About Us > Urban Perspectives > October 2008

A Civil Right For This Century?

It’s a hot and heavy election race that pits an urban candidate (Obama) verses an exurban candidate (McCain).  It’s a bit comical that each is emphasizing “coming together” as a country while they tear at the other’s throat.  But, hey, that’s politics, right?

However, shortly after his nomination, John McCain made a statement that I would think Barack Obama might agree with.   I certainly do.  My urban perspective, however, qualifies the agreement.  Mr. McCain said:

“Education is the civil rights issue of this century.”

Agreed.  But, let’s remember, it was the key civil rights issue of the previous century and the one before that as well. 

Before mandatory public education and during slavery, the most grievous violation of a slave holder’s rights (after inciting insurrection) was educating a slave to read.  This, of course, was based upon local laws supported by national laws withholding citizenship rights to slaves and other people of color.

After slavery was abolished and “freedmen” received citizenship, public education became an right for all children.  But the social philosophy that under girded slavery had just morphed into social segregation.  In the South segregation was mandated by law, in the North it was maintained by social convention.  When segregated education was finally challenged in the court system as inferior (Plessy v Ferguson, 1896), a “separate but equal” policy in public schools was adopted.  However, only the first half of that legal opinion was enacted and protected.  White society simply was not going to educate black children on par with their own.

Other oppressed minority groups have their versions of the same experience with a common theme: the promise of Equal Education has never been kept.  Today our inner cities are repositories of this legacy.  No longer are children kept from quality schools because of the color of their skin, however their parents must be able to afford to live in a community that offers good schools.  The urban ghettos inherited the social ills created by slavery and supported by Jim Crow and the insidiously evil economic slavery of sharecropping.  In the 50s, 60s and into the 70’s northern cities were over whelmed by some 5,000,000 poor, often illiterate, southern field workers displaced by the mechanization of the cotton industry.  The cities were overrun with need and “white flight” became the norm.

The expanding ripple of this massive demographic shift has not stopped.  McCain is quite accurate when he says children are being denied the right to quality education on the basis of their place of birth and living surroundings.

For decades now the solution to such a vexing problem seems to be beyond us.  Local and state government have tried (i.e. forced busing) and largely failed generation after generation even though social scientists tell us that the number one indicator of crime is poor education.  Some states actually predict their need for prison cells based upon male reading scores in fourth grade.  In 1980 the justice system decided to get tough on crime and pour billions into prison construction.  “If you build it, they will come” has never proven more true.  When the effort began, about 500,000 people were in jail or prison.  Today that total has ballooned to the unbelievable total of 2.5 million.

The intractable problems of our failed educational system are staggering and I, for one, am tired of hearing about it only every four years as an election campaign talking point (from both sides). Behind the statistics are real live children, behind them are parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles.  These are people, exactly like you and like me who have dreams for their children and grand children.

The difference is that most of us have the means to make that choice – the choice to move into a community with good schools or the choice to pay for a quality education, a choice that pays dividends in the future.

What if every family that had the means to make such a choice for their child made a change possible for another?  This would not necessitate new legislation, new taxes or governmental action.  In fact, such an action is much like the Good Samaritan story or loving your neighbor as yourself.  If every family enabled just one child to go to a school of their choice (i.e. through a scholarship) it could transform our society in a generation or two.

Will it happen?  The answer is up to you.