Integrate!

                The big idea that Nikole Hannah-Jones tries to get across in the work she shares on “The Problem We All Live With” is that integration works, and it might just be the best school reform strategy to improve high poverty segregated districts. The major obstacles, outside of logistics and bureaucracy, stem from the prejudices and fears that fly when predominately white districts face the prospect of letting in non-white students. Perhaps the most unsettling part of the story came during the town hall meeting when the parents of the 80% white Francis Howell district spoke against the 96% black Normandy district’s students being “integrated” into their community. I felt that these students were being seen in the same light as many refugees are seen in the world today. 

                Each time refugees, like the Rohingya or Syrians, flee en masse to countries that provide sanctuary, it isn’t long before the citizens of those countries begin speaking out against letting people in. Similar sentiments are expressed each time black students get bussed into white schools: there’s an uproar with many of the white parents. If they can’t prevent the black kids from coming in, they’ll flee the district. When families try to escape the sinking ships of districts like Normandy, they are met with hostility and prejudice when they arrive on the shores of white districts. 

                The parents in the Francis Howell district had every right to be concerned with the influx of new students, as do citizens of countries with already brimming populations when tens of thousands of refugees arrive seeking aid, food, and shelter. Any school district would have reasonable concerns: What’s going to happen to class sizes? What’s this going to do to the budget? Do we need to hire more teachers? Unfortunately, the concerns expressed in FH, and often during refugee crises, are founded more on prejudice than logistics. In FH, the focus was on the “type” of students that were presumed to have extensive discliplinary records and caused the need for metal detectors and drug-sniffing dogs.

                The vitriolic responses of the FH parents were especially unsettling when cast against the enthusiasm of Normandy student Mah’Ria Pruitt-Martin. She and students like her were subjected to the generalizations and assumptions that Normandy students would bring only low scores, stabbings, drugs, and crime into the FH district’s schools. The privileges of the white districts of better scores, better teachers, and better funding make them desirable destinations to migrate to, but lead to some residents working to keep outsiders out so they can continue to enjoy those privileges for themselves. Some may say that it isn’t about race, that it’s not a racial issue, but the reality is that it is. The culture of power in FH and privilege allow people, like some of the speakers at the town hall meeting, to defensively take a step back and claim that it’s not a racial issue, it’s an education issue. If there’s one thing I’ve learned since the start of the semester, it’s that those two things always go hand-in-hand.