose “prejudices had not yet hardened” would mix with black children under conditions of “equality and strict institutional supervision.” Integrated education was the best way to reform “the malignant hearts and minds of racist white citizens.” (James S. Liebman, “Desegregating Politics: ‘All-Out’ School Desegregation Explained,” Columbia Law Review, Oct. 1990, as quoted in Raymond Wolters, Right Turn: Willam Bradfor Reynolds, the Reagan Administration, and Black Civil Rights (New Brunswick: Transaction Publications, 1996), pp. 337f.)
The demographic result was “white flight” in most major cities in every state in the union, excepting Alaska and Hawaii. Prince Edward County, Virginia, simply shut down its public schools from 1959 until 1964 rather than admit a single black student. (Raymond Wolters, The Burden of Brown (Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1984), pp 65-127.) In just seven years, nine high schools in Baltimore went from all-white to all-black. (Leonard Steinhorn & Barbara Diggs-Brown, By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race (new York: Dutton, 1999), p. 101.) Sidney Lanier High School in Montgomery, Alabama, which used to educate the state’s elite, had almost no white students left ten years after the first black enrolled in 1964. (Dave Bryan, “Ala. Schools Suffer Resegregation,” Associated Press, Aug. 27, 2001.) In only eight years, from 1968 to 1976, a staggering 78 percent of white students left the Atlanta public schools. (Raymond Wolters, Right Turn, p. 344.) These dry statistics reflect tremendous disruption in countless communities, as whites pulled up stakes and moved to the suburbs or as wives went to work to pay for private school. Thus blacks and whites were driven further apart as the physical distance between them increased. While some social and economic advancement has occurred in black communities, the oft touted educational achievement gap remains unchanged.
While integration and busing were mandated by government, white flight was a matter of choice. The charter school movement likewise gives parents greater choice by allowing considerable leeway in standards and curricula. For blacks this often means self-segregation and the promotion of racial consciousness. In 2010, the Civil Rights Project found that 70 percent of all black charter students attend schools in which fewer than 10 percent of the students are white, and that 43 percent of black charter school students in America attend schools with essentially no whites at all. (Nick Anderson, “Study: Charter School Growth Accompanied by Racial Imbalance,” Washington Post, Feb. 4, 2010.)
The trend toward black segregation has been sharper in some places than in others. By 2007, many of the nation’s 3,500 charter schools were struggling because their innovations had failed, but not the black charters. Michael Piscal of Inner City Foundation in Los Angeles says the momentum they are building is nothing short of “tremendous”, noting that there are thousands of names on the waiting lists. (Chris Levister, “A Case for Segregation,” Black Voice News (Riverside, CA), Aug. 23, 2007.) In Chicago, Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men which opened in 2006 had a 100 percent black student body. (Mema Ayi, “Englewood Charter School Celebrates Opening,” Chicago Defender, Sept. 6, 2006.) In Boston in 1967, the average black student attended a school that was 32 percent white; in 2003 he attended a school that was 11 percent white, and 61 percent of black children attended schools that were at least 90 percent non-white. (Derick Z. Jackson, “Hub of Hypersegratation,” Boston Globe, April 23, 2004.) That same year in New York State, 60 percent of black students attended schools that were at least 90 percent black. (Gail Robinson, “New York Schools: Fifty Years After Brown,” Gotham Gazette (New York, NY), May 17, 2004.)
One of the many purported benefits of forced bussing and school integration was to be the effect on black achievement. The leading proponent on this subject was James S. Coleman who became known as “The Scholar Who Inspired Busing.” (National Observer, June 7, 1975. Cited in Raymond Wolters, Right Turn: William Bradford Reynolds, The Reagan Administration, and Black Civil Rights (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1996), p. 343.) By the mid 1970s, however, after integrated education had produced more than a decade’s worth of research, Coleman was forced to concede that integration did not improve black academic performance. (James S. Coleman, “School Desegregation and City-Suburban Relations,” 1978 paper reprinted in Court Ordered School Busing: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, Senate Judiciary Committee, 97th congress, 1st session (1981), 454-59. Cited in Raymond Wolters, Right Turn, p 348.) Nancy St. John was another pro-integration scholar who reluctantly changed her views. In a 1975 review of 120 studies she found that the most that could be said for black academic achievement was that test scores did not decline after large scale integration [emphasis added]. (Nancy St. John, School Desegregation: Outcomes for Children (New York: Wiley, 1975). Cited in Raymond Wolters, Right Turn, p. 347.)
An exhaustive 2002 survey reported that, “there is not a single example in the published literature of a comprehensive racial balance plan that has improved black achievement or that has reduced the black-white achievement gap significantly.” (David J. Armor and Christine Russell, “Desegregation and Resegregation in the Public Schools,” in Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom, Beyond the Color Line: New Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press 2002), p. 239.) A 2002 book devoted to the racial gap in achievement concluded, “Whether African-American students attended schools that were 10 percent black or 70 percent black, the racial gap remained roughly the same . . . . If every school precisely mirrored the demographic profile of the nation’s entire student population, the level of black and Hispanic achievement would not change.” (Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), pp. 180f.)
If black children could get a good education without integration, increasing numbers of blacks see no need for it. In 1997, Amos Quick, a member of a citizens committee appointed to redraw school districts in Greensboro, N.C., expressed an increasingly typical view: “Separate but truly equal would not be so bad.” (Steven Holmes, “At N.A.A.C.P., Talk of a Shift on Integration,” New York Times, June 23, 1997, p. A1.) A black member of the Kansas City, Missouri, School Board, Edward Newsome, went further in 1995: “I think desegregation is dead and should have died a long time ago.” Likewise in 1995, a black law professor, Alex Johnson of the University of Virginia, went so far as to say, “Brown (the 1954 Supreme Court desegregation ruling) was a mistake,” arguing that it “destroyed the black cultural community.” (Nicolaus Mills, “Segregation’s Return: Does Anyone Object?” National Law Journal, Nov. 20, 1995, p. A19.) Harry Edwards, a black sociology professor at the University of California at Berkeley, adds that integration “has not been approached or achieved because nobody wants it. Blacks have always wanted to associate with themselves.” (James Hirsch, “Columbia, Md., at 25, Sees Integration Goal Sliding From Its Grasp,” Wall Street Journal, Feb, 27, 1992, p. 1.)
Doris Wilkinson was the first black to enter the University of Kentucky after the 1954 Brown decision, but lost faith in integration which she calls an “absolute, abysmal failure.” Now a sociologist at the University of Kentucky, she said she looked forward to neighborhood schools that reflect residential segregation. “I hope we get those schools with all deliberate speed,” she said, quoting the Brown ruling. Leslie Innis, on the faculty at Florida A&M, was one of the first blacks to integrate New Orleans’ Catholic schools, thinks the struggle was misguided. She believes that as long as it is voluntary, there is nothing wrong with segregation. She says students tell her “they prefer to be around people they feel more comfortable with.” (Associated Press, “Not Everyone Sees Problem With One-Race Schools,” CNN.com, Dec. 28, 2002.)
The Myth of Diversity
Other studies are reinforcing the drive to dismiss the myth of Diversity. A 2003 study of 90,000 middle-school and high-school students found that black/white mixed-race children had more health and psychological problems than children who were either black or white. They were more likely to be depressed, sleep badly, skip school, smoke, drink alcohol, consider suicide, and have sex. The principle author concluded that the cause was “the struggle with identity formation, leading to lack of self-esteem, social isolation and problems of family dynamics in biracial households.” (Connie Cass, “Study: Mixed-Race Youth Have Health Woes,” Associated Press, Oct. 30, 2003.) Historically accurate, honest text books and smaller schools which reflect community demographics can help to reinforce racial identity. Professor Yoonsun Choi says that, “there is some indication that a strong ethnic identity helps protect kids from these [undesirable] behaviors.” According to her research, a strong immigrant identity – black, white, Asian, Hispanic – keeps children out of trouble. (“Problem Behavior,” University of Chicago Magazine, Oct. 2006.) Lisa Kiang of Wake Forest argues that a strong ethnic identity was tied to a sunny outlook: “Adolescents with a high ethnic regard maintained a generally positive and happy attitude . . . . So having positive feelings about one’s ethnic group appeared to provide an extra boost of positivity in individual’s daily lives.” (“Ethnic Identity Gives Teens Daily Happiness Boost,” newswise.com, Oct. 22, 2006. Lisa Kiang, et al., “Ethnic Identity and the Daily Psychological Well-Being of Adolescents From Mexican and Chinese Backgrounds,” Child Development, Sept/Oct. 2006, p. 1338.)
Dora Costa of MIT and Mathew Kahn of Tufts University analyzed 15 recent studies of the impact of diversity on social cohesion. They found that every study had “the same punch line: heterogeneity reduces civic engagement.” (Johnthan Tilove, “A Diversity Divide,” Newhouse News, July 8, 2007.) Robert Putnam of Harvard studied 41 different American communities that ranged from the extreme homogeneity of rural South Dakota to the very mixed population of Los Angeles. He found a strong correlation between homogeneity and levels of trust with the greatest distrust in the most diverse areas. Students surely have similar feelings in mixed school populations where they are taught by a mixed race faculty. Unhappy with the results of his own study, Putnam checked his findings by controlling them for any other variable that might affect trust, such as poverty, age, crime rates, population densities, education, commuting time, home ownership, etc. These played some role but he was forced to conclude that “diversity per se has a major effect. Prof. Putnam listed the following consequences of diversity:
- Lower confidence in local government, local leaders and the local news media.
- Lower political efficacy – that is, confidence in their own influence.
- Lower frequency of registering to vote, but more interest and knowledge about politics and more participation in protest marches and social reform groups.
- Less expectation that others will cooperate to solve dilemmas of collective action (e.g., voluntary conservation to ease a water or energy shortage).
- Less likelihood of working on a community project.
- Lower likelihood of giving to charity or volunteering.
- Fewer close friends or confidants.
- Less happiness and lower perceived quality of life.
- More time spent watching television and more agreement that “television is my most important form of entertainment.” (Robert D. Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century,” Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 30, No. 2, 2007, p. 153.)
There is no good research that suggests diversity increases community cohesiveness, that the brain ignores race, or that diverse countries are happier and more peaceful than homogeneous ones. However, to criticize diversity raises the intolerable possibility that the United States and the public school establishment has been acting on a false premise based upon mistaken assumptions for over half a century. In 2009, the conservative New Century Foundation proposed a simple text advertisement to several college newspapers: “Is diversity a strength? We think not.” The ad invited readers to visit a web site for “an alternative view.” Every college paper rejected the ad. Diversity is a subject on which diverse views are not welcome and facts are ignored while our children continue fail and our future consequently looks less and less bright.
Talking glowingly about diversity has become a form of cheerleading for America. While white Christians and Leftists have been touting diversity out of misguided guilt for the crimes of the past, blacks continue to cite diversity as justification for a government jobs program called the Public School System. Long before Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange demonstrated the myth of social engineering or Michael Crichton, M.D., warned of suppressing Nature in Jurassic Park, Horace wrote in the Epistles, “Though you drive Nature out with a pitchfork, she will ever find her way back.”
It is precisely because it is so easy to point out the weaknesses of diversity that any attempt to do so must be countered, not by specifying diversity’s strengths – which no one can do – but with accusations of racism. Our society forgives sexual misconduct, abuse of office, dishonesty, and incompetence far more readily than it does any action by whites that could be described as “racist.” Ignoring all the facts and research and condemning future generations to substandard and the oppressive educational experiences that result from forced diversity,1, 2, 3, 4, 5 we continue to support diversity as it is the most recognizable way of demonstrating opposition to racism. We attribute unrealistic, exaggerated benefits to diversity because we cling to emotion rather than rational reasons. Blacks feel they must in order to gain economically in the short term and whites feel they must in order to prove they are not racists. The same anti-racist conformity also explains why no expert ever has to cite concrete examples of its advantages; no one questions the advantages of diversity, so no one ever has to list them. (1: Erika Hayaski, “Chaos Reigns at a Model School,” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 2006. 2: Vernon Clark, “Stetson Parents Put Blame on School,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 23, 2004, p. B1. 3: Susan Snyder, “Shocking Sec Acts in Schools,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 19, 2004, p. B1. 4: Eric Kline, “Berkeley High May Cut Out Science Labs,” East Bay Express (Oakland), Dec. 23, 2009. 5: Sharlonda I. Waterhouse, “School Attacks Terrify Gary Student at Bailly,” Post-Tribune (Merrillville, IN), Feb. 28, 2006.)
The Segregated Solution
In support of segregated schools, Taki Raton, who founded Blyden Delany Academy in Milwaukee, says, “Black people are the only ones who can teach black children, it’s as simple as that.” He argues for an all-black staff, an all-black student body, and an all-black school board. “The bottom line is we are not all the same . . . Black children are not going to grow up and be white.” (Eugene Kane, “African-Centered Success Story Has a Strong Backer,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nov. 21 2010.) Kansas City, Missouri’s J. S. Chick Elementary School has been African-centered since 1991. The school considers itself an African village, and parents must sign statements of commitment to its principles. In 1995, a judge overseeing a Kansas City desegregation case approved a similar African-centered theme for the Sanford B. Ladd Elementary School, and a middle school has since adopted a similar curriculum. Supporters claim that black studies improve grades and reduce absenteeism. (Stacy A. Teicher, “An African-Centered Success Story,” Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 2006.)
A crisis is looming in America’s future if the educational gap is not addressed with emotionally-detached, clear thinking. No racial community comfortably accepts the short term economic gain of using the Public School System as a jobs program over the long term gain of true academic improvement. The crisis we face in the future is too real and the realities of the facts are too disturbing: fourth grade blacks and Hispanics are two years behind whites and Asians on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading test. (“Detailed Findings on the Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools,” McKinsey & company, April 2009, p. 20.) By 12th grade, the average black or Hispanic is reading and doing math at the level of the average white 8th-grader! (B. D. Rampey et al., NAEP 2008 Trends in Academic Progress, US Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics, pp. 15, 17, 35, 37.) There are about 16,000 school districts in the United States, but not one has been able to eliminate this gap. Blacks and Hispanics score in equivalent ranges, whether they account for fewer than 5 percent of a state’s student population or more than 20 percent. (“Detailed Findings on the Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools,” McKinsey & company, April 2009, pp. 28f.)
Money is not the problem. From the early 1970s to the 2006-2007 school year per-pupil spending more than doubled in real terms. (Bill Costello, “The Schools Scandal,” The American Thinker, Sept. 6, 2010.) Neither income nor per student expenditures explain the gap. In 2009, the 95-percent-black Detroit School District placed last in the country on the NAEP test. Michael Casserly of the council of the Great City Schools said the scores were “just above what one would expect by chance alone – as if the kids simply guessed all the answers.” Los Angeles and Washington, D. C. public schools spend nearly $30,000 per student, far more than most districts in the country, and they consistently rank near the bottom in student achievement. (1. “On National Test, 69 Percent of Detroit Children Score Below Basic on Forth Grate Math: 77 Percent Below Basic on Eighth Grade Math,” Detroit Public Schools, Press Release, Dec. 8, 2009. 2. “LAUSD Spends $30K Per Student”, John Seiler, Cal Watchdog, Aug. 1, 2011. 3. Adam Schaeffer, “They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools,” Cato Institute, Policy Analysis No. 662, March 10, 2010, pp. 7f.) A McKinsey and Company study found that white fourth graders living in poverty scored higher than black fourth graders who were not poor. (“Detailed Findings on the Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools,” McKinsey & Company, April 2009, p. 50.) On the 2009 math and verbal SAT tests, whites from families with incomes of less than $20,000 not only had an averaged combined score that was 117 points (out of 1600) higher than the average for all blacks, they even outscored by 12 points blacks who came from families with incomes of $160,000 to $200,000. (“The Persisting Racial Chasm in Scores on the SAT college Entrance Examination,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, Autumn 2009, p. 85.)
Most proposed solutions are as wide ranging as they have been unreasonable. One group, a Chicago non-profit, has filed a complaint with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights making the claim that Blacks and Hispanics are demoralized and drop out because they are more likely than whites to be held back. They propose the tests be eliminated because they are skewed in favor of whites. (“St. Sen. Frederica Wilson Wants FCAT Law Repealed,” WFOR-TV (Miami), Aug. 11, 2010.) They fail to explain why Asians consistently outperform whites on standardized tests and in schools which employ no Asian teachers or administrators. In 2006, Noma LeMoine, charged with closing the achievement gap in Los Angeles, proposed teachers learn and teach “ebonics” along with standard English. (Louise Esola, “Local Educators Confront Black Achievement Gap,” North County Times (Escondido, CA), Feb. 2, 2006.) Addressing an issue Glynn County is well aware of, in 2010, a group of prominent black pastors held a press conference in Atlanta to denounce the “witch hunt” underway to investigate altered answers on students’ standardized tests. They explained that the teachers were just trying to help the children. (Kim Severson, “Scandal and Schism Rattle Atlanta’s Schools,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dec. 11, 2010.)
Having spent 12 years teaching in inner city schools (in St. Louis), I could supply another writer with volumes of personal anecdotes, but more gravity is lent to these assertions from other teachers and other sources. In 2006, the Los Angeles Times published an in depth report on Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, just north of downtown. This school represents the new demographics of California: Two-thirds of the 4,000 students are Hispanic, 15 percent are white and most of the remaining students are black. One teacher was quoted as saying, “There’s no love of learning,” and that if students don’t have it, it cannot be instilled. Another teacher described a huge sense of “entitlement”, with many students convinced they deserved passing grades just for showing up. Chaos typified the lives of many students who became pregnant, got in trouble with the law, and/or took drugs. When friends dropped out, it was a great temptation to follow them, and there was constant racial tension even though the school decorated with signs reading “Black + Brown = Peace”. (Mitchell Landsberg, “Back to Basics: Why Does High School Fail So Many?” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 29, 2006.)
Any honest parent in Glynn County will attest to the fact demographic change in our future is both inevitable and that it has become a vicious but unnecessary cycle. As more minorities and immigrants enter a school system, average achievement falls. More scarce resources –money and effort – are annually devoted to these groups, squeezing gifted programs, music and art, and advanced placement courses. The better performing students leave, and standards fall further. This cycle helps feed the case for resegregation proposed by an increasing number of parents and preachers, academics and administrators. Instead of addressing the issue of race rationally, Glynn County is planning yet again to round up its good-old boy clan and throw millions more dollars on a new mega-high school. The only beneficiaries from this one-solution-fits-all approach will be the usual suspects: money to good-ole-boy construction interests and maintain a large pool of “students” from which to populate Brunswick Academy sports teams.
John L. Wall
Note to all: I have oodles of more references and citations on these matters. I cite only a few above to add support to my assertions. If any of you would care to consult with me or seek further references or evidence, please contact me at: johnwall62@hotmail.com
