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?

[dead0man]

I'd suggest moving away from Memphis/the South.  Any mid sized city west of St.Louis and north of Dallas should be an ass ton better than Memphis.

[tik 🪀✨]

Funny, no thoughts on what the daughter wants (not that she knows what's best of course!!)

I know you're just itching to burst into a diatribe against them liberals, but this is racist. Yes, many groups of people are more than happy to fulfill their stereotypes, but that doesn't mean it will happen. Let the girl stay in the school if she feels fine there and if there aren't any incidences. I'm sure they can think of a less openly bigoted reason to bother leaving. Christ.

ATTN: htmldon would like to inform you that this is the real world.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I'd suggest moving away from Memphis/the South.  Any mid sized city west of St.Louis and north of Dallas should be an ass ton better than Memphis.

     I live in San Francisco. It's about 9% black. Los Angeles is fine too, provided you stay out of East or South Central L.A.. Same goes for Oakland provided you stay in the hills. I don't know enough about San Jose to comment.

     That's that for your major options in the Golden State.

[opebo]

Private school is probably the best solution.   Your friend won't be able to get rid of their old house very easily in the currently collapsed housing market, so moving isn't a good option.

[minionofmidas]

Thanks to liberal permissiveness, the hip-hop culture that objectifies women, promotes violence, and denigrates education has become pervasive in the black community. 

LMFAO.

[opebo]

Thanks to liberal permissiveness, the hip-hop culture that objectifies women, promotes violence, and denigrates education has become pervasive in the black community. 

LMFAO.

Yes, a more accurate explanation of why her classmates would abuse this poor lone whitey is that they themselves have been abused, impoverished, etc., by a group of which she is in a sense a member.

[dead0man]

That is quite likely true, but that doesn't mean the little girl needs to be punished for it.  Punish the guilty (when and where you can and as hard as the law allows), but don't use little girls as a surrogate.

[phk]

I'd suggest moving away from Memphis/the South.  Any mid sized city west of St.Louis and north of Dallas should be an ass ton better than Memphis.

     I live in San Francisco. It's about 9% black. Los Angeles is fine too, provided you stay out of East or South Central L.A.. Same goes for Oakland provided you stay in the hills. I don't know enough about San Jose to comment.

     That's that for your major options in the Golden State.

San Diego is 8% Black, its probably also unaffordable.

I vote for "Move anywhere you have to to get her into a better public school".

[Eraserhead]

We get that you dislike blacks, htmldon. I'm not sure we needed a big rant about it.

Anyway, as others have said, it should really be up to the girl. If she isn't comfortable because she feels threatened then taking her out of school is reasonable of course. On the other hand, it could be a good experience if she's open to it.

Some of my fondest memories come from riding an almost all black bus through the city over here as a kid. The people were so welcoming. It was a lot better than all of the majority white buses I rode as a kid, since I often ended up in fights on them.

Anyway, different people have different experiences. There's no need for a knee jerk reaction here.

[Sbane]

I like how the diatribe is all against blacks and their "culture", while you do not even mention how the school is performing. If it is comparable to other schools, moving her out of there would be nothing other than RACIST. Now if they want to escape the blackies just move out here to california, that is if they don't hate hispanics as well.

[Hash]

OMG IN RIYADH I WAS IN A CLASS WITH DA ARAB KIDZ! OH THE HORROR!

[MODU]

Not being familiar with Shelby County, I cannot say if the "all black" school is full of punks or very intelligent kids.  Looking at the crime statistics for the county, they had in any given week:  12 rapes, 3 murders, 102 cases of assault, and so on.  Sounds like your generic county.  It probably isn't a bad thing that she is in this class, but if her parents are concerned by the influence others are having on their child (which would require a lot of open conversation with the kid, as well as paying attention to her homework habits/grades), and if they have the financial flexibility to relocate the child to another school, then that is their prerogative. 

Just because a class is made up of only one demographic doesn't automatically make it bad.  It could be the most diverse class around, but if they are all gang members, is it any better?  Of course not.  So I wouldn't jump to any conclusions on here without knowing more about the make-up of the class itself.

[DownWithTheLeft]

Why is absurd that a student wouldn't want to go to an "all-gansta" class.   This has nothing to do with black or white really, I would never allow my kid to go to a public school in the ghetto no matter what the race.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A fascinating thread, but not, I think, in the way that the original poster thought it would be. Actually, it's many of the later posts that are most interesting. Aha.

[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

[John Dibble]

1. Is the school performing well? If not, I'd leave regardless of race issues.
2. How are the other kids actually treating her? Not how you worry they might be, the actual situation. If it is bad, certainly they need to get her out, but if it isn't then they need to reconsider.
3. What is the actual culture in the classroom? I know the culture you are speaking of, but it's not a universal one and even if it is present there is the matter of degree. Some of my best friends during my school years were black and were not really part of that culture.

[Verily]

When I was a little kid, I went to the local public schools, which at the time and today are almost entirely black and Hispanic. (Today they are much more Hispanic than when I was there; at the time they were probably 80% black and 15% Hispanic.) I did leave for a private school, although that was because, by fourth grade, I was taking half of my classes with the fifth graders, and busing between the elementary and middle schools during the day was ridiculous (although the principal proposed it to get my brother and I to stay). While I wasn't exactly a happy kid at the time, I got into fights mostly because I was smart, which is pretty typical of elementary school. Had I been a girl (and all of the other kids who really worked hard were, save my brother), it would have been basically a no-stress situation. I know people who continued at the public schools thereafter, and they all enjoyed themselves without being "ghetto" (including friends who were white or Asian).

There certainly is a "ghetto culture", but it is not by an means all-pervasive even among blacks, and I have never noticed it to be more misogynist than "normal culture", probably less so than the private school I ended up attending. There is basically nothing but racism informing the decision to remove their daughter from the school; they are not even willing to make an attempt to see whether she would be happy. Of course, the terrible black people who will mistreat her have probably already been described to her by her parents, so she's unlikely to be happy simply because she knows she's expected to be unhappy. And that is the real tragedy of this story: the continuation of that expectation.

[Torie]

1. Is the school performing well? If not, I'd leave regardless of race issues.
2. How are the other kids actually treating her? Not how you worry they might be, the actual situation. If it is bad, certainly they need to get her out, but if it isn't then they need to reconsider.
3. What is the actual culture in the classroom? I know the culture you are speaking of, but it's not a universal one and even if it is present there is the matter of degree. Some of my best friends during my school years were black and were not really part of that culture.

Exactly. We don't have enough facts, and we don't know the personality of the child. That said, I think few parents would send their child to such a school, unless the kids were pretty high up on the social economic class scale, and the quality of the education was otherwise acceptable.

[Silent Hunter]

Unless there's clear evidence of racist abuse going on, there's no reason to move her.

[JohnFKennedy]

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

Don, from my understanding of that article, 'acting white' is a term applied to black people who are perceived to be acting in a manner typical of white people. Is that not simply the reverse of your suggestion that if your friends leave their child in the school she will start referring to herself as 'hoe' and act in other characteristically 'black' ways. Surely this applies both ways?

[memphis]

What school is it? Most Shelby County Schools are typical suburban schools, well run, and not at all ghetto. The "problem" has been created by all the white parents boycotting the school. 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. 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.

[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.

[opebo]

That is quite likely true, but that doesn't mean the little girl needs to be punished for it.  Punish the guilty (when and where you can and as hard as the law allows), but don't use little girls as a surrogate.

Blacks can't 'punish the guilty' deadman, as they have no power.  Heck even poor whites can't punish the ones who did it too them.   Anyway blacks typically only have the opportunity to return the favor to the abolute lowest of the ruling race - little poor kids and white males in prison.

Just because a class is made up of only one demographic doesn't automatically make it bad. 

Come on, lets be serious here - this demographic has been so subjugated into poverty and despair that being stuck there with them is almost certainly going to be a negative.

[DownWithTheLeft]

When I was a little kid, I went to the local public schools, which at the time and today are almost entirely black and Hispanic. (Today they are much more Hispanic than when I was there; at the time they were probably 80% black and 15% Hispanic.) I did leave for a private school, although that was because, by fourth grade, I was taking half of my classes with the fifth graders, and busing between the elementary and middle schools during the day was ridiculous (although the principal proposed it to get my brother and I to stay). While I wasn't exactly a happy kid at the time, I got into fights mostly because I was smart, which is pretty typical of elementary school. Had I been a girl (and all of the other kids who really worked hard were, save my brother), it would have been basically a no-stress situation. I know people who continued at the public schools thereafter, and they all enjoyed themselves without being "ghetto" (including friends who were white or Asian).

There certainly is a "ghetto culture", but it is not by an means all-pervasive even among blacks, and I have never noticed it to be more misogynist than "normal culture", probably less so than the private school I ended up attending. There is basically nothing but racism informing the decision to remove their daughter from the school; they are not even willing to make an attempt to see whether she would be happy. Of course, the terrible black people who will mistreat her have probably already been described to her by her parents, so she's unlikely to be happy simply because she knows she's expected to be unhappy. And that is the real tragedy of this story: the continuation of that expectation.

It doesn't sound like this place is comparable to Englewood