I think your hard work deserves recognition. I think it is pretty likely you wouldn't have a problem with a minority kid joining your school who is willing to behave and work hard.

I think that the New York school board has it all backwards. Instead of bringing in the poorly performing kids to the "advantaged" school they should bring in the highest performing kids from the lowest performing schools.

That way parents and students who work hard and succeed despite being in a crappy school are rewarded. And their the kids who would likely benefit from the enriched environment anyway. The poorly performing kids likely won't be able to keep up and will feel stupid.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

So does my hard work and sacrifices deserve any recognition or is it o.k. for a government's social experiment jeopardize my child's future? ///


Sounds similar to arguments you might have heard around the time of integration in 60's..Is this really any different? It is hard to reconcile, and on a micro level(yours and mine) we tend to look after our own. Question is I guess on the macro level, are we going to be better off making the gap between the have's and have nots larger or smaller?? I pretty much did exactly what you did, sold my house, picked up stakes, and moved to a top rated school district. Racism was not the reason, but for sure if you look at where I left to where I went, there is a stark difference in the races, so I guess one could infer that race was a factor in my decision, but they would be wrong. I'm not really happy about the racial makeup of the new schools either, it is the goldilocks conundrum, one too hot, one too cold, would be nice to find that just right mix. Problem is that the mixing that I had when I went to school, and continued for quite sometime, seems to have been reversing itself again, and likes tend to end up with likes, be it race, religion, social status, or finances.

One thing I know though, is I hate people that work to get theirs, achieve success, then roll(or try to)up the door behind them. Whatever system one works through to make it to the promised land, should be kept open and enhanced, not closed and/or turned into some obstacle course..(legal and ethical of course)

You don't understand because you are thinking on a binary scale, and people aren't binary in political views, not even the majority of the far right and left.

As for the topic at hand, consider this: You live in a neighborhood similar to mine. Nearly everyone is college educated, we all own $500k plus houses, and we are a mix of religions and races. Are kids play together, go to school together, interact socially. The religion and race cards never come into play. No one cares if you can afford to live here.

Now someone asks to put a house trailer on one of the empty lots. Would we be suddenly racist if we tried to block that family from moving into our neighborhood? Or are we just trying to protect our socio-economic status.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

This is a great point. One other thing I'd like to note is that my change in career was before I got married and had a child. I didn't want to move to that part of my life until I was in the right place.

I say this because I truly believe you must help yourself before you can help others. Maybe this is what trickle down means. When I couldn't afford it, I didn't donate money or time to others. But now, I have that opportunity and take advantage of it. And because of that I can set a good example for my family.

Doing things this way means it may take longer for those I help to recieve that help. But the help they get is much more beneficial.

Oh I agree with you. However, if those people moving into the trailer park are black or Hispanic and you fight against their moving into your neighborhood you will be labeled a racist.

Would the black couple next door, or the Indian couple across the street also be racist, because they would be right there next us.

How about the white guy who is married and Asian woman on the other side of me?

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

Of course not. BK is pseudo-saying that, as troll-bait. Ask him. People always strive to give their children the best oppourtunities.



You get plenty of recognition and advantages for working hard (or being lucky or inheriting a lot). Mobility and inequality were vastly worse centuries ago. Everyone would agree that things have improved since (ending slavery, paying for public education and public health are a few of the government "social experiments" that jeopardized some peoples' child's future).

Likewise, most people who study such things would admit that opportunity is becoming significantly more unequal in the past several decades, and government action is exacerbating it in some instances. Strict school zoning iand balkanization of poor school districts is a government policy. Other countries don't do that, the results are different.

Go ahead and play the game according to the present rules. We all do. That doesn't mean that the rules should never be evaluated or changed.

The black couple - no. The rest - yes.

Here's the key:


"Local news station Spectrum News NY 1 has posted a video that shows white parents furiously attacking a plan to require all local middle schools to reserve 25 percent of their seats for students who score below grade level on state English and Math exams."

The rule requires the school to keep a quarter of its seats for students who are performing poorly. Assuming the schools don't already have 25% of their students performing below grade level, the rule is requiring them to lower the quality of their student body, not from a racial perspective but from a performance perspective. The schools will be required to get worse. Why would any parent at those schools not have an issue with that concept?

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Just saw on CBS morning news; the NYC school chancellor apologized for re-tweeted that link calling the parents racists.

Says even though he apologizes, he still feels the need to desegregate those schools.

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''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

Yes, I saw that report too. Both Carranza and de Blasio keep talking about supporting these efforts at diversifying the schools. At least they admit this is basically an attempt at affirmative action.

Nailed it. They are ever where in this country. Look at Kay Serrar's response. I would call it racist but it is so much more, at the root of it is Classicism. We see it in our small town. Affordable housing is a huge issue, the county and three other entities set aside 17 acres of land in the late 90's to build affordable housing. The area has since been developed into an uber rich suburb, populated by aging Baby Boomers and Wall Street types working from home. Their lifestyle is wine tastings and left wing politics. Big time Hillary supporters. The county brings in a developer to build affordable housing? We have to stop "those people" (a quote from a public meeting) from living near them (they would have to drive by the development).

Seattle, DC, New York, LA even formerly Libertarian cities like Denver have all been polluted with idiot rich leftists, who at the heart of their beliefs, are Classicists, and often closet racists whose sole goal is to separate themselves and their idiot offspring from the unwashed masses.

And you wonder why we have Donald Trump as President?

Nice diatribe. There are plenty of Reublicans on the UWS who feel the same way as the Democrats you so hate. They are resisting the anti-meritocratic efforts to forcably reduce the academic standards in their schools while discriminating against students who work hard to achieve their grades. Race should not affect admissions decisions, and when the leaders pushing this proposal admit it is designed to increase diversity, they are admitting that race is driving the effort.

And anyone who says they would welcome this kind of policy in their own kids' school is most likely a liar.

Looks like it's not just the liberal elites on the UWS...

Trump seeks to sue schools over affirmative action seen to hurt whites

Just replying to the last post in the thread with some observations (I have 2 kids in NYC public schools).

• Parents' first loyalty is to their kids.
• NYC has the most racially and economically segregated public school system in the country. It runs the gamut from schools with no PA where 100% of the kids qualify for school vouchers to schools where the PA expects $15k of donations per kid per year and funds a second teacher in every class.
• Race is very rarely the driver for this segregation, rather the racial segregation is a function of a broader economic story that these parents have no say in or ability to alter. Perhaps no say is too strong, maybe they could drop their protests to actions like this, accept busing their kids to a shitty school that they'll be powerless to improve in their kids' timeline and do so gladly in the hope that three or four generations from now their investment in a more equitable society will bear fruit. But would you?

Wealthy has many meanings but I'd guess most of these families have chosen to buy or rent ludicrously expensive 1-2 bedroom apartments to avoid the property taxes of Westchester. They will have oriented their entire family life and finances in reliance on the fact that they have a 90% chance of getting into their local, neighborhood school. Of course they had no guarantees but the emotional investment they've made is huge and if you don't understand why passions would run high you're not thinking hard enough.

Finally, it's most liberal white New Yorkers' dream for their kids to test into one of the elite public high schools (Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech etc.). White kids are a decreasing minority in most of these.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

I just got a call from the jwbeuk of several years ago (the one who railed against "class warfare"), and he is wondering who stole his Slowtwitch account. Congratualations, Comrade Jwbeuk, you are now a class warrior!!Your post is a portrait of incoherence. You are railing against "idiot rich leftists" who seem to have figured out our capitalist system for better than the non-idiot conservatives. Are you just going to rail The reality is much more mundane, Folks at the top span the ideological spectrum. If they tend to vote for Clinton, it is because the far right went too far down the rabbit hole, and they refused to follow. The same NIMBY-ism happens in "conservative" areas, you just need to be resolutely and selectively blind to it.

By the way, Michael Goodwin, a staunch Conservative, has an Op Ed in the NY Post today, slamming this UWS schools proposal.

I'm old enough that I go back to the forced busing (and desegregation plan) days of the early 70s. I was in a Catholic school in my neighborhood, so it didn't affect me. But a lot of my friends from our blue collar working-class neighborhood ended up on buses, getting sent to a suburban Detroit school while kids from that school got bused to Detroit schools. This was all because a judge ordered that a busing plan be implemented to desegregate Metro Detroit schools. You can imagine how that went over back then. The Supreme Court struck down Detroit's busing plan in 1974 and the furor generally died down. The busing plan was insane and no adult in my neighborhood at the time was in favor of it.


Edited to add: Oh, and all you white folks are Klan hood-wearing racists! ;-) ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

What is the incentive for the teachers and administration to do better, when they are required to keep 25% of the population below grade level for math and English?

I believe someone else mentioned this earlier in the thread, a much better solution would be to have the top 25% move to these schools. What will the white children learn about other races when the only non-white people they interact with perform poorly in school?

Good point.

Why do you assume that the 25% below grade level will be non-white?

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''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

Also, why do you think the only other races that the white children will interact with will be in school? This is NYC, everywhere you go, you interact with people from all over the world.

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''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

I thought they would be all white, because it was stated in the opening comment that the schools were almost all white and Asian (I did leave out Asian).

I assumed the 25% below grade level would not be white because they were coming from schools that are mostly minorities. So the top and bottom 25% of that school would be minorities. These kids will obviously have interactions with non-white kids outside of school, but it won't be near the amount of time they spend with their classmates.

And now it's Boise:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/housing-crisis-small-cities-boise_us_5ae878f7e4b055fd7fcfcee0