Separate Never Has Been and Never Will Be Equal

On April 9, I attended the 2011 Jack Crum Conference on Prophetic Ministry at Avent Ferry United Methodist Church in Raleigh. The event was sponsored by the Methodist Federation for Social Action, and presenters included Rev. James Lawson, Great Schools in Wake, Rev. Dr. William Barber, Dr. Timothy Tyson and more. This is not going to be my most eloquent blog post, but this information needs to get out there, and I intend to do my part.

The main focus was the dismantling of Wake County Schools' diversity policy, long part of the school district's widely acknowledged success. The current school board aims to move toward an assignment policy based on a neighborhood schools model. Controversy has ensued, enough that even Stephen Colbert picked up the story.

In theory, I love the idea of neighborhood schools. But, as one presenter commented at the conference, until our neighborhoods are themselves more racially and socioeconomically integrated, neighborhood schools means segregation. And, as Dr. Barber put it, separate never has been and never will be equal.

Busing was (and is) demonized as the source of all evil in public education—but the stats show the average bus ride in Wake County is 17 minutes, and here's an article my dad wrote about busing in 2002 in The Charlotte Observer. Busing is not the problem.

I learned a lot at this conference. It hit home for me because I am the product of 13 years of public education in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS). In much of the statistics arguing against the Wake County school board's proposed actions, CMS has been used as a negative example of the effects of neighborhood schools.

I remember when CMS instated the current choice program. Since then, schools have moved toward resegregation; just a year after the move to neighborhood schools, the number of high-poverty schools in the district jumped from 39 to 49. Now, that number is 83—nearly half the schools in CMS. Many high-poverty schools have closed. The middle class doesn't seem to care.

As a high school student when this started, I was hardly aware of the implications; as a magnet student, it didn't really affect me. Thankfully, some Wake County teenagers are aware; several have even been arrested, including Seth Keel (pictured). There is an organization called NC H.E.A.T. (Heroes Emerging Among Teens) that have taken this issue to heart. These are some brave young people.

A major talking point for folks opposed to the work of John Tedesco and the current Wake County School board is that integrated schools benefit socioeconomically disadvantaged kids AND the middle class. In one of the many educational presentations available on the website of Great Schools in Wake, a study conducted in a few CMS schools produced this chart—which features the high school I attended for 9th and 10th grade, North Meck:

Yikes. The idea is that Garinger and Independence, as more diverse schools than North Meck, provide better learning environments and help students not only to succeed academically and career-wise but also to make life choices that promote diversity in their communities at large.

The NAACP, NC H.E.A.T. and a Wake County teen have lodged a Title VI complaint against the Wake County School board claiming intentionally discriminatory school reassignments, the discriminatory impact of those assignments, and discriminatory school discipline. You can learn more about the complaint here.

As we heard from various speakers on April 9, I sat next to a friend from my church in Durham. She is African-American and grew up in segregated schools. At one point, she said to me that as a child of segregated schools, she never thought she would still be fighting this battle today.

I haven't yet said how my faith plays into this. It's really quite simple: 1 Corinthians 12:26 says, "²⁶If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it." When we willfully abandon our neighbors—for, even if they don't live on the right side of the tracks, they are our neighbors, our brothers, our sisters—to injustice and discrimination, we violate the body of Christ.

John Wesley said, "The world is my parish"; protesters declare, "Wake County is my neighborhood!" Even if you don't live in Wake County (I don't), it is your neighborhood. You can take a small step in supporting the diversity policy in Wake County Schools by signing on to the NC Council of Churches' petition here.

19 arrested as protesters claim school plan would resegregate system (Raleigh, 7/21/10)
Neighborhood Schools in Charlotte: Ten Years Later (Charlotte, 2/7/11)
Wake schools corrects some data in civil rights probe (Raleigh, 4/14/11)
N.C. plan a step back toward segregation (Raleigh, 4/20/11)