An online magazine called “Southern Spaces” has a booklet length
article “Segregationists, Libertarians, and the Modern ‘School Choice’ Movement”,
by Steve Suitts in Atlanta, link.
The general concept is that many parents still want to get
to choose whom their kids don’t have to go to school with.
I can remember being taught about Brown v. Board of
Education (1954) in “General Education” class in seventh grade middle school,
in 1956. But I saw very few black students in middle school or high school
through to my 1961 graduation from Washington-Lee (name recently changed to
Washington-Liberty).
I suppose that “school choice” will result in private
schools with fewer black students that statistics would justify.
That may be less true of Catholic schools. Many parents will pay for Catholic school simply
because they know that, through all the conservatism, they will get a great grasp
of fundamental academic skills. Those Covington kids turned out to be very
strong indeed.
I have to admit that I have sometimes heard shocking
statements in family gatherings (from my parents’ side) as recently as maybe 2007
still wanting some kind of segregation. It’s infrequent, but it has happened. I
think of Kyle Kashuv’s unfortunately foolish behavior at sixteen, as reflection
of private conversations of the adults in his life then, probably.
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