This American Life: #563: The Problem We All Live With - Part Two

August 9, 2015 7:50 PM

Last week we looked at a school district integrating by accident. This week: a city going all out to integrate its schools. Plus, a girl who comes up with her own one-woman integration plan.
posted by lunch (6 comments total)

This was much a looser episode than last week's, although I completely identified with the first segment. I attended an (at the time) all-black newly opened charter school where I was one of four non-black students, and while the school's racial makeup was apparent in its rhetoric and curricular focus I don't recall having issues acclimating, and as far as I recall, questions of safety and the number of other white students never arose. It's increasingly apparent from this and last week's episode that white parents' concerns that their children won't be able to adjust to a school in which they aren't the majority is often an unfounded and projected fear, especially because there's great value for a white person to be in a scenario in which they aren't part of the majority.

One of the topics that the episode didn't address are schools that have a half magnet population and half zoned population, as was the kind I went to in middle school and was prevalent in the city I grew up. These programs brought white students into historically segregated schools, but then had separate magnet classes and events, disallowing the zoned students full access to the school's resources. It also created a hierarchy in which the magnet students were deemed better and smarter and were the greater focus of the school's attention, whereas the zoned students were almost deemed an inconvenience. It's possible that that system of magnet school could work, but it led to the magnet students having greater egos and reinforcing their racial stereotypes, and the zoned students being denied any of the advantages of the new magnet program and feeling ignored.
posted by lunch at 8:38 PM on August 9, 2015 [1 favorite]

I am white and not American, so I am not qualified to comment on this, except i did not have a planetarium or any of those fancy things in my high school. I am insanely jealous. Every school should have one. Or a lab of some kind, every kid ever should have one.
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 3:35 AM on August 10, 2015

Can someone tell me what the difference between "white boy wasted" and non-white wasted is? I'm still not sure. Sadly, I'm not being a deliberate smartass about that either, I want to know!
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:59 PM on August 10, 2015

I think the idea is that white kids feel more comfortable getting absolutely shitfaced because they're not afraid of getting hassled, arrested, judged, etc. A white kid can get drunk and not worry that they are embarrassing their entire race. I'm white and have never been wasted, so I could be wrong about that though.
posted by chaiminda at 3:23 AM on August 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

One of the topics that the episode didn't address are schools that have a half magnet population and half zoned population, as was the kind I went to in middle school and was prevalent in the city I grew up. These programs brought white students into historically segregated schools, but then had separate magnet classes and events, disallowing the zoned students full access to the school's resources.

This was brought up a few times on Serial, with Jay being a "zoned" kid and (I think) Hae and Adnan being "magnet" kids all going to the same school.
posted by sparklemotion at 8:47 AM on August 11, 2015

Really good episode. I appreciated that there was acknowledgement of the racial dynamics of the show itself at the end.
posted by latkes at 1:52 PM on August 22, 2015