Re: Paying for Schools

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Tue Aug 28 2001 - 11:43:42 MDT


Pat Inniss wrote:
>
> Mike Lorrey wrote:
> >
> > <snip>
> > Well, considering how much the left accepts the means justifying the
> > ends if it is their ends being served, you may notice that literacy
> > among African Americans was much higher prior to Brown v. Board of
> > Education than it is today....
>
> Mike -
>
> This allegation that illiteracy has increased among African Americans
> following Brown vs Board of Education is, as well as surprising, also
> quite inaccurate. According to Arthur Hu's statistics site
> (http://www.leconsulting.com/arthurhu/index/literacy.htm), which I hope
> you find a sufficiently conservative source, illiteracy among blacks
> over age 14 declined from 11% to 3.6% from 1947 to 1969.

And what has occured since then, Pat? Since 1969, black illiteracy has
skyrocketed. I'm not surprised, though, this is rather typical 'cherry
picking' statistical practice. Integration wasn't even beginning to
spread widely until 1969, so using pre-1969 statistics to claim that
black illiteracy has not gone up since BvBOE is a fraudulent
presentation of facts. The facts you present, of pre-1969 data, show
that segregated educational systems were having a positive impact upon
literacy among african-americans.

> Also check out
> http://nces.ed.gov/publications/majorpub/120yr/porintr1.txt. I'd be
> interested in seeing the source of your misinformation. I see many
> distortions and outright fabrications circulating in conservative
> circles. I am beginning to suspect that the garden variety conservative
> mentality may be somehow less inclined to skepticism and more toward
> accepting questionable data which supports existing ideas. The
> conservative disinformation machinery on the internet certainly has no
> liberal analog.
>
> It might help to understand more fully the context of racial
> discrimination in education. It formed part of a system to
> disenfranchise blacks and poor people in general. Another important
> component was literacy tests. If you didn't educate blacks, you also
> denied them political power. This would seem to be highly
> anti-libertarian, the way many libertarians present their philosophy.
>
> It is interesting that your allegation seems to reveal some hostility
> toward school desegregation. I am surprised that you would attribute
> Brown vs Board of Education to "the left." Being perhaps something of a
> leftist myself, I will take the compliment, but do conservatives oppose
> that decision? Maybe 40 years ago, but today? I had thought you
> considered yourself a libertarian. Yet, opposition to school
> desegregation would seem to fit a pattern I have noticed among some
> "libertarians" of espousing anti-libertarian positions when they
> conflict with conservative inclinations. In this instance, a libertarian
> would, if true to his or her philosophy, support Brown vs. Board of
> Education because it removed government practices which were restrictive
> on personal freedom, e.g. attending the school of a person's choice. I
> have heard many libertarians complain about civil rights laws when they
> impinged upon the behavior of individuals. But what libertarian
> principle is transgressed by Brown vs Board of Education, which only
> increases personal choice at the expense of government control? One
> things libertarians frequently promise, in defense of the removal of
> civil rights protections in the private sphere, is that a libertarian
> government, such as it might be, would treat all citizens fairly
> regardless of race. Is this not what Brown vs Board of Education was all
> about? Who would oppose such a law? Certainly such opposition could not
> be motivated merely be libertarian philosophy.

Nobody would oppose BvBOE on theoretical grounds, but the central claim
of proponents of integration was that it would allow greater and broader
scholastic achievement for all african americans. Your 'facts', which
contain NOTHING about literacy since 1969 (an omission of 32 years of
data is quite glaring) when integration was just getting started, do
nothing to prove your point, and only serve to bolster the claims of
'separate but equal' proponents (of which I am NOT one).

What integration has created is a situation where middle class and
wealthy blacks are able to flee traditionally black school systems and
institutes of higher education for elite mainstream schools, while the
majority of blacks, who are poor, have been stuck in the husk of a
second class educational system. This 'green flight' mirrors the 'white
flight' phenomena that occured when black institutes attempted to make
up for this by forcing at gunpoint the force busing system of shipping
white and black kids out of their neighborhoods and across town to
schools where they are severely lacking in the social support that is so
necessary for academic achievement.



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