Racial segregation is legal in the U.S?

[Tatyana]

Our prom took place at the school. It was all-white but that's because I grew up in an all-white town and went to an all-white school.

Does not compute.



Seriously, I can't relate to this, although I did feel a wee bit odd the first time I went to Denmark (land of the beautiful people), and there were WAY more white people than I was used to being around.

What was that like? Did you grow up in the middle of nowhere?

Is your home town still all white?

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Does not compute.



Seriously, I can't relate to this, although I did feel a wee bit odd the first time I went to Denmark (land of the beautiful people), and there were WAY more white people than I was used to being around.

What was that like? Did you grow up in the middle of nowhere?

Is your home town still all white?

It's not that odd. The town I went to high school in was less than an hour from Chicago (which is of course highly segregated in itself), and it was all white. But then two towns over it is almost 50% Latino.

Today, one-third of black students attend school in places where the black population is more than 90 percent. A little less than half of white students attend schools that are more than 90 percent white. One-third of all black and Latino students attend high-poverty schools (where more than 75 percent of students receive free or reduced lunch); only 4 percent of white children do.

Things have been better, and not so long ago. In 1990 more than 40 percent of black students in the South were attending majority-white schools. Today, fewer than 30 percent of students do — roughly the same percentage as in the late 1960s, when many districts were still refusing to implement 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education.

That trend isn’t limited just to the South, according to Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. According to Orfield, some of the deepest racial divisions in America today are in the Midwest, where old patterns of “white flight” have shaped the suburban landscape, and a new generation of immigrants is settling into communities that were never under orders to desegregate.

Linky.

Across the country, 43 percent of Latinos and 38 percent of blacks attend schools where fewer than 10 percent of their classmates are white, according to the report, released on Wednesday by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles.

And more than one in seven black and Latino students attend schools where fewer than 1 percent of their classmates are white, according to the group’s analysis of enrollment data from 2009-2010, the latest year for which federal statistics are available.

Segregation of Latino students is most pronounced in California, New York and Texas. The most segregated cities for blacks include Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia and Washington.

“Extreme segregation is becoming more common,” said Gary Orfield, an author of the report who is co-director of the Civil Rights Project.

Linky.

I remember when a Black family moved in and one of the kids went into the Freshman class. Turned out a lot of people I knew were racist, but it had just never come up before!

 

[Rashmi]

the trick is to keep all of the smaller penis boys,

away from the proper holes...

I'm not a pragmatistic goal

 

[zooterkin]

Does not compute.



Seriously, I can't relate to this, although I did feel a wee bit odd the first time I went to Denmark (land of the beautiful people), and there were WAY more white people than I was used to being around.

What was that like? Did you grow up in the middle of nowhere?

Is your home town still all white?

There's plenty of places in Britain still like that. The school I went to in the 70s, in outer London, had about one non-white pupil in each year, so less than 2%; going to a Poly in the Midlands was very much a multi-cultural experience in contrast. Then moving to Berkshire it felt like there was something missing, with again an almost totally white population. More recently, I went to the Guy Fawkes carnival in Wells a couple of years ago, and I don't recall seeing more than one non-white face in the crowds there.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Weird. . .most proms I've heard of are in fact affiliated with and under the aegis of the school. I suspect what happened was similar to some southern states' threats to end the public school system rather than accept desegregation. (That would leave segregation up to private entities.)

Apparently Wilcox County High stopped having an official prom rather than desegregating it, leaving the segregation up to prom organizers officially not affiliated with the school.

I'd argue that since it's in the school's power to have a school sanctioned desegregated prom that they are tacitly complicit in the discriminatory practice.

I suspect one could sue (as in the lesbian prom-goer mentioned earlier in the thread), but no one has been willing to do so.

 

[DrDave]

Yes. And?

What's happening here is illegal in most other western countries. It's called vilification. Discrimination. Racism. Regardless of the who, where, why.

Illegal? Care to point me to the UK law stopping me hosting a party and inviting who I choose?

 

[WildCat]

Black's Beach?

http://www.blacksbeach.org/

(not safe for work)

"There are rocks with crabs hiding inside."

I'll bet!

 

[RemieV]

This was going to a good place when I went to bed, and now it's less so.

Don't paint the South with a broad brush. I'm from Texas. I lived there for the first 26 years of my life. My prom was certainly not, in any way whatsoever, segregated. In fact, it never even really occurred to me before, but me and my date constituted an interracial couple. How funny that seriously never, in any way, struck me at all! He's Japanese, and I'm half Native American.

I'm now casting my mind back to think about black kids and try to recall if there was anything at all. I remember a super popular, super cute black guy who was on the football team and in my physics class. I seem to remember that he was in the running for prom king.

I do not recall if our prom was private or not. It was in a hotel, not at the school. But the branding was there, and tickets were sold at school. You could bring whoever you wanted as your date. They didn't even have to go to the same school.

At any rate, this was the South as well. It has not been illustrated that racial segregation is pervasive even in the South.

 

[StankApe]

I grew up in the south, my prom was at a church bingo hall thing . It wasn't an official school function. But it wasn't segregated either

 

[Gazpacho]

It's a dodge that shouldn't be legal.

There is no law in the US against racial discrimination in general. There are laws against discrimination in certain contexts, and against government participation in discrimination in others. Privately organized parties are not among them.

The law is what it is. What it "should be" is a matter for politics.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

There is no law in the US against racial discrimination in general. There are laws against discrimination in certain contexts, and against government participation in discrimination in others. Privately organized parties are not among them.

The law is what it is. What it "should be" is a matter for politics.

I'd be curious to your response to my post number 45.

In most schools, proms are officially sanctioned by the school. The Prom Committee is usually an extension of student body government which itself is school sanctioned.

The fact that this school has opted not to have a school-sanctioned prom is at least tacit support for these private proms that can legally discriminate.

I suspect the only reason this hasn't been challenged is because few--if any--want to end the practice of segregated proms in Wilcox County.

 

[StankApe]

tacit approval doesn't mean anything legally though. The only way it could be deemed to be a violation is if school approved or provided funds/facilities/hours were used (hence taxpayer funds, hence govt sanctioned hence illegal)

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

tacit approval doesn't mean anything legally though.

Sure it does. It means the same thing it means in ordinary language.

 

[StankApe]

How could you even prove that though? if it isn't on a school site, if funds weren't used from school coffers, if tickets were sold by individuals while at school, then there are a ton of other things illegal going on at schools too (girl scout cookies, raffle tickets...etc).

Lack of condemnation doesn't imply approval by proxy does it?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

There is no law in the US against racial discrimination in general. There are laws against discrimination in certain contexts, and against government participation in discrimination in others. Privately organized parties are not among them.

First, I'm not sure you could consider a party open to anyone in the class of one race (and their guests) to be a fully "private" party. Second, if that party is held in a hotel, restaurant, or other place of public accommodation, it may well be subject to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

And I would again argue that the school is participating in this discrimination.

I'd be willing to bet the elected courts of both proms appear in school publications, and I'd be surprised if there weren't photos of them in the yearbook.

If these aren't really anything recognizable as proms, but only private parties, it'd be another story. But that's not what it sounds like. There is only one white prom queen, and one black prom queen. It'd be different if it was customary to have a prom queen at any of a number of different private prom parties.

 

[DrDave]

Sure it does. It means the same thing it means in ordinary language.

What would you suggest? Forcing schools by law to hold a prom and forcing all kids (or at least an acceptible proportion of each race) to attend.

 

[StankApe]

My parties will be held at hotels and only one legged korean guys named Dave will be allowed to attend.

see you there!

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

How could you even prove that though? if it isn't on a school site, if funds weren't used from school coffers, if tickets were sold by individuals while at school, then there are a ton of other things illegal going on at schools too (girl scout cookies, raffle tickets...etc).

I'm highly skeptical that the school has been able to put such a barrier between itself and the two supposedly unsanctioned proms. If nothing more substantial were available, the minute a faculty member said "Congratulations" to a prom queen, that would be school recognition of one of these events.

Or as mentioned earlier, even allowing the segregated proms to put up posters on school bulletin boards would be enough. Since the story of the integrated prom mentions people tearing down their flyers at the school, I suspect the segregated flyers have been appearing there in the past.

 

[StankApe]

No, just no.

I won a science fair, it was a private institute that gave this award, my school had nothing to do with it and in fact it was no considered a school function so my absence that day wasn't excused.

When I got back with my 2nd place award, the science teacher gave me a big congrats. But by no means was this act transcendent in the official endorsement of this private science fair by the school.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

What would you suggest? Forcing schools by law to hold a prom and forcing all kids (or at least an acceptible proportion of each race) to attend.

In this case, I would require the school to give official recognition to the desegregated prom that is being set up this year. Recognize that Prom Committee and continue not recognizing the segregated prom organizers.

No one is suggesting racial quotas for attendance. What they're talking about is not prohibiting attendance based on race.