Race/Class/Gender/etc. Do they still matter?

[sapphi_snake]

mrstickball said:

Forced districting means that a certain school must take all kids from a given area - a 'district'. For example, I live in one school district, and must send my kid (if I had one. My wife is pregnant, so we'll be having one shortly, though) to this local school district. I can't send him to the better school that is closer than this one, because my house is 1 mile from the district line. In some cases, it is allowed if the family pays money to the district, but most people don't have the money.

When that happens, it means that if you have a neighborhood that has a crappy school, everyone - white, black, hispanic - must go to that school no matter what. In Ohio, a woman was sent to jail for sending her kids to the school that was better, because she was outside of her district.

The districting issue isn't racist - its an issue where everyone suffers, but due to the location of some racial groups, some suffer more inadvertantly. Of course, I'm big on vouchering as the solution to this (e.g. allow all children an education voucher to go to whatever school they want - any public, any private, any religious up to a certain dollar value).

In the end, I don't believe racial inequalities are due to inequal opportunities, but due to cultural factors that play a significant part in hindering some peoples' education or lifestyles. For example, crime among poor blacks and poor whites is usually about the same. However, since there are more poor blacks than poor whites, there are more blacks that commit crimes. Some see this as racial bias, but I see it as a socio-economic bias that just happens to effect some more than others. Furthermore, its not that you don't want to fix the issue, but we have to ensure we fix the issue without favoritism via racial quotas, or things that benefit one race over the other, which we do a lot of in America.

Can't you just send your kid to a private school? I mean that voucher stuff just seems pointless.