tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190274.post8695231106843740534..comments2023-10-15T08:19:02.024-04:00Comments on Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk: Garvey's Ghost from Colonial Williamsburgsondjatahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06770540934297277676noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6190274.post-70740077923131039962007-07-07T14:50:00.000-04:002007-07-07T14:50:00.000-04:00As I understand your post on the ercent civil rig...As I understand your post on the ercent civil rights decision you seem to stress two points. The first seems to be one of skepticism about the whole projectof "integration". You seem to question the value of sitting next to a white student. The second point seems to be that much of what people are concerned about is not racism but "market ordering: residential housing patterns-you go to the school where you live-not coercive discrimination is the problem. Very laissez-faire.<BR/><BR/>I'm very familiar with those arguments: they resonate in terms of the arguments made first by Charles Hamilton Houston and later pic ked up by Derrick Bell: "the issue" he says, "is not integration but quality schools." There is truth here but it must not obscure a deeper problem.<BR/><BR/> There are two questions you need to think about. First the harm of segregation is not the inability to sit next to a white person per se. The harm is that segregation , operationally, represents a concentration of poverty. Majority black schools, in inner cities especially, are overwhelmingly poor . When you concentrate poor students you concentrate problems. The result of racial isolation is that the quality of education is usch that in Baldwin's words inner city schools have become "disaster factories." What the pundits are addressing is the fact that the disaster is likely to escalate, That is no talkinfg head rhetoric . That is what will happen.<BR/><BR/>Another point is that the market-residential housoing patterns- did not just get that way. These housing patterns are theselves driven by racism. If we are going to change racial isoaltion where do suggest we begin? <BR/><BR/>There is a larger issue. The issue is not integration it is the extent to which the ideology of colorblindness has become and is merely acover for white supremacy. I am frankly not interested in sitting next to whites or having my chilkdren do so. But I am opposed to white supremacy in any form, especially the form of the Supreme Court decisons legitimating racial isolation. That's what these cases represent.Donald Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02655567093763881623noreply@blogger.com