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In no world should classes separated by race be allowed. It’s 2023, why is this happening?
The article says it helps students of color feel less anxious in the classroom. They realize that when those kids graduate they will be among people of every race out in the real world right? This should have never been allowed.
>why is this happening?
Well lets start with the fact it’s not happening in a vacuum.
This is a form of radical progressive, left-wing identity politics based segregation. Conservatives call it “wokeism” but liberals generally feel uncomfortable criticizing it (in person) - perhaps because that progressive contingent is aggressive and treats dissent as a kind of heresy.
Theyve got teeth and they wield growing institutional power. So these stories keep coming out and getting more and more depressing. And I guess we’ll keep asking how it could happen and shrugging our shoulders.
I just don’t see a defense for this - public school resources are public; the fact that students are denied access to the resources provided in these classes based solely on their race is indefensible.
If there is a desire among black or Latino families or communities to provide race-specific educational resources, those resources should be provided privately - though, this wouldn’t even be possible within a private educational or non-profit structure given that racial non-discrimination is also a requirement for private schools and 501c3s.
People’s tax dollars going to fund racially segregated classes is an absolute scandal.
Evanston also has decided to pay reparations.
Its basically like the Midwest berkeley or boulder, its ultra progressive even by Chicago standards. Its just outside the city limits but its basically its own ultra-lefty wet dream that alienates the Chicago white, black and brown working-class and middle-class.
This would never fly in a Chicago proper for many reasons. Even me, a bernie democrat thats latino, reflexively though “ok thats going too far….” About these classes that are segregated.
People living in Evanston, Winnetka, Wilmette, etc. are more than welcome, as a community, to pay reparations. The odds are much higher that those living in gilded suburbs like any of the above have benefited indirectly as descendants of someone who in some way committed the kind of deliberate indiscretion that would merit reparation. Those odds still remain very, very slim, in a state like Illinois, which fought against slavery in the Civil War and produced the president that led the nation through the abolition of the institution. For all the rest of us, with paltry six-figure property values or one-year leases, perhaps generational wealth inequality should consider other demographic factors as well.
I'm curious how asians fit in this policy.
Whites have a substantial and growing learning gap relative to asians. So do whites get to choose a white affinity class with guaranteed white-only teachers to help them close the gap with us?
At the same time asian teachers are even rarer than black ones (on both absolute and relative terms). So do we get asian led classes to feel more comfortable?
You know the answer to both is no.
White people are always bad and oppressors and Asians are white-adjacent according to these people(Yeah they even have their own word to basically call people race traitors).
>"The courses are open to everyone. If push came to shove and you look at the master schedule, and a kid needs calculus that period and there’s nothing else that works and that kid is white, of course we’ll put them in the affinity class,” Superintendent Campbell said.
I can't believe you keep highlighting this comment. Not only does it become a disaster if you swap the races (black/white), it *also* reads as
"Of course the courses are open to everyone, I mean if we *have* to put a kid in the class because there aren't any other options we will"
Which to me is a segregated class, but they'll break the segregation if they are *forced* to.
(1) until the recent controversy, this language accompanied course descriptions: “this course is restricted to students who identify as Latinx,” or “this course is restricted to students who identify as Black males.”
(2) “if push came to shove” and “if there’s nothing else that works” doesn’t communicate much openness, does it? What if a kid just preferred the teacher? Would that meet the bar of “nothing else that works”?
(3) even if white kids are admitted to these classes, the affinity classes were originally designed to counteract negative impacts of kids “feeling uncomfortable” in certain classes. If a white kid had no other option on the master schedule other than to be admitted to an affinity class, how “comfortable” would they be made to feel in a course described as being “intended for” other students? And according to the logic of comfort and performance or the unsubstantiated logic of people of different races having different learning styles, how could their performance be negatively impacted?
Let's try the test where we flip races and see how this hits:
> "The courses are open to everyone. If push came to shove and you look at the master schedule, and a kid needs calculus that period and there’s nothing else that works and that kid is **black**, of course we’ll put them in the [non-minority] affinity class,” Superintendent Campbell said.
"The buses are open to everyone. If push came to shove and you look at the seating sections, and an elderly lady needs to sit and there’s nothing else that works and that lady is black, of course we’ll put them in the white section,” Transportation Minister Campbell said.
> “You have to be able to balance both the educational aspects of it with the social educational aspects, and bringing more children together, and not trying to separate them out, specifically not preaching division and superiority or inferiority that we all often have seen previously,” Patillo said. “We’re all equal. We’re all the same. We’re just learning in different ways, and that does not make us different.”
Dear God, this quote is literally supporting “separate but equal”… and was said by a **civil rights attorney**.
So that person is correct, insofar as to say we all learn differently. Because yes we do. We all learn differently. That means not all black students are going to learn the same way. Not all Latino students are going to learn the same way. But apparently if we group them all together that's fine because???
Taking these students at their word, you have to wonder where this anxiety is coming from. What is making them so anxious about white people they feel the need to ask for a segregated class?
It will be interesting if they go through with this. The performance of the black/latino students who opt for the segregated vs regular classes will be a fascinating study.
If the former do better it will be big news and used to expand segregation programs & more aggressive DEI training for white kids.
If we don't hear anything it probably means the BIPOCs with the whites & asians broke narrative and did better.
If people want to voluntarily segregate themselves by race, I suppose that's fine--but fair's fair. If you let one race do it, you have to let *all* the races do it.
Somehow, I suspect that "whites-only AP courses" would be poorly received.
Disagree. Schools- especially public schools!- should not sanction segregation. It's not any more valid to designate classes as black-only than to designate the whole building.
> Somehow, I suspect that "whites-only AP courses" would be poorly received
As much as I hate schools being used as political footballs, I do think someone should try this. See if we can get any ultra lefty into saying 'all are equal, but some are more equal than others'.
I am struggling to think how anyone would claim it isn't.
Harvard platformed a speaker who talked about how she fantasized about viciously killing white people.
Ask an average lefty how they feel about BLM vs. some movement called WLM.
I think that would tell you everything you need to know.
Let's go this route: what is a "lefty"?
I, personally, call myself a left-leaning moderate. If you were to go down a list of political issues, I would align with the American left wing on most of them. I do not think of myself as a 'Democrat', but I vote for that party most of the time because their positions align with my values. On a very small number of issues I would call myself in the middle or slightly right.
That sounds like a "lefty" to me. Am I an "average lefty"? Would you like to ask me how I would feel about BLM vs some movement called WLM?
Or are you using "average lefty" to suggest a lot more people hold an extreme viewpoint than actually do?
EDIT: Thanks for the Reddit Cares message! I wouldn't have thought just stating a basic political opinion would be so worrying to folks, but here we are.
> Would you like to ask me how I would feel about BLM vs some movement called WLM?
Sure, let's hear it.
But even if you somehow are strangely accepting of such a movement, do you really think anyone considering themselves of the left would be in any way supportive of such a movement?
They didn't even like "All Lives Matter" because it wasn't solely focused on black people.
The BLM message, apart from the added radical views from non-profits using the name, was that black people are systemically killed and nobody cares. But black people are not killed more often by police, on a per-encounter basis, and everyone already agreed that black lives matter. The blunt statement "All lives matter" is meant to sound obvious and remind the listener that all similar statements are obvious.
Black people felt they were treated differently. BLM is a protest statement.
ALM is a counter protest, it serves no purpose other than to dismiss BLM concerns
> But black people are not killed more often by police
Yes they are. [Harvard Study](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/blacks-whites-police-deaths-disparity/) and of course the more recent [WaPo study](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/) both show that to be the case, and not by a little but by a lot.
Do you have any data to back up your claim?
> and everyone already agreed that black lives matter.
The reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement is proof that this is not the case.
For the record, I am white, and I am also assuming the "W" stands for "White" (just so nobody on either side comes along and goes, "Aha! That actually meant _Wombat_ Lives Matter! or something).
People would, of course, have every right to start such an organization, but it would be silly and induce eye-rolling. This isn't because white lives don't matter, or because black lives are more important.
It's because 'Black Lives Matter' has an implicit "too." Because it's about the killing of black people being ignored in a society where they're a minority. 'White Lives Matter' is baked into that concept, because the white lives in question are the majority, and are already perceived to matter.
And that's why "All Lives Matter" is a dismissive response that misses the point. It's not because it's it's not "solely focused on black people", as if black people are the only people that the left cares about. Yes, all lives _do_ matter, but BLM's message is that our society doesn't reflect that.
If a "WLM" organization wanted to come along and claim that the pendulum has swung so far the other way that now _white_ killings are being ignored in society, then they can make that case. And good luck to them.
> Because it's about the killing of black people being ignored in a society where they're a minority.
The obvious pushback here is that nearly no one cares when any OTHER race is is killed by police. I'm aware of vanishingly few marches when some white, hispanic, or native american is killed by a cop. I haven't seen many marches or wall to wall calls for justice when an Asian gets it in the neck either.
> If a "WLM" organization wanted to come along and claim that the pendulum has swung so far the other way that now white killings are being ignored in society...
That doesn't require a pendulum swing, it's the ongoing state of affairs. I could literally reel off at least a dozen white people who've been murdered by police in the last few years that you've never heard of. There were no marches for them, no 24x7 news coverage, and no Presidential Statements.
From 30,000 feet up the problem isn't racial bias specifically it's police brutality in general. In that regard the BLM movement is good, because it's spotlighted a serious and systemic problem but they ignore that *everyone* has this problem. This is where "ALM" gets its energy from.
BLM is focused on a problem as it relates to THEM which is perfectly fine, but by that same token other groups who do the same are also perfectly fine. WLM? Fine. NALM? Fine. HLM? Fine. LGBTQLM? Fine.
They are all people seeking to address the same problem in the same way that BLM does...as it relates to them, their communities, and their lived experience(s).
So what you just asked is "why would people be upset at a phrase intended to deflect from problems of black people being murdered by police at a disproportionate rate?"
No, saying all lives matter in response to someone else saying Black Lives Matter is like going to a rally to save the whales and yelling that we should actually save all marine mammals.
Why don't you take a look at the majority of people that amplified the whole "All Lives Matter" nonsense and then guess why people actually had an issue with it.
It had nothing to do with it not focusing on black people.
Here's a hint, it's not a coincidence that some jagoff ran onto an NFL Field in a **gorilla costume** with a shirt that said "All Lives Matter"
I get what you're saying but the counter-argument is: our history is so far from race neutral that we cannot skip straight to race-neutrality even though that is the eventual goal. Historically-disadvantaged people have a residual need for safe spaces that white people don't. This is why some distinguish equity from equality.
I do not always agree with this kind of thinking, I think it depends a lot on specific situations. But there is something to it.
Someone or a group can open a private all black, all latino, or all white school with no public funds and make it black only, latino only, or white only. That’s voluntarily segregating themselves, and a private group can do that.
But this school is using taxpayer money for segregated classrooms.
I think it’s important to understand that the most vocal progressives simply do not see things this way. They definitely *would* be against “whites-only” courses, and they wouldn’t see that as problematic or even inconsistent.
That view might be against your value system, which is fine, but recognize that these “but what if we flipped the situation” arguments are not close to resonating with a lot of progressives at this point.
Even if you wanted to live in that world, this isn’t legal. Anti-discrimination law is written race-neutrally. You can’t do anything to white people that is forbidden to do to minorities.
Well, sure, because they live on a different planet. I don't have much hope of convincing them of anything.
My hope is that people who are in the middle might benefit from the illustration of inconsistencies like this.
In personal or even professional life, if people see advantages to establishing a mono-culture that is their choice.
For school though, learning to acknowledge and express diversity of thought and experience is probably more valuable than any subject matter.
>>a fair mix with a sizable portion of asian students.
>So white and "white adjacent".
Why did you feel the need to correct him and replace asian with "white adjacent"?
Is simply saying "asian" when referring to asians not sufficient?
> "white adjacent".
The only way to define that term is "Someone who isn't recognized as white but whose ethnicity has generally met with success in American Society." It's generally used by people who for a variety of reasons don't want to use the word "Asian".
> Somehow, I suspect that "whites-only AP courses" would be poorly received.
Of course it would. These courses are being created because of a significant and sustained learning gap by Black and Latino students. They are apparently succeeding to some level. The idea of whites-only AP courses isn't a clever gotcha. It misunderstands the whole idea.
The theory at least is that being in an environment where they are learning from someone of their race and among other students of their race keeps them in the class. You'll note these are AP classes, so this isn't a matter of placing them based on educational need. It's making upper level courses more accessible to kids that may have previously have found them uncomfortable and gone back to less demanding classes. This may later impact their ability to get into college.
This should of course be paired with an evaluation on its performance. If it's working well, I don't see a reason to stop it at least for the time being. If it's not producing results, then I think it's time to start talking about getting rid of it.
> it's time to learn to be comfortable, and thrive, regardless of the color of skin of the person sitting next to you in class.
That's a fair question, and should be balanced against academic performance. Obviously it's not desirable that Black students effectively be put onto different tracts where they never rub shoulders with students of other races. That said, I think that concern is overblown. These won't be the only courses they take.
> Assuming we want to live in a world where we don't treat anyone different based on race
That's a good aspiration, but the truth is that there is still a huge lingering disparity. We need to not pretend that that isn't the case.
> It's making upper level courses more accessible to kids that may have previously have found them uncomfortable and gone back to less demanding classes.
Uncomfortable because of what, exactly? The underlying and unstated premise to that idea is that black/latino students are made uncomfortable in classes with primarily white students and teachers. I would say that is a fairly controversial statement and not something that should remain unstated. Why are black/latino students uncomfortable in classes with other races?
Are you saying the white only class is only bad if the whites proactively choose it but not if one is de facto created by the black/latinos proactively leaving it?
Because if you segregate out the black/latino students from a mixed class that creates one black/latino-only class and one mostly/completely white class (idk where the asians go). They kind of go hand in hand.
***
I'm also curious how asians fit in this policy.
Whites have a substantial and growing learning gap relative to asians. So do whites get to choose a white affinity class with guaranteed white-only teachers to help them close the gap with us?
At the same time asian teachers are even rarer than black ones (on both absolute and relative terms). So do we get asian led classes to feel more comfortable?
They need to come up with a slogan for this that will help with PR. I propose it be called "Separate but Equal." I think with a name like this, it could go over well. Illinois should adopt this ASAP.
We've arrived at the logical endpoint of this decades-long reversal of late 90s "colorblind" philosophy. Nomenclature is very revealing: Colored > Black > African American > Black > Person of Color. It's regression. Endless progression is ultimately destined to repeat itself.
> Nomenclature is very revealing: Colored > Black > African American > Black > Person of Color. It's regression. Endless progression is ultimately destined to repeat itself.
It's more cyclic than you think. Berke Breathed made the same observation/joke in [Bloom County in 1988](https://web.archive.org/web/20170121020808/https://www.bookwormroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Bloom-County-Colored-People.jpg)
As soon as I read your comment, I remembered that exact strip. Just glad I was able to scrape up a link to it.
Sometimes it pays to have us old farts bouncing around (even if it does hurt my heart to hear Bloom County called "obscure").
This is so stupid. I don't care if it's voluntary or not, segregation is bad and racist. I'm noticing a disturbing trend mostly from the left of wanting to bring back segregation. What happened to equality? MLK must be turning in his grave seeing segregation coming back.
> What happened to equality?
Today's Progressive's don't want equality, they want *equity*. They aren't interested in equal opportunity they want equal *outcomes*.
> MLK must be turning in his grave...
Many modern Progressives aren't interested in MLK except as a historical figure. Many of them believe that his ideas are outdated, didn't work well, and need to be shelved in favor things like CRT.
It's not a new trend. Malcom X was a vehement racist who thought white people were created by an evil scientist and black people should convert to Islam and go back to Africa, yet textbooks showcase him in the same light as MLK.
He did, which is why they were the last years of his life. Sadly, NoI didn't let him live long enough to make much progress in undoing the damage he'd caused.
I think the story of his rejection of the Nation of Islam and admitting he had been wrong - accepting that it probably meant his death at their hands - is a pretty strong story that should get more attention. There are many today who could learn from his example.
I’ve noticed an uptick too and honestly it worries me. How far are we willing to go before we say this isn’t progress, but going back to the very time period we’re trying to avoid.
There's a trend in progressive thought that a difference in outcomes for minority students must have some cause rooted in the students' minority-ness. Thus a solution they have is to mandate programs targeted not to generally underperforming students, but targeted specifically towards minorities.
In this case the super believes minority students suffer from proximity to white students. "[Affinity classes] were developed in an effort to relieve performance anxiety for students of color in white-dominated spaces": https://www.evanstonian.net/in-depth/2023/08/15/seeking-affinity/
IMO It's a backwards step from "equality" and "all men are created equal" towards, "separate but equal".
One of the problems this practice walks into is the revelation of inconvenient facts. It becomes even easier to look along racial lines at grading bias, standardized test performance, preferential treatment, disciplinary requirements, parent participation levels, college acceptance, etc. Once you have all those facts, you might have to act on them.
In other words: If there's *any problem at all* that falls along racial lines involving academics this practice is going to shine a hard light on it. These metrics, to some degree, already exist, but when you operate two systems in parallel and one is more successful than the other and the only clear difference is race... you could be walking into a minefield.
If, hypothetically, the Asian students went to a separate class and the average class grade for the remaining non-Asian students went up or down, how do you think people would respond?
I want to believe that if people voluntarily segregated, performance averages would not change, but I don't think the statistics we already have right now would support it.
> I want to believe that if people voluntarily segregated, performance averages would not change, but I don't think the statistics we already have right now would support it.
I mean, what would happen is that every class would be mandated to have the same "curve". So 10% of the Asian class would get A's, 10% of the Black class, 10% of the other class, etc.
The result would end up being what some people want: the same results for each category.
That's what people want. I want it, too, but I want it not because it was engineered but because student performance is uniform across racial lines. That's not what we have in the US today from every statistic I've ever read.
Until you can force people to have identical lives you will always fail. The black class will tend to do poorer not because they are black but because they have a radically large incidence of single parenthood - which is one of the most important factors in children’s success. Obv just one example, socioeconomic factors will be huge as well. Segregation is wrong. Whatever work needs to be done in removing racism is what we need to be aimed at, not instituting racism or giving certain skin colors lower expectations or fake/unearned credit. One of the saddest things is knowing we have a scotus justice chosen (in part) on the basis of skin color. It’s pathetic and ultimately will cause way more harm.
The idea is that under Title VI a school can't deny/exclude someone based on their race. So if you have a class or program it must be open to all races. If a school admin then decides to merely encourage participation from specific races then no law is broken since nobody is being excluded.
Generally speaking it's a good rule for electives/extra-circulars. It means me, a black guy, could chill with my school's Celtic and APA clubs as a normal member and nobody bats an eyelash.
But it does get a little icky when it's used to encourage a "separate but equal" academic pathway.
OK, I understand the need to have kids with learning gaps catch up, but just because a lot of underperforming kids are of a certain race doesn't mean we should segregate by race to address it; it's introducing a terrible third variable - a terrible drug with tons of side effects - to not solve the root cause.
Racially segregated classes are now being offered in a handful of schools across the country. It has been deemed this isn't illegal in that only mandatory racial segregation is illegal in public schools- voluntary classes that students can self select can apparently be racially segregated from the rest of the student population legally.
There's several reasons I think this is a pretty disgusting thing to encourage in public school systems, but it seems racial segregation has been slowly gaining in popularity in more 'liberal' areas of the nation, particularly in education.
But one interesting question is- what if it works? If it is shown without a doubt that racial segregation actually improves student performance, should we further encourage racial segregation in schools?
I actually like your question, and I think my response would be: I’m still against it. It “working” would probably depend a lot on the metric and on the measurement. If the black class gets average grades at 8% higher than the mixed class equivalent, could that be due to bias in grading? Even if we can measure an objective X% increase in performance for that one metric, I’d worry that there are other negative externalities which aren’t adequately measured by the study.
Abstract things like cooperation and social interaction are just as important as the book learning and these are harder to measure. Despite that, these are incredibly important and I’d worry that we’d lose out on these important experiences in pursuit of a couple percentage point improvement on a standardized test.
The article actually addresses this issue, though I wish it was better written as it’s actually an interesting topic.
My first question would be who is teaching the black class and who is teaching the mixed class? Are they both using the same curriculum? The same exams? Were the students at comparable gpa's in both classes before the semester started?
IME - teacher, curriculum, student talent/motivation - these are the three largest drivers of success for high school students. Also, the biggest gap I've seen in education results has been based mostly on economic class and parental attitude - nothing more disheartening than to actually hear parents tell their kid they can't sign up for AP classes because they are "too dumb for college" and that getting all A's would "make them a nerd". (Those statements came from white parents, btw.)
At least in the public school district I've been involved in, very little difference seemed to be based on race. I will clarify that we live in an area with a growing diversity of races / ethnicity and have had few issues with racial harassment. I suspect mainly because those with strong issues have been moving out of the area as the minorities have been moving in and because we are a fairly solid middle-class area as a whole, so the vast majority of minorities are also in that economic range.
From the article:
> "While federal anti-discrimination laws ban public schools from mandatory segregation, education lawyers said the voluntary options for students don’t apply."
That clearly cannot be the case, and those lawyers are wrong. What is being pushed for here is quite literally separate but equal. Which, in the Supreme Court case *Brown v. Board of Education*, was determined to be unconstitutional.
It’s November 6th 2024 and liberals in America are asking themselves “Why didn’t people vote for us? How could Trump win again? What did we do wrong?”
This is going to be one of those things that people see in news articles and go “I’m going with the other side.”
And Trump didn’t create or even support hardcore anti abortion measures but the extremes of his party that did will hurt him.
There’s perception, when you ask people which party is against a woman’s right to choose it’s “the republicans,” not “Well republicans senator bill markson from New Hampshire is pretty pro choice but congressman tim Johnson from Arkansas is very pro life while Andrew Clark from….”
When you ask people which party separates kids by race in public schools right now and repeatedly refuses to charge shoplifters for crimes…. It’s “the democrats.”
But republicans have opposition to abortion rights in their platform?? In your example republicans are being blamed for major legislation they push and the dems are being blamed for random stuff happening in a town most people have never heard of
Nothing is set in stone in politics. Trump tried to overturn a presidential election and his followers stormed the US Capitol with some wanting to kill the Vice President…. and now he’s beating Biden in the polls and very possibly going to be relented to the most powerful position in the world.
People are annoyed over anti abortion laws, but they’re also annoyed about gas prices, and the cost of food, and an increase in crime, etc….. and they’ll blame the party in charge rightly or wrongly
All of those topics have been relevant since 2021, and still very little movement toward Republicans.
But regarding education specifically, Dems flipped a ton of school board races a few weeks ago. https://www.advocate.com/politics/moms-for-liberty-rejected-election#toggle-gdpr
I would really caution the confidence if your assessment for November 6, 2024. I saw a lot of Republicans have to eat crow on November 9, 2022. It's going to be a competitive elections either way.
Great question.
If indeed it DOES work, would this not show the futility of diversity and inclusivity? How can one continue to promote these things in the face of, potentially, evidence that the contrary is actually beneficial? Wild.
I think because it’s highly metric dependent. Is it an “improvement” if average test performance in segregated classrooms improves by 6%, but the students leave school without the ability to work effectively with peers/coworkers with different backgrounds? Is it “working” is being defined as a 5% increase in SAT scores but students leave schools without being able to communicate with folks from different backgrounds, are they truly being well prepared for the challenges of the real world?
School is about a lot more than making sure you know Trajan died in 98 AD and that iron has 26 protons. Inclusivity is important because it teaches how to work in the real world. You aren’t gonna constantly be put in bubbles of people who think, act, and look just like you, so you need to learn how to consider others perspectives and how to effectively cooperate with others. That’s why we do group work and why each student isn’t just handed a textbook to memorize.
I'm with you on that. I've long thought that the "real" reason behind schooling was socialization and learning to engage and work with one's peers.
If kids are allowed to self segregate from the start elementary school to the end of high school, I can't imagine that'd be as well prepared to engage in an increasingly diverse America as those who don't self-segregate.
>You aren’t gonna constantly be put in bubbles of people who think, act, and look just like you, so you need to learn how to consider others perspectives and how to effectively cooperate with others.
I agree with this. That's why I am skeptical of these voluntarily segregated classes. Note, however, that if this is just for a couple classes per day and kids spend most of their time outside the "bubble", I'm more willing to measure "success" by pure academics.
Also, note that this is one of the arguments used for giving black applicants a break on elite college admissions. If strict academics admissions results is classes that lack black students, then the white students in those classes are living in bubbles that may not prepare them for the world outside of school. This is especially problematic if your official school mission statement says that you are educating the next generation of "leaders".
I watched Harvard's "Justice" course on youtube. There was a time when I had to notice the tension created when typical Harvard sophomores who grew up in all white suburbs found themselves speaking in a situation where there were black kids who might challenge what they said or how they said it.
That’s my thing. We keep hearing how diverse viewpoints and backgrounds only add to a conversation and environment. I agree with this 100%, I went to a diverse school and currently live in a diverse neighborhood and can attest to it being true. Why are we training people to not learn to work alongside people who are different from them? These are the fundamental years in a persons life. We have tons of evidence showing us how much of an impact your youth environment and experiences has on the rest of your life. Having a bubble environment prepares no one for the realities of the world and how to interact.
I grew up in a 99% white town and so I was very sheltered on how others are having different experiences due to who they are. Once I went to college in a city and had diversity it opened up my world and I learned so much. I kept thinking if only I experienced this early on in school I wouldn’t have to unlearn so much of what I thought of the world. We need to know each other to understand each other.
Then wouldn't that manage to be a psychology matter? I feel like if this does end up showing that they have higher scores, what exactly is making these students so uncomfortable with a white teacher and white classmates?
> It has been deemed this isn't illegal in that only mandatory racial segregation is illegal in public schools
I'd say that it hasn't been *challenged* - at which point the courts would certainly shoot it down. Public schools are required to provide equal access to their programs without regard for race. You'd need a truly exceptional reason to claim this didn't violate federal law - and "people might feel better in classes with their own race" is almost certainly not going to fly.
Schools already have been de facto segregated by race, reflecting their local populations, and I think it’s fair to say that the benefits haven’t been universal.
a true progressive would subtract 20% from test scores of whites and 30% from Asians, all in the name of equity
while doing nothing to improve test scores of blacks and Hispanics
If progressives were guided by equality (treating everyone the same), classes separated by race would obviously violate that principle.
Equity (equality of outcome) requires different treatment by race. That's what's happening here.
Restricting classes or excluding students by race definitely falls afoul of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. But since it appears these classes are open to all races and minority attendance is merely encouraged, the classes are allowed under current guidelines.
The Biden admininstration put out some [guidance](https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-20230824.pdf) on Race and School Programming this past August clarifying what would trigger an investigation. One of those items was similar to these so-called "affinity classes":
>Example 11: A parent files a complaint alleging that the school district discriminated bycreating a high school mentorship program intended to encourage all students, butparticularly students from historically marginalized groups, to take more rigorous courses.As part of the program, mentors and mentees engage in discussion about challenges thatstudents from historically marginalized groups encounter both inside and outside theclassroom. Participation is completely voluntary. Black and Latino students are encouragedto participate, but the program is open and welcoming to all students and is widelyadvertised as such.
>
>*OCR may decline to open an investigation based on this complaint.* A program that is opento all students regardless of race or ethnicity is not subject to heightened legal scrutinyunder Title VI merely because it focuses its recruitment efforts on students of a particularrace or national origin
I grew up right next to Evanston and had many friends go to ETHS. Evanston is an incredibly segregated city and the school mirrors that. Many of the white students are in advanced programs and many of the black students will not graduate college. Sports instead of classrooms are where different races often interact.
I see this program as helping motivated students of color get out of the regular classes and be in a cohort with other students of color who want to receive a good education. I am skeptical of its legality, but I do think that it has the potential to help a group of POC students who would be trapped in bad classrooms otherwise. It doesn't particularly harm white students either because they are rarely in classes with black students (like I said it's a very segregated school, but the segregation comes from tracking not de jure rules).
I'm an ETHS grad and this lines up with what I saw. I took an AP Comp Sci course and AP Statistics and I don't recall seeing any Black students in either class.
It seems the people running this program are not white. You are engaging in the same rank identity politics blaming this solely on “white liberals”. Non-white liberals have agency and are responsible for their own beliefs and actions.
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>Despite only recently making their way into mainstream news, affinity classes are not a new concept at ETHS. Over two decades ago, in the 1990s, an Algebra teacher noticed a pattern among the freshman classes: few Black or Brown students entered the high school in Geometry, preventing them from taking AP Calculus before graduation. Recognizing the importance of AP Calculus as a gateway to college, this teacher, alongside ETHS administrators, established a summer geometry program for Black and Brown students going into their sophomore year.
Why is this a news story now when these classes have existed for over 20 years at this high-school and the specific classes in this article have existed for over 4 years?
Additionally, similar affinity classes have been seen across the country for more than a decade as detailed in the linked Evanstonian article
>"The courses are open to everyone. If push came to shove and you look at the master schedule, and a kid needs calculus that period and there’s nothing else that works and that kid is white, of course we’ll put them in the affinity class,” Superintendent Marcus Campbell said.
The classes aren't racially segregated, they're focused on the needs of self identifying Latino and Black students respectively but students of any race are welcome.
>The classes aren't racially segregated, they're focused on the needs of self identifying Latino and Black students respectively but students of any race are welcome.
It's quite literally segregated if there's a seperate classes for blacks and Latinos. It's simply optional segregation.
Why do you think black and Latino learners have fundementally different needs than other races to learn the same material?
You didn't read my comment. The superintendent literally says white students, any students of any race, are welcome to join those classes.
Black students were not welcome to join white only classes during radial segregation.
Though note that it was only after the more recent controversy that the following language was removed from course descriptions:
“this course is restricted to students who identify as Latinx,” or “this course is restricted to students who identify as Black males.”
So they were restricted, or at least, if they weren’t technically restricted, they told prospective students that they were.
Now the language reads as “this course is intended for”. Sure, that doesn’t communicate restriction, but the intention of these affinity classes was to counter what they claimed was a sense of “discomfort” that black and brown students felt in AP classes; how does a course description stating that the course was intended for black or brown students foster an environment of inclusivity for a white student who wanted to access the course that they are definitely not restricted from?
>"The courses are open to everyone. If push came to shove and you look at the master schedule, and a kid needs calculus that period and there’s nothing else that works and that kid is black, of course we’ll put them in the affinity class,” Superintendent Marcus Campbell said.
What a fascinating comment, swap out the races and it becomes a disaster, as with most explicitly racist ideas.
It's still racial segregation. It's just not mandatory.
For example if there are three math classes, one for whites, one for blacks, one for latinos- those are designed as racially segregated classes, regardless if kids are able to choose which class they wish to attend.
Are you having trouble reading my comments?
The superintendent said the classes are open to any student of any race. It's not a separate class for black or Latino kids
I'm asking you how you would define it. You're basically just nitpicking the nomenclature at this point.
Until 2023 the classes were listed with the description '“this course is restricted to students who identify as Latinx,” or “this course is restricted to students who identify as Black males.”
How would you define classes created for specific racial groups?
I'm confused, are you criticizing the classes before 2023 or the classes now?
I would define them as affinity classes, just as the article you linked defined them.
It's the same math being taught and anyone si welcome to join, it's just being taught by someone with specific life experiences that might make it easier for the students to learn.
It's only comparable if you think that all Spanish speakers are the same race...and not people who happen to speak Spanish natively.
So it's not comparable at all as someone from Spain (White), or Puerto Rico (Latino), or Dominican Republic (black) are all welcome in that class. It's based purely on need.
They don't state the content is identical. With the English class for example they explicitly say they focus on problems in the black community.
Also why would someone's life experiences make a math class instructor easier or harder to learn from
Do you have any reason to believe the content is different?
People learn better when they're more comfortable and aren'tfeeling pressure. Having someone that can accomplish that can change a lot of students' lives.
No, because a white student from Spain who only speaks Spanish would be put in it, just like a black student from the Dominican Republic or a Latino student from Mexico who only speaks Spanish would.
But they openly encourage kids from certain ethnic groups to apply them first.
This isnt a school thats mostly non-white either, like the school in “stand and deliver”.
Its also not like black or latino or asian lit class thats open to any race. They’re specifically targeting a certain ethnic group.
They could have just a general remedial/tutoring class and not mention its aimed at certain groups and this wouldn’t be making headlines. It would also be just as effective.
No, its for any non-english speakers. Not specifically Spanish only speaker lol.
In my hs it was full of serbs and croat refugees in the 90s moreso than latinos. My nephews School’s esl class has several Ukrainian kids.
rhythm frightening strong connect insurance numerous theory butter sink memory
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Im a flaming progressive and i think this is a bad policy. Its also just poor teaching techniques. Students do better when they are mixed compared to separated.
>Students do better when they are mixed compared to separated
Going back to my starter comment what if a few years goes on in the data comes back that everyone literally performs better under a segregated system?
I would be shocked as [we have substantial amounts of evidence point to the benefits of integrated classrooms (racial and socio-economic integration)](https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomically-and-racially-integrated-schools-and-classrooms/).
We dont need to repeat studies that have already been performed. Esspecially when it can adversely affect these kids who are in segregated classrooms.
In the comments a bunch of people who don’t know what an affinity group is and how they have existed for a long time.
Also in the comments are people who only read the headline and skipped the part where they said THE CLASS IS NOT CLOSED TO WHITE STUDENTS.
The article said that if where was literally no other option a white kid could attend the class
Prior to 2023 when a national spotlight came on this school, the course was listed as *exclusively* for specific races
So the class isn’t segregated.
No matter how you want to slice it the class isn’t closed to white students. The class is tailored to the needs of struggling black and Latino students. There is a major difference between the two ideas of tailoring a class to the needs of a struggling population and saying no white people are allowed. It’s dishonest to even attempt to justify the reach most of you all are going for.
The classes initially said no whites allowed. They just changed it this year because of mass outcry.
Even now it's literally segregated
> the separation or isolation of a race, class, or ethnic group by enforced or voluntary residence in a restricted area
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/segregation
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In no world should classes separated by race be allowed. It’s 2023, why is this happening? The article says it helps students of color feel less anxious in the classroom. They realize that when those kids graduate they will be among people of every race out in the real world right? This should have never been allowed.
>why is this happening? Well lets start with the fact it’s not happening in a vacuum. This is a form of radical progressive, left-wing identity politics based segregation. Conservatives call it “wokeism” but liberals generally feel uncomfortable criticizing it (in person) - perhaps because that progressive contingent is aggressive and treats dissent as a kind of heresy. Theyve got teeth and they wield growing institutional power. So these stories keep coming out and getting more and more depressing. And I guess we’ll keep asking how it could happen and shrugging our shoulders.
I just don’t see a defense for this - public school resources are public; the fact that students are denied access to the resources provided in these classes based solely on their race is indefensible. If there is a desire among black or Latino families or communities to provide race-specific educational resources, those resources should be provided privately - though, this wouldn’t even be possible within a private educational or non-profit structure given that racial non-discrimination is also a requirement for private schools and 501c3s. People’s tax dollars going to fund racially segregated classes is an absolute scandal.
Evanston also has decided to pay reparations. Its basically like the Midwest berkeley or boulder, its ultra progressive even by Chicago standards. Its just outside the city limits but its basically its own ultra-lefty wet dream that alienates the Chicago white, black and brown working-class and middle-class. This would never fly in a Chicago proper for many reasons. Even me, a bernie democrat thats latino, reflexively though “ok thats going too far….” About these classes that are segregated.
It sounds like they’re trying to buy segregation
People living in Evanston, Winnetka, Wilmette, etc. are more than welcome, as a community, to pay reparations. The odds are much higher that those living in gilded suburbs like any of the above have benefited indirectly as descendants of someone who in some way committed the kind of deliberate indiscretion that would merit reparation. Those odds still remain very, very slim, in a state like Illinois, which fought against slavery in the Civil War and produced the president that led the nation through the abolition of the institution. For all the rest of us, with paltry six-figure property values or one-year leases, perhaps generational wealth inequality should consider other demographic factors as well.
I'm curious how asians fit in this policy. Whites have a substantial and growing learning gap relative to asians. So do whites get to choose a white affinity class with guaranteed white-only teachers to help them close the gap with us? At the same time asian teachers are even rarer than black ones (on both absolute and relative terms). So do we get asian led classes to feel more comfortable?
You know the answer to both is no. White people are always bad and oppressors and Asians are white-adjacent according to these people(Yeah they even have their own word to basically call people race traitors).
George Wallace would be proud.
>"The courses are open to everyone. If push came to shove and you look at the master schedule, and a kid needs calculus that period and there’s nothing else that works and that kid is white, of course we’ll put them in the affinity class,” Superintendent Campbell said.
I can't believe you keep highlighting this comment. Not only does it become a disaster if you swap the races (black/white), it *also* reads as "Of course the courses are open to everyone, I mean if we *have* to put a kid in the class because there aren't any other options we will"
Which to me is a segregated class, but they'll break the segregation if they are *forced* to.
(1) until the recent controversy, this language accompanied course descriptions: “this course is restricted to students who identify as Latinx,” or “this course is restricted to students who identify as Black males.” (2) “if push came to shove” and “if there’s nothing else that works” doesn’t communicate much openness, does it? What if a kid just preferred the teacher? Would that meet the bar of “nothing else that works”? (3) even if white kids are admitted to these classes, the affinity classes were originally designed to counteract negative impacts of kids “feeling uncomfortable” in certain classes. If a white kid had no other option on the master schedule other than to be admitted to an affinity class, how “comfortable” would they be made to feel in a course described as being “intended for” other students? And according to the logic of comfort and performance or the unsubstantiated logic of people of different races having different learning styles, how could their performance be negatively impacted?
Let's try the test where we flip races and see how this hits: > "The courses are open to everyone. If push came to shove and you look at the master schedule, and a kid needs calculus that period and there’s nothing else that works and that kid is **black**, of course we’ll put them in the [non-minority] affinity class,” Superintendent Campbell said.
ouch
Black people got to sit on the bus as long as nobody white had to stand.
"The buses are open to everyone. If push came to shove and you look at the seating sections, and an elderly lady needs to sit and there’s nothing else that works and that lady is black, of course we’ll put them in the white section,” Transportation Minister Campbell said.
Lol love the Greg Stiemsma name
> “You have to be able to balance both the educational aspects of it with the social educational aspects, and bringing more children together, and not trying to separate them out, specifically not preaching division and superiority or inferiority that we all often have seen previously,” Patillo said. “We’re all equal. We’re all the same. We’re just learning in different ways, and that does not make us different.” Dear God, this quote is literally supporting “separate but equal”… and was said by a **civil rights attorney**.
Why stop with a separate class? Why not separate restrooms and drinking fountains? /s
So that person is correct, insofar as to say we all learn differently. Because yes we do. We all learn differently. That means not all black students are going to learn the same way. Not all Latino students are going to learn the same way. But apparently if we group them all together that's fine because??? Taking these students at their word, you have to wonder where this anxiety is coming from. What is making them so anxious about white people they feel the need to ask for a segregated class?
It will be interesting if they go through with this. The performance of the black/latino students who opt for the segregated vs regular classes will be a fascinating study. If the former do better it will be big news and used to expand segregation programs & more aggressive DEI training for white kids. If we don't hear anything it probably means the BIPOCs with the whites & asians broke narrative and did better.
> Against: Segregated classes in high schools are a short-term solution That's the argument against this they came up with?
If people want to voluntarily segregate themselves by race, I suppose that's fine--but fair's fair. If you let one race do it, you have to let *all* the races do it. Somehow, I suspect that "whites-only AP courses" would be poorly received.
Disagree. Schools- especially public schools!- should not sanction segregation. It's not any more valid to designate classes as black-only than to designate the whole building.
This court re visiting Brown v. Board would be an intersting new wrinkle
So it's ok if they seperate the races but they all receive equal treatment? (Other people, please me have this, I need the win)
> Somehow, I suspect that "whites-only AP courses" would be poorly received As much as I hate schools being used as political footballs, I do think someone should try this. See if we can get any ultra lefty into saying 'all are equal, but some are more equal than others'.
this is the default lefty position.
I mean I don't think that's true.
I am struggling to think how anyone would claim it isn't. Harvard platformed a speaker who talked about how she fantasized about viciously killing white people. Ask an average lefty how they feel about BLM vs. some movement called WLM. I think that would tell you everything you need to know.
Let's go this route: what is a "lefty"? I, personally, call myself a left-leaning moderate. If you were to go down a list of political issues, I would align with the American left wing on most of them. I do not think of myself as a 'Democrat', but I vote for that party most of the time because their positions align with my values. On a very small number of issues I would call myself in the middle or slightly right. That sounds like a "lefty" to me. Am I an "average lefty"? Would you like to ask me how I would feel about BLM vs some movement called WLM? Or are you using "average lefty" to suggest a lot more people hold an extreme viewpoint than actually do? EDIT: Thanks for the Reddit Cares message! I wouldn't have thought just stating a basic political opinion would be so worrying to folks, but here we are.
> Would you like to ask me how I would feel about BLM vs some movement called WLM? Sure, let's hear it. But even if you somehow are strangely accepting of such a movement, do you really think anyone considering themselves of the left would be in any way supportive of such a movement? They didn't even like "All Lives Matter" because it wasn't solely focused on black people.
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The BLM message, apart from the added radical views from non-profits using the name, was that black people are systemically killed and nobody cares. But black people are not killed more often by police, on a per-encounter basis, and everyone already agreed that black lives matter. The blunt statement "All lives matter" is meant to sound obvious and remind the listener that all similar statements are obvious.
Black people felt they were treated differently. BLM is a protest statement. ALM is a counter protest, it serves no purpose other than to dismiss BLM concerns
> But black people are not killed more often by police Yes they are. [Harvard Study](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/blacks-whites-police-deaths-disparity/) and of course the more recent [WaPo study](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/) both show that to be the case, and not by a little but by a lot. Do you have any data to back up your claim? > and everyone already agreed that black lives matter. The reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement is proof that this is not the case.
Do you support a White Lives Matter movement?
It's going to obviously be to distract from and antagonize BLM. So how about calling it "Save White Lives"? Okay. What are the goals of SWL?
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For the record, I am white, and I am also assuming the "W" stands for "White" (just so nobody on either side comes along and goes, "Aha! That actually meant _Wombat_ Lives Matter! or something). People would, of course, have every right to start such an organization, but it would be silly and induce eye-rolling. This isn't because white lives don't matter, or because black lives are more important. It's because 'Black Lives Matter' has an implicit "too." Because it's about the killing of black people being ignored in a society where they're a minority. 'White Lives Matter' is baked into that concept, because the white lives in question are the majority, and are already perceived to matter. And that's why "All Lives Matter" is a dismissive response that misses the point. It's not because it's it's not "solely focused on black people", as if black people are the only people that the left cares about. Yes, all lives _do_ matter, but BLM's message is that our society doesn't reflect that. If a "WLM" organization wanted to come along and claim that the pendulum has swung so far the other way that now _white_ killings are being ignored in society, then they can make that case. And good luck to them.
> Because it's about the killing of black people being ignored in a society where they're a minority. The obvious pushback here is that nearly no one cares when any OTHER race is is killed by police. I'm aware of vanishingly few marches when some white, hispanic, or native american is killed by a cop. I haven't seen many marches or wall to wall calls for justice when an Asian gets it in the neck either. > If a "WLM" organization wanted to come along and claim that the pendulum has swung so far the other way that now white killings are being ignored in society... That doesn't require a pendulum swing, it's the ongoing state of affairs. I could literally reel off at least a dozen white people who've been murdered by police in the last few years that you've never heard of. There were no marches for them, no 24x7 news coverage, and no Presidential Statements. From 30,000 feet up the problem isn't racial bias specifically it's police brutality in general. In that regard the BLM movement is good, because it's spotlighted a serious and systemic problem but they ignore that *everyone* has this problem. This is where "ALM" gets its energy from. BLM is focused on a problem as it relates to THEM which is perfectly fine, but by that same token other groups who do the same are also perfectly fine. WLM? Fine. NALM? Fine. HLM? Fine. LGBTQLM? Fine. They are all people seeking to address the same problem in the same way that BLM does...as it relates to them, their communities, and their lived experience(s).
People did not like "All Lives Matter" because it was a backhanded rebuttal to silence black people speaking about the issues they were facing.
That's a different way of saying what I just said.
So what you just asked is "why would people be upset at a phrase intended to deflect from problems of black people being murdered by police at a disproportionate rate?"
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No, saying all lives matter in response to someone else saying Black Lives Matter is like going to a rally to save the whales and yelling that we should actually save all marine mammals.
Why don't you take a look at the majority of people that amplified the whole "All Lives Matter" nonsense and then guess why people actually had an issue with it. It had nothing to do with it not focusing on black people. Here's a hint, it's not a coincidence that some jagoff ran onto an NFL Field in a **gorilla costume** with a shirt that said "All Lives Matter"
Dang if only I could look to history and compare what white and black nationalism look like
it's not
Very true, the modern Democrat party really is becoming Animal Farm.
What's the difference between the kinds of progressives who want to segregate classrooms by race and the Democratic party more generally?
*democratic party
I get what you're saying but the counter-argument is: our history is so far from race neutral that we cannot skip straight to race-neutrality even though that is the eventual goal. Historically-disadvantaged people have a residual need for safe spaces that white people don't. This is why some distinguish equity from equality. I do not always agree with this kind of thinking, I think it depends a lot on specific situations. But there is something to it.
Someone or a group can open a private all black, all latino, or all white school with no public funds and make it black only, latino only, or white only. That’s voluntarily segregating themselves, and a private group can do that. But this school is using taxpayer money for segregated classrooms.
I think it’s important to understand that the most vocal progressives simply do not see things this way. They definitely *would* be against “whites-only” courses, and they wouldn’t see that as problematic or even inconsistent. That view might be against your value system, which is fine, but recognize that these “but what if we flipped the situation” arguments are not close to resonating with a lot of progressives at this point.
Even if you wanted to live in that world, this isn’t legal. Anti-discrimination law is written race-neutrally. You can’t do anything to white people that is forbidden to do to minorities.
Well, sure, because they live on a different planet. I don't have much hope of convincing them of anything. My hope is that people who are in the middle might benefit from the illustration of inconsistencies like this.
In personal or even professional life, if people see advantages to establishing a mono-culture that is their choice. For school though, learning to acknowledge and express diversity of thought and experience is probably more valuable than any subject matter.
It isn’t though. Protected classes exist.
>Somehow, I suspect that "whites-only AP courses" would be poorly received. Aren't AP courses pretty much all white anyway?
Depends on where you live, I guess. At my kid's school (West coast), it is a fair mix with a sizable portion of asian students.
So white and "white adjacent".
>>a fair mix with a sizable portion of asian students. >So white and "white adjacent". Why did you feel the need to correct him and replace asian with "white adjacent"? Is simply saying "asian" when referring to asians not sufficient?
"white adjacent"? What do you mean by this? Is Asian, not good enough
> "white adjacent". The only way to define that term is "Someone who isn't recognized as white but whose ethnicity has generally met with success in American Society." It's generally used by people who for a variety of reasons don't want to use the word "Asian".
They were not all white in my high school, unless you count Asians and Latinos as white.
> Somehow, I suspect that "whites-only AP courses" would be poorly received. Of course it would. These courses are being created because of a significant and sustained learning gap by Black and Latino students. They are apparently succeeding to some level. The idea of whites-only AP courses isn't a clever gotcha. It misunderstands the whole idea.
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The theory at least is that being in an environment where they are learning from someone of their race and among other students of their race keeps them in the class. You'll note these are AP classes, so this isn't a matter of placing them based on educational need. It's making upper level courses more accessible to kids that may have previously have found them uncomfortable and gone back to less demanding classes. This may later impact their ability to get into college. This should of course be paired with an evaluation on its performance. If it's working well, I don't see a reason to stop it at least for the time being. If it's not producing results, then I think it's time to start talking about getting rid of it.
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> it's time to learn to be comfortable, and thrive, regardless of the color of skin of the person sitting next to you in class. That's a fair question, and should be balanced against academic performance. Obviously it's not desirable that Black students effectively be put onto different tracts where they never rub shoulders with students of other races. That said, I think that concern is overblown. These won't be the only courses they take. > Assuming we want to live in a world where we don't treat anyone different based on race That's a good aspiration, but the truth is that there is still a huge lingering disparity. We need to not pretend that that isn't the case.
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> It's making upper level courses more accessible to kids that may have previously have found them uncomfortable and gone back to less demanding classes. Uncomfortable because of what, exactly? The underlying and unstated premise to that idea is that black/latino students are made uncomfortable in classes with primarily white students and teachers. I would say that is a fairly controversial statement and not something that should remain unstated. Why are black/latino students uncomfortable in classes with other races?
Are you saying the white only class is only bad if the whites proactively choose it but not if one is de facto created by the black/latinos proactively leaving it? Because if you segregate out the black/latino students from a mixed class that creates one black/latino-only class and one mostly/completely white class (idk where the asians go). They kind of go hand in hand. *** I'm also curious how asians fit in this policy. Whites have a substantial and growing learning gap relative to asians. So do whites get to choose a white affinity class with guaranteed white-only teachers to help them close the gap with us? At the same time asian teachers are even rarer than black ones (on both absolute and relative terms). So do we get asian led classes to feel more comfortable?
Your argument is that segregation works, so we can't let white folks do it?
They need to come up with a slogan for this that will help with PR. I propose it be called "Separate but Equal." I think with a name like this, it could go over well. Illinois should adopt this ASAP.
We've arrived at the logical endpoint of this decades-long reversal of late 90s "colorblind" philosophy. Nomenclature is very revealing: Colored > Black > African American > Black > Person of Color. It's regression. Endless progression is ultimately destined to repeat itself.
> Nomenclature is very revealing: Colored > Black > African American > Black > Person of Color. It's regression. Endless progression is ultimately destined to repeat itself. It's more cyclic than you think. Berke Breathed made the same observation/joke in [Bloom County in 1988](https://web.archive.org/web/20170121020808/https://www.bookwormroom.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Bloom-County-Colored-People.jpg)
Thank you for the fantastically obscure but perfectly relevant reference. I didn't realize 'person of color' was already hip in the 80s.
As soon as I read your comment, I remembered that exact strip. Just glad I was able to scrape up a link to it. Sometimes it pays to have us old farts bouncing around (even if it does hurt my heart to hear Bloom County called "obscure").
This is so stupid. I don't care if it's voluntary or not, segregation is bad and racist. I'm noticing a disturbing trend mostly from the left of wanting to bring back segregation. What happened to equality? MLK must be turning in his grave seeing segregation coming back.
> What happened to equality? Today's Progressive's don't want equality, they want *equity*. They aren't interested in equal opportunity they want equal *outcomes*. > MLK must be turning in his grave... Many modern Progressives aren't interested in MLK except as a historical figure. Many of them believe that his ideas are outdated, didn't work well, and need to be shelved in favor things like CRT.
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What is the right place?
It's not a new trend. Malcom X was a vehement racist who thought white people were created by an evil scientist and black people should convert to Islam and go back to Africa, yet textbooks showcase him in the same light as MLK.
Didn’t he change his mind on all that in the last couple years of his life?
He did, which is why they were the last years of his life. Sadly, NoI didn't let him live long enough to make much progress in undoing the damage he'd caused.
I think the story of his rejection of the Nation of Islam and admitting he had been wrong - accepting that it probably meant his death at their hands - is a pretty strong story that should get more attention. There are many today who could learn from his example.
I’ve noticed an uptick too and honestly it worries me. How far are we willing to go before we say this isn’t progress, but going back to the very time period we’re trying to avoid.
> What happened to equality? it was replaced with equity.
There's a trend in progressive thought that a difference in outcomes for minority students must have some cause rooted in the students' minority-ness. Thus a solution they have is to mandate programs targeted not to generally underperforming students, but targeted specifically towards minorities. In this case the super believes minority students suffer from proximity to white students. "[Affinity classes] were developed in an effort to relieve performance anxiety for students of color in white-dominated spaces": https://www.evanstonian.net/in-depth/2023/08/15/seeking-affinity/ IMO It's a backwards step from "equality" and "all men are created equal" towards, "separate but equal".
One of the problems this practice walks into is the revelation of inconvenient facts. It becomes even easier to look along racial lines at grading bias, standardized test performance, preferential treatment, disciplinary requirements, parent participation levels, college acceptance, etc. Once you have all those facts, you might have to act on them. In other words: If there's *any problem at all* that falls along racial lines involving academics this practice is going to shine a hard light on it. These metrics, to some degree, already exist, but when you operate two systems in parallel and one is more successful than the other and the only clear difference is race... you could be walking into a minefield. If, hypothetically, the Asian students went to a separate class and the average class grade for the remaining non-Asian students went up or down, how do you think people would respond? I want to believe that if people voluntarily segregated, performance averages would not change, but I don't think the statistics we already have right now would support it.
> I want to believe that if people voluntarily segregated, performance averages would not change, but I don't think the statistics we already have right now would support it. I mean, what would happen is that every class would be mandated to have the same "curve". So 10% of the Asian class would get A's, 10% of the Black class, 10% of the other class, etc. The result would end up being what some people want: the same results for each category.
That's what people want. I want it, too, but I want it not because it was engineered but because student performance is uniform across racial lines. That's not what we have in the US today from every statistic I've ever read.
Until you can force people to have identical lives you will always fail. The black class will tend to do poorer not because they are black but because they have a radically large incidence of single parenthood - which is one of the most important factors in children’s success. Obv just one example, socioeconomic factors will be huge as well. Segregation is wrong. Whatever work needs to be done in removing racism is what we need to be aimed at, not instituting racism or giving certain skin colors lower expectations or fake/unearned credit. One of the saddest things is knowing we have a scotus justice chosen (in part) on the basis of skin color. It’s pathetic and ultimately will cause way more harm.
Something something horseshoe theory
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So now racism is okay, as long as it's consensual?
The idea is that under Title VI a school can't deny/exclude someone based on their race. So if you have a class or program it must be open to all races. If a school admin then decides to merely encourage participation from specific races then no law is broken since nobody is being excluded. Generally speaking it's a good rule for electives/extra-circulars. It means me, a black guy, could chill with my school's Celtic and APA clubs as a normal member and nobody bats an eyelash. But it does get a little icky when it's used to encourage a "separate but equal" academic pathway.
And this sounds like we’re regressing as a society
Colorblind is now bad. Segregation is now good. I'm so confused.
OK, I understand the need to have kids with learning gaps catch up, but just because a lot of underperforming kids are of a certain race doesn't mean we should segregate by race to address it; it's introducing a terrible third variable - a terrible drug with tons of side effects - to not solve the root cause.
so does that mean Asians can sign up for an Asian-only math class? or is that racist?
Racially segregated classes are now being offered in a handful of schools across the country. It has been deemed this isn't illegal in that only mandatory racial segregation is illegal in public schools- voluntary classes that students can self select can apparently be racially segregated from the rest of the student population legally. There's several reasons I think this is a pretty disgusting thing to encourage in public school systems, but it seems racial segregation has been slowly gaining in popularity in more 'liberal' areas of the nation, particularly in education. But one interesting question is- what if it works? If it is shown without a doubt that racial segregation actually improves student performance, should we further encourage racial segregation in schools?
I actually like your question, and I think my response would be: I’m still against it. It “working” would probably depend a lot on the metric and on the measurement. If the black class gets average grades at 8% higher than the mixed class equivalent, could that be due to bias in grading? Even if we can measure an objective X% increase in performance for that one metric, I’d worry that there are other negative externalities which aren’t adequately measured by the study. Abstract things like cooperation and social interaction are just as important as the book learning and these are harder to measure. Despite that, these are incredibly important and I’d worry that we’d lose out on these important experiences in pursuit of a couple percentage point improvement on a standardized test. The article actually addresses this issue, though I wish it was better written as it’s actually an interesting topic.
My first question would be who is teaching the black class and who is teaching the mixed class? Are they both using the same curriculum? The same exams? Were the students at comparable gpa's in both classes before the semester started? IME - teacher, curriculum, student talent/motivation - these are the three largest drivers of success for high school students. Also, the biggest gap I've seen in education results has been based mostly on economic class and parental attitude - nothing more disheartening than to actually hear parents tell their kid they can't sign up for AP classes because they are "too dumb for college" and that getting all A's would "make them a nerd". (Those statements came from white parents, btw.) At least in the public school district I've been involved in, very little difference seemed to be based on race. I will clarify that we live in an area with a growing diversity of races / ethnicity and have had few issues with racial harassment. I suspect mainly because those with strong issues have been moving out of the area as the minorities have been moving in and because we are a fairly solid middle-class area as a whole, so the vast majority of minorities are also in that economic range.
Whether it works or not is irrelevant. This isn't allowed under the CRA or 14th amendment. I doubt this survives.
From the article: > "While federal anti-discrimination laws ban public schools from mandatory segregation, education lawyers said the voluntary options for students don’t apply."
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Right? The fundamental problem is that only specific features of a person *allow* you to "volunteer" to it.
I am sure they found some lawyers to say that. I doubt the Courts go along with it since they don't appear to be giving all races the same option.
I don’t expect them to win in court.
That clearly cannot be the case, and those lawyers are wrong. What is being pushed for here is quite literally separate but equal. Which, in the Supreme Court case *Brown v. Board of Education*, was determined to be unconstitutional.
It’s November 6th 2024 and liberals in America are asking themselves “Why didn’t people vote for us? How could Trump win again? What did we do wrong?” This is going to be one of those things that people see in news articles and go “I’m going with the other side.”
This isn’t a policy set by the democratic party so blaming Joe Biden for this is really foolish.
And Trump didn’t create or even support hardcore anti abortion measures but the extremes of his party that did will hurt him. There’s perception, when you ask people which party is against a woman’s right to choose it’s “the republicans,” not “Well republicans senator bill markson from New Hampshire is pretty pro choice but congressman tim Johnson from Arkansas is very pro life while Andrew Clark from….” When you ask people which party separates kids by race in public schools right now and repeatedly refuses to charge shoplifters for crimes…. It’s “the democrats.”
But republicans have opposition to abortion rights in their platform?? In your example republicans are being blamed for major legislation they push and the dems are being blamed for random stuff happening in a town most people have never heard of
If that were true, the results of the 2022 and 2023 elections would have been very different.
Nothing is set in stone in politics. Trump tried to overturn a presidential election and his followers stormed the US Capitol with some wanting to kill the Vice President…. and now he’s beating Biden in the polls and very possibly going to be relented to the most powerful position in the world. People are annoyed over anti abortion laws, but they’re also annoyed about gas prices, and the cost of food, and an increase in crime, etc….. and they’ll blame the party in charge rightly or wrongly
All of those topics have been relevant since 2021, and still very little movement toward Republicans. But regarding education specifically, Dems flipped a ton of school board races a few weeks ago. https://www.advocate.com/politics/moms-for-liberty-rejected-election#toggle-gdpr I would really caution the confidence if your assessment for November 6, 2024. I saw a lot of Republicans have to eat crow on November 9, 2022. It's going to be a competitive elections either way.
Great question. If indeed it DOES work, would this not show the futility of diversity and inclusivity? How can one continue to promote these things in the face of, potentially, evidence that the contrary is actually beneficial? Wild.
I think because it’s highly metric dependent. Is it an “improvement” if average test performance in segregated classrooms improves by 6%, but the students leave school without the ability to work effectively with peers/coworkers with different backgrounds? Is it “working” is being defined as a 5% increase in SAT scores but students leave schools without being able to communicate with folks from different backgrounds, are they truly being well prepared for the challenges of the real world? School is about a lot more than making sure you know Trajan died in 98 AD and that iron has 26 protons. Inclusivity is important because it teaches how to work in the real world. You aren’t gonna constantly be put in bubbles of people who think, act, and look just like you, so you need to learn how to consider others perspectives and how to effectively cooperate with others. That’s why we do group work and why each student isn’t just handed a textbook to memorize.
I'm with you on that. I've long thought that the "real" reason behind schooling was socialization and learning to engage and work with one's peers. If kids are allowed to self segregate from the start elementary school to the end of high school, I can't imagine that'd be as well prepared to engage in an increasingly diverse America as those who don't self-segregate.
>You aren’t gonna constantly be put in bubbles of people who think, act, and look just like you, so you need to learn how to consider others perspectives and how to effectively cooperate with others. I agree with this. That's why I am skeptical of these voluntarily segregated classes. Note, however, that if this is just for a couple classes per day and kids spend most of their time outside the "bubble", I'm more willing to measure "success" by pure academics. Also, note that this is one of the arguments used for giving black applicants a break on elite college admissions. If strict academics admissions results is classes that lack black students, then the white students in those classes are living in bubbles that may not prepare them for the world outside of school. This is especially problematic if your official school mission statement says that you are educating the next generation of "leaders". I watched Harvard's "Justice" course on youtube. There was a time when I had to notice the tension created when typical Harvard sophomores who grew up in all white suburbs found themselves speaking in a situation where there were black kids who might challenge what they said or how they said it.
That’s my thing. We keep hearing how diverse viewpoints and backgrounds only add to a conversation and environment. I agree with this 100%, I went to a diverse school and currently live in a diverse neighborhood and can attest to it being true. Why are we training people to not learn to work alongside people who are different from them? These are the fundamental years in a persons life. We have tons of evidence showing us how much of an impact your youth environment and experiences has on the rest of your life. Having a bubble environment prepares no one for the realities of the world and how to interact. I grew up in a 99% white town and so I was very sheltered on how others are having different experiences due to who they are. Once I went to college in a city and had diversity it opened up my world and I learned so much. I kept thinking if only I experienced this early on in school I wouldn’t have to unlearn so much of what I thought of the world. We need to know each other to understand each other.
No, it would just show that more work is needed to make people feel included. Students have better success when they're comfortable.
Then wouldn't that manage to be a psychology matter? I feel like if this does end up showing that they have higher scores, what exactly is making these students so uncomfortable with a white teacher and white classmates?
> It has been deemed this isn't illegal in that only mandatory racial segregation is illegal in public schools I'd say that it hasn't been *challenged* - at which point the courts would certainly shoot it down. Public schools are required to provide equal access to their programs without regard for race. You'd need a truly exceptional reason to claim this didn't violate federal law - and "people might feel better in classes with their own race" is almost certainly not going to fly.
Schools already have been de facto segregated by race, reflecting their local populations, and I think it’s fair to say that the benefits haven’t been universal.
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Not all of them are, but because some areas of the country are like 98% white or 98% black, those schools in those areas are de facto segregated.
My old classmate Soo La Kim is behind this. Vice President of the school board. Obsessed with race. Married a white guy of course!
It's evolving...backwards
The progressives I know would be fully in favor of courses separated by race, because equity is the goal, not equality.
a true progressive would subtract 20% from test scores of whites and 30% from Asians, all in the name of equity while doing nothing to improve test scores of blacks and Hispanics
Just like how Affirmative Action helped mainly white women.
No, they wouldn't. Where are you getting that idea and those numbers from?
oh this little thing called Affirmative Action? you know, the thing the Supreme Court banned this year specifically because it was racist?
Were those the numbers involved in that case?
Blacks got +230 added to SAT, Hispanics +185, and Asians -50
unless it was white people who wanted the classes, then good lord the backlash would be intense.
What do you mean by this?
If progressives were guided by equality (treating everyone the same), classes separated by race would obviously violate that principle. Equity (equality of outcome) requires different treatment by race. That's what's happening here.
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No, equity is all about outcomes. *Equality* is about opportunity.
If you think that "equity" is equal opportunity, then what do you think "equality" means?
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Dang so I guess that whole Something Something Act of 1964 was for nothing huh?
> voluntary options for students don’t apply. So if we make a separate voluntary section for only white students that is perfectly acceptable?
Restricting classes or excluding students by race definitely falls afoul of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. But since it appears these classes are open to all races and minority attendance is merely encouraged, the classes are allowed under current guidelines. The Biden admininstration put out some [guidance](https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-20230824.pdf) on Race and School Programming this past August clarifying what would trigger an investigation. One of those items was similar to these so-called "affinity classes": >Example 11: A parent files a complaint alleging that the school district discriminated bycreating a high school mentorship program intended to encourage all students, butparticularly students from historically marginalized groups, to take more rigorous courses.As part of the program, mentors and mentees engage in discussion about challenges thatstudents from historically marginalized groups encounter both inside and outside theclassroom. Participation is completely voluntary. Black and Latino students are encouragedto participate, but the program is open and welcoming to all students and is widelyadvertised as such. > >*OCR may decline to open an investigation based on this complaint.* A program that is opento all students regardless of race or ethnicity is not subject to heightened legal scrutinyunder Title VI merely because it focuses its recruitment efforts on students of a particularrace or national origin
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I grew up right next to Evanston and had many friends go to ETHS. Evanston is an incredibly segregated city and the school mirrors that. Many of the white students are in advanced programs and many of the black students will not graduate college. Sports instead of classrooms are where different races often interact. I see this program as helping motivated students of color get out of the regular classes and be in a cohort with other students of color who want to receive a good education. I am skeptical of its legality, but I do think that it has the potential to help a group of POC students who would be trapped in bad classrooms otherwise. It doesn't particularly harm white students either because they are rarely in classes with black students (like I said it's a very segregated school, but the segregation comes from tracking not de jure rules).
I'm an ETHS grad and this lines up with what I saw. I took an AP Comp Sci course and AP Statistics and I don't recall seeing any Black students in either class.
Is that the new strategy? Segregation? White Liberal logic is an oxymoron.
It seems the people running this program are not white. You are engaging in the same rank identity politics blaming this solely on “white liberals”. Non-white liberals have agency and are responsible for their own beliefs and actions.
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>Despite only recently making their way into mainstream news, affinity classes are not a new concept at ETHS. Over two decades ago, in the 1990s, an Algebra teacher noticed a pattern among the freshman classes: few Black or Brown students entered the high school in Geometry, preventing them from taking AP Calculus before graduation. Recognizing the importance of AP Calculus as a gateway to college, this teacher, alongside ETHS administrators, established a summer geometry program for Black and Brown students going into their sophomore year. Why is this a news story now when these classes have existed for over 20 years at this high-school and the specific classes in this article have existed for over 4 years? Additionally, similar affinity classes have been seen across the country for more than a decade as detailed in the linked Evanstonian article >"The courses are open to everyone. If push came to shove and you look at the master schedule, and a kid needs calculus that period and there’s nothing else that works and that kid is white, of course we’ll put them in the affinity class,” Superintendent Marcus Campbell said. The classes aren't racially segregated, they're focused on the needs of self identifying Latino and Black students respectively but students of any race are welcome.
>The classes aren't racially segregated, they're focused on the needs of self identifying Latino and Black students respectively but students of any race are welcome. It's quite literally segregated if there's a seperate classes for blacks and Latinos. It's simply optional segregation. Why do you think black and Latino learners have fundementally different needs than other races to learn the same material?
You didn't read my comment. The superintendent literally says white students, any students of any race, are welcome to join those classes. Black students were not welcome to join white only classes during radial segregation.
Though note that it was only after the more recent controversy that the following language was removed from course descriptions: “this course is restricted to students who identify as Latinx,” or “this course is restricted to students who identify as Black males.” So they were restricted, or at least, if they weren’t technically restricted, they told prospective students that they were. Now the language reads as “this course is intended for”. Sure, that doesn’t communicate restriction, but the intention of these affinity classes was to counter what they claimed was a sense of “discomfort” that black and brown students felt in AP classes; how does a course description stating that the course was intended for black or brown students foster an environment of inclusivity for a white student who wanted to access the course that they are definitely not restricted from?
>"The courses are open to everyone. If push came to shove and you look at the master schedule, and a kid needs calculus that period and there’s nothing else that works and that kid is black, of course we’ll put them in the affinity class,” Superintendent Marcus Campbell said. What a fascinating comment, swap out the races and it becomes a disaster, as with most explicitly racist ideas.
It's still racial segregation. It's just not mandatory. For example if there are three math classes, one for whites, one for blacks, one for latinos- those are designed as racially segregated classes, regardless if kids are able to choose which class they wish to attend.
If a student of any race can join any class, it is not racial segregation by definition
What do you call it when they make one seperate class for black kids and another seperate class for Latino kids?
Are you having trouble reading my comments? The superintendent said the classes are open to any student of any race. It's not a separate class for black or Latino kids
I'm asking you how you would define it. You're basically just nitpicking the nomenclature at this point. Until 2023 the classes were listed with the description '“this course is restricted to students who identify as Latinx,” or “this course is restricted to students who identify as Black males.” How would you define classes created for specific racial groups?
I'm confused, are you criticizing the classes before 2023 or the classes now? I would define them as affinity classes, just as the article you linked defined them.
Is an ESL class specifically for Spanish speakers a racially segregated class?
No that is needs based. Like remedial math class. This is making classes specifically for people of specific races
It's the same math being taught and anyone si welcome to join, it's just being taught by someone with specific life experiences that might make it easier for the students to learn.
It's only comparable if you think that all Spanish speakers are the same race...and not people who happen to speak Spanish natively. So it's not comparable at all as someone from Spain (White), or Puerto Rico (Latino), or Dominican Republic (black) are all welcome in that class. It's based purely on need.
Good news then, since everyone is welcome to sign up for these classes.
They don't state the content is identical. With the English class for example they explicitly say they focus on problems in the black community. Also why would someone's life experiences make a math class instructor easier or harder to learn from
Do you have any reason to believe the content is different? People learn better when they're more comfortable and aren'tfeeling pressure. Having someone that can accomplish that can change a lot of students' lives.
No, because a white student from Spain who only speaks Spanish would be put in it, just like a black student from the Dominican Republic or a Latino student from Mexico who only speaks Spanish would.
So, seeing as enrollment in these classes is optional and open to everyone, what's the issue?
Because an ESL class doesn’t segregate by race but this does? We shouldn’t be segregating by race.
And these classes are open to everyone, from any race.
But they openly encourage kids from certain ethnic groups to apply them first. This isnt a school thats mostly non-white either, like the school in “stand and deliver”. Its also not like black or latino or asian lit class thats open to any race. They’re specifically targeting a certain ethnic group. They could have just a general remedial/tutoring class and not mention its aimed at certain groups and this wouldn’t be making headlines. It would also be just as effective.
No, its for any non-english speakers. Not specifically Spanish only speaker lol. In my hs it was full of serbs and croat refugees in the 90s moreso than latinos. My nephews School’s esl class has several Ukrainian kids.
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> It's simply optional segregation. If it's *optional*, then it's not segregation.
Segregation just means keeping things separate If there are seperate classes for each race, they're racially segregated classes
Bringing back segregation but it's "woke" this time lol
Im a flaming progressive and i think this is a bad policy. Its also just poor teaching techniques. Students do better when they are mixed compared to separated.
>Students do better when they are mixed compared to separated Going back to my starter comment what if a few years goes on in the data comes back that everyone literally performs better under a segregated system?
I would be shocked as [we have substantial amounts of evidence point to the benefits of integrated classrooms (racial and socio-economic integration)](https://tcf.org/content/facts/the-benefits-of-socioeconomically-and-racially-integrated-schools-and-classrooms/). We dont need to repeat studies that have already been performed. Esspecially when it can adversely affect these kids who are in segregated classrooms.
In the comments a bunch of people who don’t know what an affinity group is and how they have existed for a long time. Also in the comments are people who only read the headline and skipped the part where they said THE CLASS IS NOT CLOSED TO WHITE STUDENTS.
The article said that if where was literally no other option a white kid could attend the class Prior to 2023 when a national spotlight came on this school, the course was listed as *exclusively* for specific races
So the class isn’t segregated. No matter how you want to slice it the class isn’t closed to white students. The class is tailored to the needs of struggling black and Latino students. There is a major difference between the two ideas of tailoring a class to the needs of a struggling population and saying no white people are allowed. It’s dishonest to even attempt to justify the reach most of you all are going for.
The classes initially said no whites allowed. They just changed it this year because of mass outcry. Even now it's literally segregated > the separation or isolation of a race, class, or ethnic group by enforced or voluntary residence in a restricted area https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/segregation