Why progressives want "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"
George Wallace's Legacy: A Warning Against Segregation in the Guise of Progress
George Wallace, a name synonymous with staunch segregationist policies of the mid-20th century, would find a peculiar echo of his ideologies in a place least expected: the progressive policies of modern-day 'blue-state' school districts. It's a bizarre twist of fate to see these so-called progressives unwittingly mirroring tactics from an era many have strived to leave behind. To bridge racial achievement gaps, schools like Evanston Township High School in the Chicago area are encouraging black and Latino students to opt into racially-segregated classes, an approach that Wallace, notorious for his "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" stance, would have likely applauded.
This initiative exemplifies the rising trend of "affinity groups" in educational settings, where students are grouped by common identities, including race. This approach marks a notable evolution in educational philosophy, influenced substantially by critical race theory and its focus on skin color in educational practices. This focus is part of a broader strategy in preparing future educators to address racial disparities in their teaching, but it may inadvertently minimize the importance of other significant elements that contribute to academic disparities, such as cultural differences and varying levels of initial academic preparedness.
Despite the intention to mirror student demographics, the emphasis on hiring more minority teachers has not markedly improved academic outcomes for minority students. Instead, these equity-based approaches risk lowering academic standards, sidelining high achievers, and exacerbating racial divisions.
In stark contrast, schools like Alabama's Piedmont City Schools demonstrate that focusing on individual student needs rather than their racial background can lead to substantial improvements. They've successfully improved math scores by tailoring instruction to address specific academic weaknesses identified through test scores. This approach highlights the effectiveness of skill-based, personalized education over race-based policies.
Adopting tactics reminiscent of segregation under the banner of progressivism deepens the very divides that progressives aspire to close. Maybe it’s time for these people to revisit the vision of Martin Luther King Jr., who worked towards a society where people are valued for their character rather than their skin color. The move towards racially segregating students, even with the best intentions, appears to be a regression from the inclusive, unified society envisioned by King.
I am increasingly convinced that the key to genuine educational progress lies in valuing our shared humanity and addressing the individual needs and talents of each student, without regard to skin color. George Wallace’s segregationist history serves as a somber reminder because it warns us of the risks of inadvertently repeating the mistakes of history.
Faced with the shadow of George Wallace’s policies, are our current educational strategies truly honoring King’s legacy? How can we close achievement gaps without inadvertently reinforcing social and racial divides? And do we have the courage to forge an educational path that genuinely transcends race, one that celebrates and nurtures every student's unique abilities? The current trend of segregating students by race, despite good intentions, seems to deviate from the society King aspired to build.
In our efforts to advance and be ‘progressive’, are we not risking a regression to a past defined by division?
Clayton Craddock is a devoted father of two, an accomplished musician, and a thought-provoker dedicated to Socratic questioning, challenging the status quo, and encouraging a deeper contemplation on a range of issues. Subscribe to Think Things Through HERE, and for inquiries and to connect, email him here: Clayton@claytoncraddock.com
Just to come at this from my own reliably contrarian angle, I'd posit that the whole question of government domination of the education realm is being evaluated on the wrong premises. If one looks at state involvement in education as a state-owned industry, not unlike a Swedish coal mine or Russian gas supplier or Mexican railroad, the results of such an arrangement are predictable: a culture of unaccountable bureaucratic blameshifting, inauthentic ideological chest-pounding to disguise the backroom deal-making that truly gets things done in the general clamor for budgetary advantages, and worst of all, that crippling constant of all enterprises run by and for governments primarily in their own self-sustaining interests, self-serving careerism pursued by all means available (lawfully and otherwise) by all involved.
Add in the permanent and thoroughly domineering presence of public-employee unions, plus the clear and present continual threats of sexual predators, drug traffickers and factional moles carrying out their nefarious agendas on public payroll, not to mention the continual regeneration and encouraging of a vicious and cruel youth culture with more power over each other's daily lives than the state even knows how to envision (much less acknowledge as occurring on its watch), and I'm content to call state-sponsored education at every level in every form a catastrophic failure, and beyond repair: a total loss of every resource thus far invested, and among the most unconscionable of the countless national disgraces the American public sector has been empowered for generations to perpetrate.
American public education is not some flawed machine in need of a few tweaks, it is a vast criminal enterprise in need of comprehensive dismantling, and the sooner the better. As such, arguing constantly about such tangent notions as skin color versus character content (MLKjr, for all his sainted virtues assigned by pop-culture after the fact, was just a man who gave a few rousing speeches a long, long time ago, calling to mind as well that governments are never the ones to lead the way in coming to terms with such intensely interpersonal conundra as folks being different from one another, and generally serve only to make realistic solutions at that level all but impossible to implement...) is little more than a denial of the obvious and a delaying of the entirely necessary.
Naturally, it has been the norm for so long in the USA that children spend half or more of their waking hours during their youths as little more than government property, items of manufacture proceeding down an assembly line, that it may pose some difficulty for anyone to imagine any other approach to educating the young. But my own first principles, which hold that government left in charge of anything is certain to make a corrupt and mediocre calamity of things at every opportunity, strongly suggest that while non-state pathways to preparing the young for adulthood might not result in anything necessarily better than the embarrassing, plundering exercise in the warehousing of children in day-prisons passing as 'education' I have witnessed all my life, I for one find it hard to assume it could be any worse.