My friend's daughter has been placed in an all-black class, What should they do?

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

The other day a friend of mine told me about their daughter in Shelby County schools.  She has just been placed in a school where she is the only white girl in her class.

The neighborhood they live in is mostly white, but black kids are bused in from lord knows where - and apparently the white families have evacuated moved.

They filled out the appropriate paperwork pleading with the school system to let their daughter move to another school.  Request denied.

Why wouldn’t they want their daughter to be the only white girl in her class?  Are they crazy racist bigot homopho.. (insert liberal claptrap here)?  No, they aren’t.   In fact, their other daughter is in a class at another school that is multi-racial, and they have no problems with that.

Those of you with red avatars please lower your nose a bit and try to understand real-life problems that have to be dealt with.  Thanks to liberal permissiveness, the hip-hop culture that objectifies women, promotes violence, and denigrates education has become pervasive in the black community.  Can you blame a white parent for wanting to remove their child from that cultural viewpoint any more or less than a black parent who wants their child to go to a white school also to avoid that cultural flaw?

These fears are based on real-life experiences, not textbook theory studied at an ivy league University.  I have two personal friends who were one of few whites at a school and both had terrible experiences.  One was a white girl at a Fayette Co. high school.  She was in fights almost every day and she was evacuated to a private school to graduate.  Another friend went to Kingsbury and was always displaying injuries that he received at the hands of black classmates.

So tell me liberal friend, is this what you would want for your daughter?

Keeping her in that school is simply not an option, as they care about their daughter.

They are trying to place their house on the market and are willing to move anywhere it takes to get into a different school.  (probably Arlington, hoping that the schools there are good long enough to get their kids through high school)

Another option they checked into was surrendering custody of their child to a grandparent who lives in a better school zone.  They would have done this, but it takes over a year to complete and there are apparently many parents who are taking this route already.

It's not an option in this case, but some parents have even found relatives in Desoto county, MS, and found ways to register their children for school there.  Unfortrunately, Desoto county now watches out for kids being driven away from school in cars with TN license plates and has cracked down on the practice.

They can’t afford it themselves, but they could put some family money together and send their daughter to a private school, joining the hordes of other white families who have had to seek refuge there.  Tuition starts at $5000/yr.


I've often criticized the prevalent attitude of white Memphians of believing that you can just move away from your problems and they will go away.  White Memphians moved to South Memphis, then to New South Memphis, then to Whitehaven, then to Fox Meadows, then to Hickory Hill, then to Cordova.  Affluent and middle-class blacks followed them, trying to move away from the same crime problems that caused the whites to move.  Then the lower-class blacks and the criminal parasites followed them, forcing the whites to move, and the cycle continues.

Our county is on the verge of bankruptcy partially due to the expenditure of resources on citizens that have to keep moving or may have even departed our county and left those of us poor souls who remain with the $3 Billion bill.

If people have to keep moving to guarantee their safety, then there is no way for them to put down roots and set up stable and cohesive neighborhoods.

The “well-intentioned” policy of forced school busing, of the most misguided and destructive ideas ever perpetrated on a community, caused immediate consequences for children and families in Memphis.  Within just a year or so, new private schools opened their doors and thousands of white children were removed from the public schools.

Two generations of white kids in Memphis have now mostly been educated outside the public school system.  In the name of integrating public schools, they are now more segregated than in the days when George Wallace was standing on the courthouse steps.  He wanted “Segregation forever”, and thanks to busing, he got exactly that.

By the 1990’s when I was going to school, the only white kids in Memphis who weren’t in private or Catholic schools were the ones affluent and fortunate enough to be in the White Station zone.  (There were also white enclaves at Ridgeway and Craigmont, though I remember a white student being moved from Craigmont to my private school in the middle of 7th grade as it had gotten so bad there)

Other families moved out of Memphis and into outer Shelby County which is in a different school system – and that brings us back to the origin of this story.

So what should this family do?

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Racist?
No, this is racist.  And liberals don't want to deal with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acting_white

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Most Shelby County Schools are typical suburban schools, well run, and not at all ghetto.

Today they are.  But if busing is forced on these schools, people will move, neighborhoods will fail, and schools will suffer - just as they have for the last thirty years.

The "problem" has been created by all the white parents boycotting the school.

Agreed, but what are you going to do about it?  You can't change behavior just by forcing another behavior on people.

I went to Memphis City Schools (much more inner city than Shelby County Schools) and all my schools were diverse (and my neighborhood very stable) because people didn't run away.

Other than White Station, would you send your children to any other Memphis high school now?

I understand not wanting to be the only white kid, but you're definately making a lot of presumptions about black kids, foremost of which is that they're all "gangsta." The ones in SCS are not exactly Tupac.

No, most aren't like that at all.  However, as I stated, the two friends that I have that were the only whites at their respective schools often faced abuse and violence.  I also stated above that the family's other daughter goes to a mixed-race school and their experience is excellent.

In theory, Judge Donald's ruling that messed up SCS' plan to make Southwind a 88% black school was a good thing.  Making the other schools more diverse would help keep situations where a child is the only white in a class from happening.  Problem is that when you bus kids in from other neighborhoods into an existing school, the parents that have the ability will seek alternatives.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

My advice is to consider an African American girl in a class of all whites, determine your answer to that, and choose the same answer for this situation.

My advice to you is to consider what you would do if your child were zoned into the 'worst' school in Nashville/Davidson County and you were deined a request to move your child to another school.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

My advice is to consider an African American girl in a class of all whites, determine your answer to that, and choose the same answer for this situation.

My advice to you is to consider what you would do if your child were zoned into the 'worst' school in Nashville/Davidson County and you were deined a request to move your child to another school.

So this school that your relative is going to, is it one of the worst in Memphis? Are you sure its not just middle class blacks?

So should this family wait three years (approximate amount of time it takes for the few middle class blacks there are to evacuate and follow the whites east) then leave?

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

My thanks to those who have tried to discuss the circumstances rationally instead of just screaming "racist" whenever you try to share an honest opinion on a subject.

Bear in mind if this child is the "last" black child in their class, that means that a whole lot of other parents moved their kids out first once the blacks started coming in.

I am trying to get you, especially the non-southerners out there, to understand how the process of busing, white flight, and black flight have systematically destroyed Memphis (and now Shelby County) neighborhoods.   Remember that there are plenty of "liberal", Obama-voting whites in this town whose kids go to private schools so that they don't have to grow up culturally accustomed to gangs and violence.  Are they racist too?

The cycle only stops if something is done to stabilize the neighborhoods and schools.  Anti-busing advocates used to have signs that said "Hapiness is a Neighborhood School" and they were right.   If black neigborhoods were more stable, then more could be done to combat crime and increase black homeownership.  If white neighborhoods were more stable, then affluent whites would stop constantly moving and taking their property tax revenue over the county or state lines. 

So why do they feel the need to prevent black students from going to their schools? Here in California I think family income matters much more than race as to how a school district will perform.

Certainly income matters 100 times more than race, as race is not an indicator of intelliegence or educational excellence.  Culture, however, matters more than income. 

The problem here is the cycle.  I don't know the parents of the black children at this school - and it is certaily possible that they are relatively affluent.  However, affluent black flight follows white flight, and the crime/poverty/dependence culture follows black flight.   In every school where the whites have left, it's not long before the school goes in the toilet.