SEGREGATE THIS: A demographic message for Toto and Vox!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 18, 2018

Part 3—We're not in 1968 any more:
Long ago and far away—actually, it was in the spring of 2011—we were told to read a story to a kindergarten class in Durham, North Carolina.

Teacher made us do it! Frankly, it was pretty scary. That crowd wasn't tough, but they were young. We'd never done that before.

In the front row sat one of the two little girls in the class who weren't yet speaking English. Other little girls who were bilingual—that included the delightful child, now much older, who'd brought us to visit her class—had scrambled over desks and chairs to whisper in those little girls' ears, helping them process various events in the day's first hour.

Those kids were eager to help. But we remember the face on the little girl in the front row who wasn't yet speaking English. Her face told a very old story:

It's no fun to be the 6-year-old who isn't yet speaking the language.

(To listen to a similar story about Anne Frank's first day in kindergarten, you can just click here. Her friend wasn't speaking Dutch yet. Truly, YouTube is powerful.)

We don't know the family history of that little girl in Durham. We don't know if she was born in the U.S., or if she'd recently arrived from somewhere else.

That said, the presence of those little girls tells part of a major story about our nation's changing demographics—more specifically, about the changing demographics of our student population.

In our view, it's a beautiful story. For the record, there is no law which says that everyone else has to agree, or which says that our judgments are right.

That said, the story is a major story about America's public schools. It was disappeared by Alvin Chang in his recent report for Vox about the alleged "resegregation" of those public schools.

The story is hugely relevant to the accurate factual claims around which Chang builds his highly fraught tale. But, despite its huge relevance, it went completely unmentioned by Chang. So these things tend to go.

To what demographic change do we refer? Before we answer that question, let's get clear about the accurate factual claim around which Chang based his fraught report.

For the third straight day, we present the highly fraught claims which anchor Chang's piece. The text shown below is perhaps a bit murky. But the graphic which appears beneath it helps us see what Chang means by his claims:
CHANG (1/8/18): The result is that schools today are re-segregating. In fact, schools in the South are as segregated now as they were about 50 years ago, not long after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.

Headline on graphic:

Percentage of black students in the South who attend schools that are at least 50 percent white
Is it true? Are schools in the South really "as segregated now as they were about 50 years ago," in 1968?

Because of that fraught term—"segregated"—that claim packs a punch. Beneath the claim, within that graphic, we see what Chang means by that claim.

As Chang notes, his graphic comes from Professor Orfield at UCLA (click here, see page 90. According to the graphic, 23 percent of black kids in the South were attending schools which were "at least 50 percent white" in 2011.

According to that graphic, the number had been the same in 1968. In that year, as in 2011, 23 percent of black kids in the South were attending such schools.

In the meantime, it hadn't been thus. As of the late 1980s, 44 percent of black kids in the South were attending such schools, according to the graphic Chang correctly attributes to Orfield. For better or worse, the percentage steadily dropped after that.

According to Chang, this means that our schools are "resegregating." In his report, he rather clearly attributes this change to deliberate action by school districts, who allegedly gerrymander their school attendance zones to heighten racial imbalance.

Do these claims make sense? They quickly make a lot less sense if you consider some information in Professor Orfield's report—information Chang blew past and disappeared.

For the record, Professor Orfield is the industry leader in claims of "resegregation." It's a wonderfully exciting claim, one which thrills us liberals every time.

We aren't big fans of Orfield's choice of language. But consider the information he provides in the iconic report to which Chang has linked, from which he has taken his graphic.

Why are so many fewer black kids attending white-majority schools? As is frequently the case, there may be more than one (demonic) reason. But Orfield includes the demographic information which Chang disappeared.

How has America's student population changed down through the years? In his iconic report, Orfield's discussion of that matter starts early, on page 6.

How has our student population changed? Under the heading included below, Orfield starts laying it out:
ORFIELD (2011): Changing Nature of Public School Enrollment

At the peak of the Civil Rights era, the U.S. was still a nation with a large white majority,
reaching the end of a massive baby boom, and at a historically low point in immigration...Though black population was growing rapidly, it was only the beginning of a fundamental social transformation that included the first great immigration of nonwhites in U.S. history, which followed the l965 passage of immigration reform laws.

In little more than four decades, enrollment trends in the nation’s schools (between l968 and 2011) show a 28% decline in white enrollment, a 19% increase in the black enrollment, and an almost unbelievable 495% percent increase in the number of Latino students...White enrollment was almost four times the combined black and Latino enrollment in l968, but only about a fifth bigger in 2011.
In that passage, Orfield describes "a fundamental social transformation;" he says it produced a massive change in student demographics. As he continues on page 7, Orfield describes the extent of the change as of 2011:
ORFIELD (continuing directly): The changes occurring throughout in the nation appear in even more dramatic form in some of its regions. By far the most populous regions of the country, where the great bulk of American growth is concentrated, are the South and the West. For generations, the growth of the country has been focused on these Sunbelt areas. Both of these regions now have substantial majorities of “minority” students. The West has only 40% white students and the South only 45%.
As of 2011, only 45 percent of public school students in the South were "white!" You may already have discerned what this does to Chang's presentation, but let's record the passage on page 9 where Orfield states the obvious:
ORFIELD: Given the vast changes in U.S. school enrollment, even if there were a perfectly even distribution of students from all racial groups, there would still be a decline in contact by students of other races with whites, because the share of the total who are white has declined substantially.
Duh. Now let's think about the harrowing metric Chang employs as he discusses "resegregation."

Laggards, let's stop and think. Even in 2011, only 45 percent of public school students in the South were white!

Suppose you'd waved a magic wand and created a world in which every public school in the South matched the region's overall demographic. In that case, no black students in the South—zero, none—would have been attending schools which were "at least 50 percent white."

Every black kid would have been in a school which was 45 percent white. According to Chang's harrowing lexicon, they'd all have been victims of "resegregation." The percentage of black kids on that graphic would have dropped to zero percent!

Does this mean that no school district is drawing attendance lines with the goal of increasing racial imbalance? No, it doesn't mean that.

It does mean that at least one other major cause explains Chang's thrilling graphic. At least in some substantial part, fewer black kids are in white-majority schools because there are many fewer white kids in the public schools, exactly as Orfield said:

"Given the vast changes in U.S. school enrollment, even if there were a perfectly even distribution of students from all racial groups, there would still be a decline in contact by students of other races with whites..."

This isn't hard to grasp. But we progressives love to put our thumbs on the scales when dealing with topics like this. This produce scary representations which establish the evil of Everyone Else and the great moral glory of Us.

Dearest darlings, here's the news—it's no longer 1968! Our student demographic has massively changed in the past fifty years. That change includes the two adorable little girls who sat in that kindergarten class in Durham, not yet speaking the language.

Math is hard, but the math works out like this. You can't produce a string of majority-white public schools if you don't have a majority gaggle of white kids to begin with!

Meanwhile, if you say that every other type of school is part of "resegregation," then you're going to find a whole lot of "resegregation" out there! This is what Chang and Vox have done. We think it's a horrible but fully typical look.

Before we quit for the day, consider a few more statistics. How much has the student population changed just since the late 1980s, when 44 percent of black kids in the South were in majority-white schools?

We can't give you an exact figure, but it has changed a lot! According to the NCES, these were the numbers in the Naep's Grade 4 math tests in two relevant years:
Students tested, all U.S. schools
Grade 4 math test, Naep

1992:

White kids: 72 percent
Black kids: 18 percent
Hispanic kids: 7 percent
Asian-American kids: 3 percent

2011:
White kids: 52 percent
Black kids: 16 percent
Hispanic kids: 24 percent
Asian-American kids: 5 percent
Over those nineteen years, white kids moved from 72 percent of the student population down to 52 percent. Three years later, the number of "minority" kids passed the number of "white" kids for the first time. You can read about it here.

Almost surely, you'll have fewer majority-white schools if you lack a majority of whites! Meanwhile, how about the Durham Public Schools? According to the system's web site, its current charges break down like this:
Student population, Durham Public Schools
African-American: 46.7%
Hispanic/Latino: 30.1%
White: 18.6%
Multiracial: 2.8%
Asian: 2.3%
How many schools which are "at least 50 percent white" can that school system produce? According to Chang's report, the whole darn system may be "segregated!" No gerrymandered zones need apply!

For various reasons, progressives often say that black kids are better off in majority-white schools. We also like to render exciting claims about the horrors of modern-day "segregation."

Is anyone more reliably faux than we are? We love "the browning of America," hate the schools it gives us.

That school in Durham struck us as a joy. To Chang, it's "segregated."

Tomorrow: In response to Chang's report, the Times does Tuscaloosa

11 comments:

  1. To what extent is the white attendance declining because white students are going to private schools? That needs to be discussed or it undermines Somerby’s argument that this is all the result of shifting demographics and not racism.

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  2. Why do you suppose the percentage of white students in Southern public schools is 44%, when, for example, in Alabama, whites make up 75% of the state's population?
    It seems legitimate to ask if diversity in public schools is a good thing, and if they are now more or less diverse than before. It seems to me a legitimate inquiry to track the effects of the Brown decision. Southern schools were after all 100% segregated, and presumably that was a bad thing that stemmed from, oh I don't know, racism.
    Whatever point Somerby tries to make is undermined by his snarky bullshit. And his point is always and only that progressives/liberals are hypocritical self-serving elitists. Whatever the topic, that is the narrative that Somerby promotes. He is incapable of making even a valid point without impugning the motives of a large group of people, including some of his own readers who are genuine in their search for the truth. But Somerby goes ahead and shits on them.

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    1. Dave the Guitar PlayerJanuary 18, 2018 at 12:44 PM

      Bob is not talking about you (necessarily). Chang is saying the reason that there are so few black students in schools with at least 50% white students is due to "resegregation", even though the facts say that white students make up less than 50% of public school students in the South. Bob is pointing out that Chang must either not know what he is talking about (doesn't know the facts), doesn't care what the facts are and is just repeating what he has heard or is deliberately trying to mislead his readers. All of these conditions are worth criticism. Since we hear so much about of this kind of "analysis" from the progressive/liberal media (which is what Bob is criticizing), there is apparently good reason to suggest that many (in the media) are likely self-serving elitists. So, unless you are in the media and are repeating these types of memes, Bob is not talking about you personally. I do hope that you are not distributing this type of bad analysis yourself.

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    2. I think the problem in '63 was schools that were 100% white and schools 100% black, and the difference in money and resources provided.

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  3. "This isn't hard to grasp. But we progressives love to put our thumbs on the scales when dealing with topics like this. This produce scary representations which establish the evil of Everyone Else and the great moral glory of Us."

    By "putting our thumbs on the scales", do you mean "having an opinion about the issue?"

    Is there a diversity of opinion amongst liberals about this and other issues? Not according to Somerby, who seems to view liberal thought as homogeneous, or "zombie-like", a term he has actually used. He of course picks out the examples he feels best illustrate this, a practice known as "putting one's thumb on the scales."

    And Somerby needs to quit saying "we progressives". There isn't much evidence he belongs in that group.

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    1. Dave the Guitar PlayerJanuary 18, 2018 at 12:47 PM

      You can have your own opinion. You cannot have your own facts. Journalism should only traffic in facts and not opinions.

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  4. Those demographic shifts would be referred to as a genocide if the whites in question were instead some remote Amazonian tribe. But, of course, the same tribe responsible for it also controls our media.

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  5. So the whites are sending their children to private schools. They still have to pay the school district part of their property tax. I thought the problem with segregation was rich neighborhoods had more money so the schools were better. And now we find out it is not their money that is needed but the white children to surround the black child that helps the black child learn? In what world is this not horribly racist?

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  6. “Is anyone more reliably faux than we are? We love "the browning of America," hate the schools it gives us.”

    Not sure who the “we” is when it comes to the browning of America, I assume it’s Bob, but count me in.

    The demographic of this continent was entirely brown until Whitey either drove them almost to extinction, or drove them south so that we could have what manifest destiny determined what was rightfully ours. Yup, I’m a Whitey.

    Before the white man’s borders came into being, the entirety of North, Central and South America was brown. The phenotypic similarity between native “Americans” and their brethren north and south is rather striking. To me, the browning of America is a good thing, as Bob seems to imply. I see it from the point of historical justice. The pendulum between brown and white populations swings slowly, but anthropologically speaking, it’s natural. And boy, does Whitey hate that, much to my amusement.

    Too bad DeVos is in charge. The public schools will only get worse, no matter what the color of the students.

    LINK

    h/t to Nathan J at Current Affairs

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  7. It doesn't make much sense to include Hispanics in a story about segregation since there were never laws forcing them to attend segregated schools, therefore, they should be included in the white group not the black group.

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