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Mad Poster
#51 Old 31st Jul 2014 at 7:31 PM
Ocram, I can't speak for those who disagreed with you, but I'm pretty strongly in the camp that almost all of the USA education systems are so broken they need to be scrapped and replaced. Some districts seem to be successful at educating, but most seem to be more competent at warehousing students.

We home school ours, so I'm not as concerned about the schools as those who do utilize them. It's kind of the difference between watching a car wreck versus being in a car wreck.

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"English is a marvelous edged weapon if you know how to wield it." C.J. Cherryh
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Instructor
#52 Old 24th Aug 2014 at 8:16 PM
One of the problems with school systems in the U.S. is that in many parts of the country they have been effectively re-segregated. Decades of White Flight has led to mostly segregated communities, especially in the southern states. Additionally, many white families send their children to private schools rather than public schools. This, in turn, makes these taxpayers less willing to support politicians that are pro-public education, which leads to less funding for inner city schools. Rinse, cycle, repeat, and the problem just snowballs. This problem has been especially magnified in recent years with some politicians being able to sneak in tax credits for religious private schools. It is not an inherently racial issue on the face of it, but go to a private school and a public school in a state like Mississippi, and you can probably imagine the racial makeup of each classroom.

Now, that isn't to say that there aren't public school systems in the U.S. that are good. There are many. Maryland and Massachusetts are two places that come to mind with excellent public education systems. But these are the exception to the rule, lately.

The state of public vs. private schools in the U.S. is why affirmative action is still so important today. Kids graduating from public school systems are inherently disadvantaged in relation to those from private schools. And as of this year, white students constitute a minority (though still a plurality) within public school systems across the whole of the United States.

I'm really tired of seeing people try to play victim when it comes to supposed "reverse racism" as it relates to affirmative action and other similar programs. Just a quick runthrough of some basic statistics:

Median household wealth:
White: $91,405
Black: $6,446

Median household income:
White: $59,754
Black: $35,416

Home ownership:
White: 72.9%
Black: 43.5%

Poverty rate:
White: 9.7%
Black: 27.2%

I could go on. The point is that no matter how you approach the problem, there is not a level playing field when it comes to race in the United States. People love to point out anecdotes that contradict the statistics. But individual outliers do not change the raw facts. There is no such thing as "reverse racism". Maybe call it "ever-so-slightly-lessened hegemony".
 
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