The thing that has troubled me the most thus far is the language used by Governor Almond. It disturbs me first on a personal level.
“...to those who defend or close their eyes to the livid stench of sadism, sex immorality and juvenile pregnancy infesting the mixed schools of the District of Columbia and elsewhere; to those who would overthrow the customs, morals and traditions of a way of life which has endured in honor and decency for centuries and embrace a new moral code prepared by nine men in Washington...” (Pratt 11)
The kind of person who would refer to his fellow human beings in such a way shows a detestable lack of moral character on his own part. That these words are political posturing offers him little reprive in the matter of moral fiber. Then also, there is a historical issue at stake here. Almond claims that southern society has “endured in honor and decency for centuries.” Two problems. First, really? Really? Centuries? Is he ignoring slavery? Could even the bigoted politicians of the mid-20th South go so far as to call slavery “decent?” Well, yes apparently. Perhaps though he has merely meant the gentile society that arose as a direct economic result of that peculiar institution. In that way he also neatly forgets the whole picture of the south that includes deep rural poverty, a group whose “morals” I am sure he would find wanting. Finally, there is a political issue here. What does it say that this kind of speech is the language used by the victor? The above phrases are those crafted by the man who won the governorship, assumedly with the approval of the people of Virginia. Was such bigotry so well entrenched in the white populace, or did the fringe groups hold more sway than their numbers like in our debates over gun control?
Also, just thought I would mention that I attended Harry Flood Byrd Middle Schools (Go Senators!) http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/byrd/
and then Mills E. Godwin High School http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/godwin/about-us/
While attending, nobody ever discussed the name, at least not to any substantial depth. Early in High School, I rewrote the wiki page for my middle school. I offer you this link in part to share information and in part to shame me into re-writing that page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Flood_Byrd_Middle_School
While i agree with Connor that the language of Virginia's elected officials following Brown still reads horribly, i was most troubled by the entire existence and raison d'etre of the Pupil Placement Board, an extension of the politicians' "passive resistance" tactics. The Richmond papers (the News Leader and the Times-Dispatch) hailed it as the "first line of defense against integration (21)." Not a good start. (The newspapers' actions and rhetoric during this time could be another entire post, and i hope someone else takes it up.) Pratt writes that the theoretical purpose of the Board was "to perpetuate segregation by assigning pupils to specific schools for any of a variety of reasons except race or color (21)." Instead of that being their theoretical purpose, it became their ACTUAL purpose. They kept the tradition of segregated schools alive blatantly, highlighted by the case of 6 all-black applicants who lived closer to all-white Nathaniel Bacon and Westhampton Elementary Schools than to the black schools they were attending. And in a complete shock, they were denied. The PPB was a blatant tool whose purpose was to separate the races so that white people could maintain their superiority through not being tested or bested by black people.
Although i (and my friends who offered their opinions to me directly) had stereotypes about Virginia and the South before i moved here, i truly underestimated how deep the thread of segregation is woven into the region. YAY WHITE PEOPLE!
What I found most disturbing about the Pratt text was the round about way desegragation was being prevented. Many of the actions that were put in place to aid desedgration were ultimately the same actions preventing it. I agree with Sean about "underestimating how deep the thread of segregation" went into this area and this text was an eye opener for me. I think that because I did not and do not have a very in depth understanding of the desegragation movement the entirety of the text will continue to be an eye opener.
The pupil placement board was the most absurd concept to me. I take it forgrated from my own experiences that where you live determines where you attend school and that that is the end of it. I find it baffeling and concerning that a group of people would go out their way to make parents and children go out of their own way for a specifically designated "white" or "black" school. I also find the parents of those black children inspiring for their unrelentless push against the PPB and society in general.
Personally, the most troubling thing mentioned in the Pratt text so far is definitely the proposed merger of Richmond and part of Chesterfield County in chapter 3. A lot of the things mentioned in chapter 3 were sad and disturbing, such as the white flight from neighborhoods to keep white students out of black schools or the sheer amount of time the school board spent kneecapping attempts at segregation, but they don't surprise me as that fits into the historical narrative of racism and Jim Crow laws. But the idea that a city would try and bring in 47,262 new residents to alter the racial balance of the population is staggering. The massive change in taxes, utilities, districting, and a million other things were overlooked just to keep black kids from going to school with white kids. Luckily the courts shot down the merger, but it would be interesting to find out exactly how much money this dishonest plan would have cost the city of Richmond. Part of me thinks that had they really thought about the consequences, people wouldn't have pushed for the merger, though this book has done a great job as laying out just how much grief racists will put themselves through to have their way. -Sean McFadden
Oh I had a similar reaction to Connor's in that my undergrad had Godwin Hall and no one mentioned that this was basically Institutional Racism Hall. To that end, I am also pretty glad that decent fella Linwood Holton is from my hometown and it's my hometown's only presence in the book too. Phew.
I wanted to mention how horrible two parts of the book are to me:
One comes in the ruling against Merhige's original ruling. Pratt quotes from p71: "We think that the root causes of the concentration of blacks in the inner cities of America are simply not known and that the district court could not realistically place on the counties the responsibility for the effect that the inner city decay has had on the public schools of Richmond..."
This strikes me as so disingenuously "reasonable" that it's really troubling, because had the language of the court just said, there's not enough evidence to support Merhige's ruling, I might buy that legally, not morally, that is a problem, as the language of the law often requires more direct evidence than is always available based on a given situation. But that it uses this gap of direct evidence to then push in the opposite direction is the deplorable part...to suggest that because of the lack of available evidence, then in fact our original suspicions about the nature of the people living in these areas must indeed be true. Words like decay and such are so dripping with disdain and let's all feel bad for the poor upstanding counties!
The second thing that truly bothered me were the pictures of the pro-segregation supporters (I avoid using words like protesters because I don't honestly believe you can protest in support of conservative oppression...blah blah blah....anyway, was anyone else disturbed by just how....not historical they looked....meaning...these pictures look like they were at my parents' wedding or something....like they seem so potentially recent that it's frightening. I was born in 1981....and I grew up in Virginia....and I remember some of the education fights around consolidation in schools over geographical segregation and busing and movies like Lean on Me....so it smacks a little too close to my own childhood. This is my being a product of a culture that places the negative reminds of history deeply in the past via certain types of images, ways of thinking and speaking on historical topics, and such that the people who don't come out looking so well are seen as the outsiders and not the speakers for the status quo.....as well as my naive wish to continue to do so.
To end on a different note, I found it so warming and remarkable to hear from those voices that fought so strongly against segregation especially early in the fight when the stakes (ever high) seem, from a historical framework, so removed from a "safe" vantage point.
It's also interesting to hear the names of the schools we will be working in and to match up the book's portrayal of them with what we will discover in time.
Reading Chapter 4 I found myself thinking about all of the mixed feelings a have about the practice of “bussing.” It may be PART of a solution to a system that is segregated in a number of ways, but it seems to me that often it is seen as the primary way to address segregation in communities. This approach fails to recognize that segregation within school systems that operate on a “neighborhood school” model is the RESULT of whole communities and city wide spaces of segregation, not the cause. Bussing ignores the many factors contributing to the existence of “African American neighborhoods,” “white neighborhoods,” “Hispanic neighborhoods,” etc., such as socioeconomic status and white flight. Additionally, though bussing is often toted as a step toward solving the factors mentioned above because it supposedly allows for all students to get a quality and equal education, it has obviously been not enough on its own.
The second concern that came to mind reading this chapter is the realization that RPS (and to my knowledge almost all U.S. school systems) has returned to a “neighborhood school” model that is once again essentially segregated by race. I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the reality that something which was clearly recognized as a huge issue 40 years ago is apparently no longer an issue, despite the apparent lack of change in segregation.
What struck me the most was the miscommunication between the black and white cultures concerning education. I believe Pratt drills this quite hard in chapter 4. Here it is,
"As much as some may have wanted to deny it, race continued to be a significant factor, not only in determining one's position on the issue of metropolitan consolidation but also in the shaping of one's attitudes and perceptions of school desegregation, something that clearly set most blacks and whites apart. Although blacks supported desegregation for a variety of reasons, their one overriding concern was the quality of education, which many believed would be enhanced by the mere presence of white children in the classroom. They were convinced that whites would always have access to the very best, and that their own children would benefit enormously simply by being part of that environment. Whites were equally concerned about the quality of education but their perspective, influenced by the same set of racist myths and stereotypes that distorted blacks' self-image, led many of them to conclude that integration and quality education were mutually exclusive, and because they already occupied society's "superior" position, their children had nothing to gain by mixing with "inferior" blacks". (71-72)
Later, Pratt adds about the influence that the court ordered busing had. To me this quote takes a stab at how negative, bigoted attitudes affect both the psyche of the racist and the race targeted. In addition, I believe that Pratt hints at a larger issue of how the dominant group uses states rights and liberation to defend their way of life from the invasion of the unknown, outcast or other. In fact, there is tremendous scholarship in Africana studies about how bigotry is rooted in the idea of defining yourself in reaction to what is different from you. In essence, books such as, The History of White People, claim that whiteness grew out of a reaction to blackness. Lindsay makes an excellent about the stratification of neighborhoods which places racial groups in certain schools to an extent. There are distinct cultures that exist. As a result, how can social justice be achieved without bridging those cultures?
There definitely was a lot that was disheartening and disappointing just in those first four chapters. I think that the one thing that floored me more than anything else was in Chapter 1. It just blows my mind that Prince Edward County flat out disbanded all public education for 5 years solely to avoid desegregation. And in a way, this is a reflection of just how deeply those segregationalist(?) beliefs were held. I mean, on one hand, yes, you could say that they definitely showed their resolve in doing that... but to condemn your own children to being crammed into now-overcrowded private schools... (shaking my head).
More at the Richmond level, the extent of white flight described in the book was shocking: "The 'For Sale' signs would go up daily, and you could literally see the blacks moving in and the whites moving out." It was also disappointing to hear how the realtors were so involved and readily capitalized on the fears and prejudices of whites. In Richmond's resegregation, they were probably the one winner.
I agree with Connor that the views and language held by Governor Almond are shocking and appaling. I truly do not understand how any person could treat another human that way ESPECIALLY fresh off of WWII and the Holocaust.
I also agree with Karl about Prince Edward County. It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that white people are so adament about keeping black children out of "their" schools that they would make their own children suffer. Not to mention making black children go FIVE years with out formal education.
I will say that reading this text, some things surprised me but nothing truly shocked me. Coming from the Deep South, I grew up with all of those "stereotypes" (as Sean put it) as a reality in our schools. And this is YEARS later. Also it's difficult to "shock" me because of all the violence that took place in Mississippi and Alabama.
What troubled me the most so far was the process of desegregation. In the opening of chapter three the quote by Oliver W. Hill talks about how complicated it was to desegregate the schools because the housing was not yet desegregated. They thought it would be easier to start with the schools, hoping that the children would be less violent than the adults, but we all know that wasn’t true. Somehow they wanted Black students to just volunteer to go to school with the White students, ‘The Negroes just weren’t asking to go to school with the Whites.” Knowing the severity of the controversy, why would anyone ask to go to school with the people that don’t want them there because even if they did wouldn’t they likely be the only black student there. Then there was the use of the “any pupil-assignment plan which was a plan to desegregate the schools by the parents filing out a form to choose which school they wanted their child to attend, but like Pratt says every attempt that needed to be made “would require a bold initiative on the part of the black community.” Even the small number of blacks that decided to attend predominantly white schools had to basically just go through Hell from harassment when there wasn’t any supervision to losing their job just because they believed in desegregation. Not to mention finding their own way to get there. Even once the black student did make the choice to go to White schools the White student’s parents would pull their students out of the school starting the whole segregation process all over again! The percentiles on page 46 and the chart of 47 give a good break down. The desegregation of schools in Richmond just seemed impossible and what is scary is that all this happened about 20 years before I started school. Now I understand why everywhere I go in Richmond that is in a predominantly black area from the public library to bible study I just can't escape the conversation of racism. This is still new and prevalent to Richmond citizens.
After a long talk with the librarian when picking up my Pratt text and a two hour bible study last night and one hour bible study on Monday, of which all conversations topics dealt with racism, I called my dad and jokingly (with some truth) asked him, "What am I getting myself into?"
The thing that has troubled me the most thus far is the language used by Governor Almond. It disturbs me first on a personal level.
ReplyDelete“...to those who defend or close their eyes to the livid stench of sadism, sex immorality and juvenile pregnancy infesting the mixed schools of the District of Columbia and elsewhere; to those who would overthrow the customs, morals and traditions of a way of life which has endured in honor and decency for centuries and embrace a new moral code prepared by nine men in Washington...” (Pratt 11)
The kind of person who would refer to his fellow human beings in such a way shows a detestable lack of moral character on his own part. That these words are political posturing offers him little reprive in the matter of moral fiber. Then also, there is a historical issue at stake here. Almond claims that southern society has “endured in honor and decency for centuries.” Two problems. First, really? Really? Centuries? Is he ignoring slavery? Could even the bigoted politicians of the mid-20th South go so far as to call slavery “decent?” Well, yes apparently. Perhaps though he has merely meant the gentile society that arose as a direct economic result of that peculiar institution. In that way he also neatly forgets the whole picture of the south that includes deep rural poverty, a group whose “morals” I am sure he would find wanting. Finally, there is a political issue here. What does it say that this kind of speech is the language used by the victor? The above phrases are those crafted by the man who won the governorship, assumedly with the approval of the people of Virginia. Was such bigotry so well entrenched in the white populace, or did the fringe groups hold more sway than their numbers like in our debates over gun control?
Also, just thought I would mention that I attended Harry Flood Byrd Middle Schools (Go Senators!)
http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/byrd/
and then Mills E. Godwin High School
http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/godwin/about-us/
While attending, nobody ever discussed the name, at least not to any substantial depth. Early in High School, I rewrote the wiki page for my middle school. I offer you this link in part to share information and in part to shame me into re-writing that page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Flood_Byrd_Middle_School
While i agree with Connor that the language of Virginia's elected officials following Brown still reads horribly, i was most troubled by the entire existence and raison d'etre of the Pupil Placement Board, an extension of the politicians' "passive resistance" tactics. The Richmond papers (the News Leader and the Times-Dispatch) hailed it as the "first line of defense against integration (21)." Not a good start. (The newspapers' actions and rhetoric during this time could be another entire post, and i hope someone else takes it up.) Pratt writes that the theoretical purpose of the Board was "to perpetuate segregation by assigning pupils to specific schools for any of a variety of reasons except race or color (21)." Instead of that being their theoretical purpose, it became their ACTUAL purpose. They kept the tradition of segregated schools alive blatantly, highlighted by the case of 6 all-black applicants who lived closer to all-white Nathaniel Bacon and Westhampton Elementary Schools than to the black schools they were attending. And in a complete shock, they were denied. The PPB was a blatant tool whose purpose was to separate the races so that white people could maintain their superiority through not being tested or bested by black people.
ReplyDeleteAlthough i (and my friends who offered their opinions to me directly) had stereotypes about Virginia and the South before i moved here, i truly underestimated how deep the thread of segregation is woven into the region. YAY WHITE PEOPLE!
What I found most disturbing about the Pratt text was the round about way desegragation was being prevented. Many of the actions that were put in place to aid desedgration were ultimately the same actions preventing it. I agree with Sean about "underestimating how deep the thread of segregation" went into this area and this text was an eye opener for me. I think that because I did not and do not have a very in depth understanding of the desegragation movement the entirety of the text will continue to be an eye opener.
ReplyDeleteThe pupil placement board was the most absurd concept to me. I take it forgrated from my own experiences that where you live determines where you attend school and that that is the end of it. I find it baffeling and concerning that a group of people would go out their way to make parents and children go out of their own way for a specifically designated "white" or "black" school. I also find the parents of those black children inspiring for their unrelentless push against the PPB and society in general.
Personally, the most troubling thing mentioned in the Pratt text so far is definitely the proposed merger of Richmond and part of Chesterfield County in chapter 3. A lot of the things mentioned in chapter 3 were sad and disturbing, such as the white flight from neighborhoods to keep white students out of black schools or the sheer amount of time the school board spent kneecapping attempts at segregation, but they don't surprise me as that fits into the historical narrative of racism and Jim Crow laws. But the idea that a city would try and bring in 47,262 new residents to alter the racial balance of the population is staggering. The massive change in taxes, utilities, districting, and a million other things were overlooked just to keep black kids from going to school with white kids. Luckily the courts shot down the merger, but it would be interesting to find out exactly how much money this dishonest plan would have cost the city of Richmond. Part of me thinks that had they really thought about the consequences, people wouldn't have pushed for the merger, though this book has done a great job as laying out just how much grief racists will put themselves through to have their way.
ReplyDelete-Sean McFadden
Oh I had a similar reaction to Connor's in that my undergrad had Godwin Hall and no one mentioned that this was basically Institutional Racism Hall. To that end, I am also pretty glad that decent fella Linwood Holton is from my hometown and it's my hometown's only presence in the book too. Phew.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to mention how horrible two parts of the book are to me:
One comes in the ruling against Merhige's original ruling. Pratt quotes from p71: "We think that the root causes of the concentration of blacks in the inner cities of America are simply not known and that the district court could not realistically place on the counties the responsibility for the effect that the inner city decay has had on the public schools of Richmond..."
This strikes me as so disingenuously "reasonable" that it's really troubling, because had the language of the court just said, there's not enough evidence to support Merhige's ruling, I might buy that legally, not morally, that is a problem, as the language of the law often requires more direct evidence than is always available based on a given situation. But that it uses this gap of direct evidence to then push in the opposite direction is the deplorable part...to suggest that because of the lack of available evidence, then in fact our original suspicions about the nature of the people living in these areas must indeed be true. Words like decay and such are so dripping with disdain and let's all feel bad for the poor upstanding counties!
The second thing that truly bothered me were the pictures of the pro-segregation supporters (I avoid using words like protesters because I don't honestly believe you can protest in support of conservative oppression...blah blah blah....anyway, was anyone else disturbed by just how....not historical they looked....meaning...these pictures look like they were at my parents' wedding or something....like they seem so potentially recent that it's frightening. I was born in 1981....and I grew up in Virginia....and I remember some of the education fights around consolidation in schools over geographical segregation and busing and movies like Lean on Me....so it smacks a little too close to my own childhood. This is my being a product of a culture that places the negative reminds of history deeply in the past via certain types of images, ways of thinking and speaking on historical topics, and such that the people who don't come out looking so well are seen as the outsiders and not the speakers for the status quo.....as well as my naive wish to continue to do so.
To end on a different note, I found it so warming and remarkable to hear from those voices that fought so strongly against segregation especially early in the fight when the stakes (ever high) seem, from a historical framework, so removed from a "safe" vantage point.
It's also interesting to hear the names of the schools we will be working in and to match up the book's portrayal of them with what we will discover in time.
Reading Chapter 4 I found myself thinking about all of the mixed feelings a have about the practice of “bussing.” It may be PART of a solution to a system that is segregated in a number of ways, but it seems to me that often it is seen as the primary way to address segregation in communities. This approach fails to recognize that segregation within school systems that operate on a “neighborhood school” model is the RESULT of whole communities and city wide spaces of segregation, not the cause. Bussing ignores the many factors contributing to the existence of “African American neighborhoods,” “white neighborhoods,” “Hispanic neighborhoods,” etc., such as socioeconomic status and white flight. Additionally, though bussing is often toted as a step toward solving the factors mentioned above because it supposedly allows for all students to get a quality and equal education, it has obviously been not enough on its own.
ReplyDeleteThe second concern that came to mind reading this chapter is the realization that RPS (and to my knowledge almost all U.S. school systems) has returned to a “neighborhood school” model that is once again essentially segregated by race. I am having a hard time wrapping my mind around the reality that something which was clearly recognized as a huge issue 40 years ago is apparently no longer an issue, despite the apparent lack of change in segregation.
What struck me the most was the miscommunication between the black and white cultures concerning education. I believe Pratt drills this quite hard in chapter 4. Here it is,
ReplyDelete"As much as some may have wanted to deny it, race continued to be a significant factor, not only in determining one's position on the issue of metropolitan consolidation but also in the shaping of one's attitudes and perceptions of school desegregation, something that clearly set most blacks and whites apart. Although blacks supported desegregation for a variety of reasons, their one overriding concern was the quality of education, which many believed would be enhanced by the mere presence of white children in the classroom. They were convinced that whites would always have access to the very best, and that their own children would benefit enormously simply by being part of that environment. Whites were equally concerned about the quality of education but their perspective, influenced by the same set of racist myths and stereotypes that distorted blacks' self-image, led many of them to conclude that integration and quality education were mutually exclusive, and because they already occupied society's "superior" position, their children had nothing to gain by mixing with "inferior" blacks". (71-72)
Later, Pratt adds about the influence that the court ordered busing had. To me this quote takes a stab at how negative, bigoted attitudes affect both the psyche of the racist and the race targeted. In addition, I believe that Pratt hints at a larger issue of how the dominant group uses states rights and liberation to defend their way of life from the invasion of the unknown, outcast or other. In fact, there is tremendous scholarship in Africana studies about how bigotry is rooted in the idea of defining yourself in reaction to what is different from you. In essence, books such as, The History of White People, claim that whiteness grew out of a reaction to blackness. Lindsay makes an excellent about the stratification of neighborhoods which places racial groups in certain schools to an extent. There are distinct cultures that exist. As a result, how can social justice be achieved without bridging those cultures?
There definitely was a lot that was disheartening and disappointing just in those first four chapters. I think that the one thing that floored me more than anything else was in Chapter 1. It just blows my mind that Prince Edward County flat out disbanded all public education for 5 years solely to avoid desegregation. And in a way, this is a reflection of just how deeply those segregationalist(?) beliefs were held. I mean, on one hand, yes, you could say that they definitely showed their resolve in doing that... but to condemn your own children to being crammed into now-overcrowded private schools... (shaking my head).
ReplyDeleteMore at the Richmond level, the extent of white flight described in the book was shocking: "The 'For Sale' signs would go up daily, and you could literally see the blacks moving in and the whites moving out." It was also disappointing to hear how the realtors were so involved and readily capitalized on the fears and prejudices of whites. In Richmond's resegregation, they were probably the one winner.
I agree with Connor that the views and language held by Governor Almond are shocking and appaling. I truly do not understand how any person could treat another human that way ESPECIALLY fresh off of WWII and the Holocaust.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Karl about Prince Edward County. It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that white people are so adament about keeping black children out of "their" schools that they would make their own children suffer. Not to mention making black children go FIVE years with out formal education.
I will say that reading this text, some things surprised me but nothing truly shocked me. Coming from the Deep South, I grew up with all of those "stereotypes" (as Sean put it) as a reality in our schools. And this is YEARS later. Also it's difficult to "shock" me because of all the violence that took place in Mississippi and Alabama.
-Kyle Kimbrell
What troubled me the most so far was the process of desegregation. In the opening of chapter three the quote by Oliver W. Hill talks about how complicated it was to desegregate the schools because the housing was not yet desegregated. They thought it would be easier to start with the schools, hoping that the children would be less violent than the adults, but we all know that wasn’t true. Somehow they wanted Black students to just volunteer to go to school with the White students, ‘The Negroes just weren’t asking to go to school with the Whites.” Knowing the severity of the controversy, why would anyone ask to go to school with the people that don’t want them there because even if they did wouldn’t they likely be the only black student there. Then there was the use of the “any pupil-assignment plan which was a plan to desegregate the schools by the parents filing out a form to choose which school they wanted their child to attend, but like Pratt says every attempt that needed to be made “would require a bold initiative on the part of the black community.” Even the small number of blacks that decided to attend predominantly white schools had to basically just go through Hell from harassment when there wasn’t any supervision to losing their job just because they believed in desegregation. Not to mention finding their own way to get there. Even once the black student did make the choice to go to White schools the White student’s parents would pull their students out of the school starting the whole segregation process all over again! The percentiles on page 46 and the chart of 47 give a good break down. The desegregation of schools in Richmond just seemed impossible and what is scary is that all this happened about 20 years before I started school. Now I understand why everywhere I go in Richmond that is in a predominantly black area from the public library to bible study I just can't escape the conversation of racism. This is still new and prevalent to Richmond citizens.
ReplyDeleteAfter a long talk with the librarian when picking up my Pratt text and a two hour bible study last night and one hour bible study on Monday, of which all conversations topics dealt with racism, I called my dad and jokingly (with some truth) asked him, "What am I getting myself into?"