As most of you know, and maybe some remember, I also grew up in Atlanta (Stone Mountain to be exact, which was the site of the last two largest Klan revivals,) and went to school in a magnet program (in Atlanta) designed to integrate a predominantly (~95%) black neighborhood. So after bussing kids in from surrounding areas, many of us took two busses every morning and afternoon, the makeup was probably about 3:1, black to other, if I can quote my favorite plan from Kentucky. I can say without reservation that this was also the finest public school I ever had the chance to attend, and the diversity that I experienced there (as well as my first school, and other activities like Little League) has greatly enriched my life in no small way… I moved to Oregon in 7th grade and was thrown into a very different school that was probably more than 90% white, and I can honestly say that an obvious lack of diversity, and what I then saw as an abject lack of culture in general, contributed to my early departure from compulsory education. So if I can sum up what I have just clumsily walked us through, I fully agree that diversity can greatly benefit society and an individual’s educational experience.

This being said I still have very strong reservations about any “forced diversity” planning, or as most of you have figured out by now, any government social engineering. The larger debate aside, however, these two particular plans are abyssmal. I have spent enough time in Seattle to realize that it is completely wrong-headed to try and categorize students as “white” or “non-white.” Seattle is a very diverse city with large minorities of various Asian cultures, hispanic cultures, as well as African-Americans (Seattle’s “non-white” population is about 59% of the student body.) Further, though race is only used as a tiebreaker to decide placement, it is given more consideration than geographic proximity. Most importantly, each individual’s education should be tailored to each individual, which is a subject I will delve much deeper into in my next post.

Thanks again for the comments from the Dirty Dirty. Go Braves! (you know you want to love them again Matt…)

I will have to agree with Rudo on the issue regarding schools & segregation. Coming from the A (that is Atlanta for all you non-Southerners), I grew up in a fairly diverse, middle-class area. We had black kids, asians, filipinos, and my best friend was half Mexican! All that diversity I grew up living around and in public school, including flirting with all the black girls, helped me realize that much of the rascism that I would hear at some family gatherings, at the Southern Baptist church, and around some whites, was wrong. Also going to college in south Georgia, where there was about 40% black student population, continued to help expose me to diversity.

I personally agree with what Affirmative Action tries to do in forcing diversity in the schools and in the work place. Saying that diversity will take care of itself is BS. If we even look beyond race, and look at gender, do you really think that men would give women better, higher paid jobs? Hell no. Women are still continually getting paid less then men in the same positions. I personally think that if you go to a public school, you have to expect diversity. I think there should be plans to help bring diversity back to schools that are purposely built, and bankrolled, by private neighborhoods to send their kids to a school where they don’t have to worry about “those other people.”

Bottom line…if you don’t somewhat force diversity, people will naturally line up segregated. The younger we expose kids of all races to other races, religions, and ideas, the more likely we are of breaking the rascism that gets passed down from generation to generation…I’m glad I was able to break out of it…(a small portion of a side of my family that is supposedly Christian, but not so secretly racist…that I don’t really talk to anymore) On that note, you should definitely go see the Indy movie Banished. Part of the movie tries to delve into how such nice and caring people can be so racist, and explores why and how them not knowing any better is not an excuse.

Unlike Greyson, Supreme Court humor is perhaps, not for me.

Hmmm, I find myself all sorts of conflicted about how I feel about some of these cases. First the Seattle one. While I’m not exactly with the “Brown v. Board is dead and the KKK is dancing on its grave” crowd, I am concerned with a conservative ruling which could damage future (and current) attempts to establish what I consider legitimate aff. action programs. I’m not entirely sure if what Seattle was doing falls into my definition of “legitimate,” but due to obvious prejudices, I am inclined to disagree with rulings which make what I consider rather obtuse declarations about the state of race and education in this country (i.e., I think what Roberts said is kind of glib, because it distills a rather complex problem into a nice one-liner) . I know you might be screaming at the computer right now Greyson, so in order to abate your frustration at my complete bleeding heart small mindedness, I will concede that there are big problems with instituting programs which don’t account for socioeconomics and do you one even better by agreeing that the troubling coercive element of this is hard to miss.

Good job Greyson, fo real. This was some high class postin’. Definitely Drudge worthy, or something.