I Had Lunch With Two White Women From Wake County NC (Raleigh Durham)

There was the opportunity right in front of me.  I was in Wake County, North Carolina.   Right in the heart of the Tea Party lead movement to "Turn Back The Clock" on the rights of Black people to receive "quality education" via sitting next to White students.

For the bulk of the lunch we talked about the strategy by which we could win the business from a few other capitalistic corporations who had similar interests in generating profits.

I had a choice to make.  Do I ask them where they stand on the most pressing "civil rights" issue of today or do I keep it on the level and just talk business?  

They had already talked about their own children and asked me about mine so we have already talked about issues other than business.  Now I only needed to prepare myself for the possibility that they would pull out their "Tea Party membership" card and show me who they really are.  Indeed I have heard several times, from several Black media outlets that the Tea Party is the new "Klan".

(End Of Sarcasm)

I asked the following question:
"I see that your school system here has made the national news regarding school busing.  What is going on?"
I wanted to have them put forth their perspective on the events so I asked a non-leading question.

Here is a summary of their views:

1. "I live in a community where I can see the elementary school from my house.  The way this school busing program is set up many of the children in my neighborhood are driving past this community school and sent somewhere else in the county".
1. "Imagine if you have to pick all of your children up early from school and you have to drive all around the county to collect them up?  Wake County is a large county and you could be driving all over the place."
2. "There are people with 2 or 3 children in elementary school or middle school or high school.  Instead of them all being in one school - this plan doesn't respect families, they could be in all different schools.  It is insane"
3. "Children who are of the same age in the community can all go to different schools.  The only time they get to see their local friends is if they participate in an after-school sports program locally or some type of club."
4. "Parents who would like to become "class moms" in their children's now have to consider the distance between their house and the school.  It has the effect of suppressing parental environment.  Imagine the impact on the PTA involvement when you have to fight through traffic to make it to your children's school that is across town"?
5. "Imagine if your child misses the bus in the morning and now has to get to school but the school is across the county instead of in the community that you moved into?"
6. (And Finally)  "The busing policy tries to keep each school's population of kids receiving  'Free Lunch' at or below "40%" of a schools population.  The goal is to prevent one school from having too many low income students concentrated in one place."   Something to the effect of the following was added: "I am in favor of diversity and schools sharing the load but the present system creates all of these problems.  If someone was to do a study to enumerate all of the transportation costs used to keep this program up they would see the great amount of money that is being spent.  This money spent here is money that can't be spent on classroom instruction".

The other woman has her children in private school so she admitted that she personally doesn't have to deal with these issues but the general sentiment in her city (within Wake County) is as the other woman has indicated.   These policies merely motivate the people who could send their children to public schools but who can afford private school a bit more impetus to remove them from the public schools.  It exacerbates the spiral downward.

I asked them about "per student funding".  In the "Pre-Brown v Board" era - that this time is being compared to Wake County would be a perfect situation where discrimination between Black & White was seen:  a large school system that encompasses both of these communities but the resources were allocated in balance toward the White kids.

I was told that the entire county collects property taxes for school but that she also lives in Raleigh and the city also has a tax.  I clarified that they have both a property tax and a sales tax.  She was not sure if the schools that are in the cities receive a funding boost from the cities.    Still Raleigh and the rest of the larger cities in the county are racially diverse so, even if this was so, this does not prove to be an exclusive advantage.

They asked me how things are in Georgia.  I mentioned that the state has 154 counties, each with their own school system.  The counties appear to be a bit smaller than what is the case in NC.  If you don't like the schools in one county - you move to another county who's policies produce more favorable outcomes.

"We Are Going Forward. We Are Not Going Backward" - North Carolina NAACP

North Carolina Vs The Feds: Landmark Segregation Investigation


As I listened to the version of events on the ground from the "virtual Tea Party racists" that were in front of me I could not get past one thing that I keep railing against on this blog:   What is the standing of the "Free Lunch Kids" with respect to their assumed EQUALITY?

When this quantity of children must be kept below a minimum, lest "bad things" happen inside of the school where they congregate then we must admit that the problem is with the prevailing consciousness that is injected upon these children and seek to correct it.  I investigated the "assumed inferiority" of this line of thinking in this post (click here).

Ironically the very same force that see the DAMAGE done to "Free Lunch Kids" IF they are allowed to remain in schools where THEY are the majority seeks to prevent "Bring Your Own Lunch Kids" from using their own efforts to fortify their own community schools.

Again I must point out the irony of seeing a program that has "children bused past several schools" in order to go to the school that they were assigned to, COMPARED TO a time of blatant racism in which Black kids were bused past several local schools that where "White Schools", over to a school that the school system had assigned them to.

I have a blog entry in draft form that is entitled "What Is The COST Of Diversity".  I now need to finish it and publish it.  It asks the basic question: "Is there a point that is reached where in your pursuit of 'Diversity' you own self-dignity and self-worth is compromised?".

I still can't reconcile in my own mind that force that a "single Black child" sitting in a "White classroom" receives BUT WHICH CAN'T be generated in a classroom where this same "single Black child" is congregated with other "single Black child".

The warnings made by Zora Neale Hurston about the implicit inferiority of Black people per our pursuit of these policies are more justified today than they were at her time.

I am just saddened that the "Struggle Milieu" that has been adopted by the "embedded confidence men" within our midst has been used to avoid the necessary focus on getting OUR PEOPLE brought in line with the mission that is needed to change the outcomes that are produced by changing the repetitive behavior (and the thoughts that underly them) that is conducted within.