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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28280 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

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It's not like we've spent forever trying and failing. Brown v Board was in 1954 and rollout took a really long time -- major wide-scale efforts didn't start until over 10 to 15 years later and took over a decade to truly kick in. And remember, the starting point was that Black schools were deliberately designed, funded, and often forcibly maintained as worse quality. The schools themselves, not the people! That's a lot of ground to make up. Most data seems to suggest that desegregation efforts stalled out in the late 70s and ratios flatlined until about the 90s when (arguably organic) re-segregation started happening (though the timing causes one to wonder if this was a negative side effect of War on Drugs-related stuff that started about the same time!!!)

So basically, the data suggests that for one decade, we tried to desegregate schools exactly ONCE. This is a far cry from "pie in the sky intervention 8742". And I really can't square what you mean about the scale including "continents and generations" without concluding it's a racial dogwhistle -- could you please expand on what exactly you mean by this?

Almost literally no historian who has documented white flight ever claimed it was for "no good reason", and the level of historical ignorance overall in this comment is shocking. The old adage that history doesn't ever repeat but often rhymes bears mentioning here -- while surely some strong parallels exist, you can't seriously tell me with a straight face that literal slavery vs heavy Jim Crow vs segregation and redlining vs our modern setup are at all similar states of being. Things are an absolute fuckton better than they used to be for Black people in the US. On top of the whole notion of "blackness" which doesn't make genetic sense, it doesn't make historical sense, it doesn't generalize to the world, and can only be understood in a US context. And at the end of the day people are just, ya know, people! They behave like people, and we should treat them like people too.

I'm sure some people get sucked into some liberal ideological trap of extremes, it happens all the time to all sorts of movements, but at its core I think there's at least a significant number of people who want to, you know, just be kind. Is that so bad? Is that so evil? Is that so nefarious? Is MLK's dream of kids being judged by the content of their character a bad dream? Jesus fucking christ dude, get some perspective.

Things are an absolute fuckton better than they used to be for Black people in the US. On top of the whole notion of "blackness" which doesn't make genetic sense, it doesn't make historical sense, it doesn't generalize to the world, and can only be understood in a US context.

It's possible to cherry pick a some definition of "blackness" which does not make sense. Slaves from various Western African polities were brought to various American polities and were indiscriminately mixed, losing their pre-slave distinctiveness. So most other American polities got about same mix as USA did, the difference is that south to USA, there were more race mixing.

Is MLK's dream of kids being judged by the content of their character a bad dream?

And somehow we got non-sequitur "intelligence and personality are same on average for all populations"

Almost literally no historian who has documented white flight ever claimed it was for "no good reason

I checked Wikipedia for the summary of academic documentation of "white flight"

However, some historians have challenged the phrase "white flight" as a misnomer whose use should be reconsidered. In her study of West Side in Chicago during the post-war era, historian Amanda Seligman argues that the phrase misleadingly suggests that whites immediately departed when blacks moved into the neighborhood, when in fact, many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics.[18] Leah Boustan, Professor of Economics at Princeton, attributes white flight both to racism and economic reasons

Wikipedia says it's because whites were evil racists.

White flight contributed to the draining of cities' tax bases when middle-class people left. Abandoned properties attracted criminals and street gangs, contributing to crime

Whites were the evil perpetrators and the root cause of all that crime, which didn't exist until white people's racism racismed it into existence.

See also:
"White demographic decline"
"White genocide conspiracy theory"
"Xenophobia"

And remember, the starting point was that Black schools were deliberately designed, funded, and often forcibly maintained as worse quality.

Brown v. Board of Ed SPECIFICALLY said otherwise about the case in question

Here, unlike Sweatt v. Painter, there are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers, and other "tangible" factors

Most historians have found that although separate but equal does indeed sound like a workable (though ultimately unconstitutional) fair-ish principle, it was rarely true. Especially in the South, where most Blacks lived (and still do). Like, just to use a trivial example, a separate but equal bus scheme would be like, left vs right side -- not front vs back. You'd go to church, and the white people would get better seats near the front and get Communion first. You'd go to a public water fountain, and one would be broken and one would be working fine. If you went and applied to medical school, you'd be denied because no "separate but equal" faculty group existed, therefore could not be accommodated. All of these are real examples. I could go on. In education, already unequal facilities were made even more unequal by geographic school funding on top of already unequal treatement.

I am not talking about most historians (who I would not trust in any case) or most situations. I am talking specifically about Brown v. Board of Education. Where the court ruled that black kids DID have a "right to white people".

In Sweatt v. Painter, supra, in finding that a segregated law school for Negroes could not provide them equal educational opportunities, this Court relied in large part on "those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school." In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, supra, the Court, in requiring that a Negro admitted to a white graduate school be treated like all other students, again resorted to intangible considerations: ". . . his ability to study, to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students, and, in general, to learn his profession." Such considerations apply with added force to children in grade and high schools. To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro plaintiffs:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.

Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

The ruling was that legal or otherwise fair separation is still often used to emphasize unfairness and is psychologically harmful to children, and that there are valid "intangible considerations" beyond mere obvious physical facts that make it impossible to satisfy the "equal" requirement. There is no implication here at all about white people, only that separation violates the spirit of the 14th Amendment (which amendment's history, they found, was not conclusive or useful enough to serve as a guide in interpretation). This specific decision also did not extend to areas other than public education, which is also an important point.

There is no implication here at all about white people

Indeed there is:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children.

The implication is that the "colored" children have the right to benefit from the presence of white children.

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