Economically based de-segregation assumes 2 critical things that essentially are its death-knell as a tool for reversing racial discrimination

1. There is the assumption that once you get above the level of Hot School Lunch subsidy, that race based discrimination no longer affects your educational chances - and there is ZERO evidence to support this proposition
2. that for a given socio-economic level, that there is no racial bias within that strata.

Since you cannot ask parents for their income as a criteria for attendence at public school there really is no way to do an economically based de-segregation. At best you can use Hot Lunch programs, but that assumes that once you get out of abject poverty, racism doesn't affect your access to education. And as we have seen in study after study, both within classrooms, and in the real world of middle-class housing, this is not the case. Racism continues to live on. Thus you really don't create an environment where minorities have THEIR 14th Amendment rights protected. What you have is an environment that allows white unearned priviledges to be protected by the force of law. Essentially a surreptitious Jim Crow

Similarly, when you do start to allocate funds based on socio-economics, the research that shows discrimination to affect outcomes within a socio-economic strata comes into play. Thus a poor white male receiving hot lunch will be more likely to get 'desegregated' into a better school than a poor hispanic female. So socio-economically based integration really isn't addressing the racial issue at all. It is relying on a statistical belief that somehow because the sample is predominantly minority, that the cross-section benefitting from that de-segregation will not be racially biased. And the research doesn't support this.

So the economically based de-segregation just doesn't work. That some SD's have adopted it doesn't mean it actually works.

It can't be race, because (some) studies have shown that blacks aren't naturally less intelligent. It's not money because poor white schools and poor predominately Latino schools don't do as badly as poor black schools. Asians certainly outperform blacks in all circumstances. It can't be racism, because all other races outperform blacks; unless you'd have us believe that the grand conspiracy has singled out the blacks as the chosen inferior race, and chosen to put whites and Asians on top of the intellectual heap, and decided to put Latinos right between Whites/Asians and blacks -- and gaining on the whites. What's the answer?

Richard Kahlenberg simply watched ABC World News last night and stole their thunder. I think it's a clap other should hear, so I don't hold it against Mr. Kahlenberg - it's just that he lifted his argument from ABC.

You see how well you do when you are told on a daily basis that you suck, that you are probably a thug, that you don't have good culture. See how well you do when you don't get the kind of unearned privileges white males get, of

• Being given more chances to answer a question in class
• Being given more time to answer a question in class
• Being given more hints to answer a question in class

(this was from a study of teachers that were peer-rated as unbiased).

Now add into that the over racism of some teachers and administrators and bus drivers.

I doubt you'd do as well as most blacks. Your world of unearned privilege would be so far away that you would likely crumble

Its the same crap that JC Watts et. al. have been selling for some time.

White privilege doesn't explain why all other races outperform blacks. White privilege is a myth of the paranoid liberal mind. Go talk about white privilege to those generationally poor whites living in the shadow of the Appalachian mountains, or throughout the Midwest, about white privilege. The fact that you even could believe in such a myth belies your own privileged life.

Which is about the most intellectually corrupt, and really dangerous, theory I've come across in a long time. It excuses all failures of one race, at the expense of another race, without any explanation for the successes/failures of every other race. Pretty weak.

FaxMeBeer:

It can't be racism, because all other races outperform blacks; unless you'd have us believe that the grand conspiracy has singled out the blacks as the chosen inferior race, and chosen to put whites and Asians on top of the intellectual heap, and decided to put Latinos right between Whites/Asians and blacks -- and gaining on the whites. What's the answer?

it can be racism because this country doesnt have a history of systematically (and legally) repressing latinos and asians for over 300 years. lumping in white-on-black racism in with all other forms of racism is not only intellectually lazy, its morally dangerous.

Understanding that the issues faced by blacks are different from the issues faced by latinos which are different from the issues faced by asians...now THERES a novel idea!

degsme:

Economically based de-segregation assumes 2 critical things that essentially are its death-knell as a tool for reversing racial discrimination

1. There is the assumption that once you get above the level of Hot School Lunch subsidy, that race based discrimination no longer affects your educational chances - and there is ZERO evidence to support this proposition
2. that for a given socio-economic level, that there is no racial bias within that strata.

Economically based desegregation assumes neither one of these things. It merely assumes that racial biases have some effect on one's socio-economic level. Consider for instance the system considered by the Supreme Court. Parents choose which school they would like their child to attend and the chances that they get their choice depends on their race. Now suppose this same system is used but with income rather than race determining who gets to choose.

Perhaps in your state parents cannot be forced to reveal their income, but all those who don't volunteer a copy of their tax returns are automatically placed in the highest income category. This allows schools to differentiate between income categories beyond "Hot School Lunch or not" distinction and addresses your first concern.

Then some parents are randomly selected to get their choice of schools, with the poorest parents having the highest probability of being selected. Thus there is no chance for poor whites to be favored over poor blacks, and your second fear is also groundless.

Who would be the beneficiaries of a program like this? Poor whites, poor blacks, poor hispanics, and poor Asians. If one is in a city where blacks are suffer the most from discrimination, then blacks would gain the most benefit. My guess is that this would mean that blacks would benefit most in every city, but if there turned out to be places where hispanics or even so-called "white trash" were even worse off, then they would benefit more.

And as time passes and the effects of discrimination grow less and less, the benefits of economic desegregation will automatically spread more and more evenly through the races.

Degsme's assertions don't hold, if my experience is any indication. I spent three years working in a school that is about 40% black and 50% Latino. White kids make up less than five percent of the total student population. The school still lags way behind others academically; there is no competition between whites and blacks in a classroom that has no white kids at all. Last year, I had a total of three white students out of about 120.

It should also be pointed out that African immigrants regularly outperform native-born black students in public schools. I believe a study was recently published that found African immigrant students performing at the same level as Asian and white students on average. Do not EVEN attempt to argue that African-born kids have it easier than American-born black kids; I had students from Sierra Leon and Somalia who came to this country as orphans. You think racism is bad? Those kids witnessed horrors none of us can relate to.

I suppose Degsme will want to assert that standardized tests are racist, too, and yet somehow Asian and African immigrants regularly outscore native-born classmates on those same exams. If an American-born black kid has a tough time with a test, how easy do you think it is for a kid from Africa who has only been in this country for two or three years?

I don't claim that racism doesn't exist. I just don't think its impact on education is as profound as Degsme and others claim.

Actually racism does explain the differnces. First off hispanic non-completion rates for HS are higher than any other grouping. Secondly, physiognomic mythologies differ. the common one for "blacks" is "lazy and stupid". Hispanics get the label of "hardworking" added into the "ignorant" - which argues for better GPA outcomes.

White privilege isn't a myth of the liberal mind. The generationally poor appalachian whites still receive unearned privileges WHEN COMPARED WITH THEIR MINORITY PEERS. The real myth is that it is valid to compare an appalachian poor white male, with a minority who's background is that of Barak Obama. That isn't a valid statistical comparison .

Intellectual corruption would requre there to be no supporting evidence. Yet double-blind in-classroom measurement of students and "peer graded unbiased" teachers demonstrates that white males get

• more time to answer questions than females or minorities
• More hints at getting the answer to a question than females or minorities
• More second chances at answering a question than females or minorities

Now we know that success breeds success in a classroom. So those students that are given more opportunities to feel like they succesfully answered the question correctly, will over time get better outcomes.

What is intellectually corrupt is to deny that these sort of studies exist and to deny that they demonstrate an ongoing and pervasive white privilege

Two simple factors can explain recent immigrant success over native borns

1. it is well documented research that immigrant and 1st generation students tend to work hard to assimilate and often come from the more elite strata of the nations they emigrated from
2. There have been studies that demonstrate a profound prejudice against native "black" accents. IE using "cooked" resumes, Carib accent speakers more often are offered a job than those speaking with a "native" accent.

And yes, standardized tests have been demonstrated to be racially biased on more than one occaision. But that isn't even necessary for there to be differentiated outcomes. Even if the competition isn't with white males, the LACK of the privileges that accrue to white males - longer time and more hints to answer in class questions, less presumption of criminal activity, less administrative interventions - all reduce the 'virtuous cycle' that is the positive feedback loop that leads to academic success.

And even if the teachers themselves believe they aren't doing this, the research shows they are. and even if the teachers themselves are minorities, they often carry the same biases and prejudices. The best example of this was demonstrated by the NE Federal Reserve Bank using "cooked" financial histories. African American bank managers were the MOST discriminatory towards African American loan applicants.

Its racism

degsme:

Economically based de-segregation assumes 2 critical things that essentially are its death-knell as a tool for reversing racial discrimination

1. There is the assumption that once you get above the level of Hot School Lunch subsidy, that race based discrimination no longer affects your educational chances - and there is ZERO evidence to support this proposition
2. that for a given socio-economic level, that there is no racial bias within that strata.

You continue to fundamentally misunderstand the legal rationale for school desegregation. The purpose is not to 'reverse racial discrimination' but to ensure equal access to public educational resources. Even if the courts and school systems were capable of reversing racial discrimination, they are not empowered to do so. Instead, their mission is to ensure that everyone receives equal protection under the law, and is therefore granted relatively comparable access to educational resources. Your objections are totally irrelevant, because they assume a goal which is not the actual goal of integration.

Planetary Eulogy:

You continue to fundamentally misunderstand the legal rationale for school desegregation. The purpose is not to 'reverse racial discrimination' but to ensure equal access to public educational resources.

This is absolutely right. The only available system-wide corrective to racial discrimination is intolerance of racial discrimination. But such intolerance cannot guarantee that racial discrimination will not occur; it can only guarantee that racial discrimination will be stopped when discovered. What the system can do, however, is put an end to another kind of inequality that the system not only currently tolerates, but also is actually structured around: economic inequality. Regardless of how whatever race of kids performs in school, the system should at least guarantee that rich kids and poor kids have equal access to a quality education, and so long as public school funds are tied to property values (in the form of property tax), this will not happen. An instance of racial discrimination in a public school will (and rightly should) cause public outrage, but the fact that kids living in rich neighborhoods attend public schools that receive significantly more government dollars than do schools attended by kids from poor families doesn't even seem to raise an eyebrow.