As a historian of race, civil rights, and education, I can sadly predict the response of white, ostensibly progressive New Yorkers to proposed school desegregation plans. Expect a lot of anger couched (nearly always) in race neutral language.
Let's begin with the guiding assumption--ignorant but widely held--that "ability" tests are inherently race-neutral, and that measures of "giftedness" and "talent" are objective and fair...even when parents pay for test prep for little kids.
With that in mind expect one or more of the following arguments...
-- "This will irreparably harm [my] gifted children."
--"I can't sacrifice my kid's education for an experiment."
"Eliminating gifted and talented classes will drag down the quality of education."
"This is so unfair... a) to gifted children who need a highly stimulating curriculum or b) those to kids who aren't prepared for an academically challenging curriculum." (The feint of caring for the interests of kids unlike your own).
"Everyone who can will flee to the suburbs." (Also the corollary from white suburbanites who crow "Thank god we moved to Scarsdale/New Canaan/Chappaqua when we did.")
"Real estate values in the city will drop."
All of these are based on some bedrock beliefs (masked by "colorblind" language)that parents who pay a premium in real estate prices to send their kids to a "good" school (with "gifted" and "talented" classes) deserve the best...
That the presence of a large number of white, "gifted" students is evidence of a school's success and, vice versa, that schools with large populations of non-white students are inherently "failing"
That a neighborhood or a city's desirability is measured by a large presence of white people living in places with ever-escalating property values
At core, parents accept that there's something natural and inevitable about the sorting of students by ability, the sorting of schools by the race of their student bodies, and the sorting of school attendance zones and districts by socio-economic status and property values.
This is, in other words, a story about how whites naturalize racial inequality without burning crosses, reading white supremacist literature, and dropping the n-word.
Go no further for an explanation of why New York remains at the top of the list of most-racially segregated school systems in the United States.
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