5/21/21
We in the commentariat have leapt at covering police violence against Black citizens since George Floyd’s murder a year ago, but even if Floyd hadn’t been murdered, he still very likely would have died prematurely because of his race. There would have been no headlines, no protests, no speeches. But the average Black man in America lives about five fewer years than the average white man. A newborn Black boy in Washington, D.C., has a shorter life expectancy than a newborn boy in India. Since Floyd’s death, we’ve focused on racial inequities in the criminal justice system, and it has been easy for liberal white Americans — my tribe — to feel indignant and righteous while blaming others. But in some areas, such as an unjust education system, we are part of the problem. More broadly, we in the United States embrace a public education system based on local financing that ensures that poor kids go to poor schools and rich kids to rich schools. So anyone who can afford a typical home in Palo Alto, Calif., costing $3.2 million, can then send children to superb schools. And less than 2 percent of Palo Alto’s population is Black. Rucker Johnson, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that since 1988, American public schools have become more racially segregated.
Educated white Americans are now repulsed at the thought of systems of separate and unequal drinking fountains for Black Americans but seem comfortable with a Jim Crow financing system resulting in unequal schools for Black children — even though schools are far more consequential than water fountains. Similarly, we accept that elite universities offer legacy preferences that amount to affirmative action for highly privileged children, with bonus consideration for big donors (Lori Loughlin et. al.). If the 1973 Brown v. Board of Education case had went the other way, if a single justice had switched, America's schools would today be a fairer and more equitable system. Back in the early 2000s, white Americans sometimes said in polls that antiwhite bias was a bigger problem than anti-Black bias. That was delusional, and the tumult following the Floyd case increased the share of whites who acknowledge that discrimination persists. So the Floyd case may represent a milestone of progress in criminal justice. Now can America leverage this recognition of unfairness and inequity into other spheres, such as our still segregated education system?
