Separate But Equal

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Conservatives are often accused by liberal types of desiring to "turn back the clock" on Civil Rights. I have never especially liked the "clock" analogy. It is representative of the "progressive" worldview, in which progress is viewed as linear and inevitable. Echoes from dialectical Marxist dogma are clearly heard in the sense of inevitability it promotes. Nonetheless it has become a familiar framework for discussing Civil Rights issues, so we will stick with it for now.

It is true that most conservatives would like to turn the clock back to, say, the late ‘60s, to a point where the vision of a colorblind world still held sway, but I must confess that I personally know no conservative who would like to return to the days of state-sponsored segregation. That notion has become the pet project of modern liberalism. One of the interesting things about clocks is that if you turn them forward enough, you end up right back where you started. This is the rather surreal situation we find ourselves in today, s agents of "progress" seem to be progressing all the way back around to the concept of "separate but equal".

Many examples are available, from self-segregated college dorms to Black History Month. The latest example comes from the unlikely source of the Minneapolis Urban League. A new study of the changing racial composition of the Minneapolis Public Schools shows that the mix of students is changing in very predictable ways. The percentage of white students is declining, while the ratios of black, Hispanic and Asian students are increasing. The causes for this are not hard to fathom: continuing suburbanization, increased immigration and white flight to private schools. Instead of using this data as an excuse to call for increased integration through bussing or school assignments, the Minneapolis Urban League has used it to conclude that more minority teachers are required in Minneapolis.

Quoting an unnamed study, they assert that children with teachers from the same ethnic/cultural group do better in school, stay in school longer, and are generally more likely to succeed. This appears to be an unintended variation of the mildly racist "It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand" school of race relations.

I am certain that nobody over at the Urban League spent any time thinking through the implications of this approach. One of the best ways to see if an idea makes sense is to flip it around and look at it from the opposite direction. If it is consistent and reasonable it will make sense backwards as well as forwards. If overwhelmingly black inner city schools require black teachers, then the overwhelmingly white suburban and small town schools would require white teachers, would they not? And not just whites, but whites with names like Anderson and Jensen and Maas. After all, we can’t reasonably expect these young Nordic kids to learn from people with names like Tarantino or Goldberg or Washington, can we? And what about the Tiger Woods types of kids? Heck, you’d need an entire team of teachers just for them.

What the Minneapolis Urban League seems to be saying is that "separate but equal" is the way to go. While a refreshing change from the equally silly "black kids can only learn if they are sitting next to a white kid" approach to schooling, it is still pretty dangerous stuff.

It s understandable why people who care about the prospects of inner city youths are troubled by the horrific shape of many inner city schools. It is unfortunate that any real reforms are impossible unless the education establishment is taken on and probably destroyed. The synergies between the teachers unions and most liberal/progressive groups make this almost impossible. So we see well meaning but foolish folks like the Urban League dance around the core problems and toy with ideas that get sillier and more dangerous by the minute.