When we talk about race in America, we are also inevitably talking about economics. And when we talk about economics, we are also talking about education. These were all subjects raised at tonight's community forum on race relations in Tuscaloosa, AL. I was impressed that this town––through efforts from groups such as Tuscaloosa Race Relations Initiative, Just Us, Tuscaloosa Education Network, and One Tuscaloosa––is having this conversation, because when I moved here, I heard an instructor quote a student as saying, "We don't talk about race here in Alabama." I don't know of other communities anywhere having this conversation (I'm sure there are, I'm just too lazy and dumb to look into it), but it should be happening everywhere.
After arriving at Central High School, I was seated at a cafeteria table with an interesting mix of people from the community: A male African American doctor; a white male college student from the New College self-guided curriculum program at the U of A; a white female nurse; a female African American who is a professional in her 30s; a white female retired teacher; a man from India in his 60s, who has lived here for 35 years; a white female graduate student studying education; and a distinguished African American gentleman who graduated from the U of A in the 1960s.
The man who entered the U of A in 1966, when he was just one of six African American students (integration, and Governor Wallace's infamous stand, was in 1963), is a successful man (I didn't catch his career) who believes government cannot solve problems, but, rather, Alabamians themselves can decide to change their state and the problems that plague us by channeling our resources and efforts into positive things. He pointed out that Alabama decided it wanted to be great at football, and now they're number one, because Alabamians pool their resources in order to accomplish this. He said that there's too much concentration on race and not enough on these bigger problems, such as those outlined in the article from the Tuscaloosa news I linked in my last post. He also thinks, as some conservatives will say, the problems begin inside the homes, with the parents. He seems to subscribe to the school of "If I can accomplish this, then so can you."
The difficulty with his arguments are that you cannot legislate what goes on inside people's homes, but you can focus resources on education, which, as it's been shown in the southern state of Kerala in India (scroll down on the Web page for this example), can help alleviate many problems, such as lowering birth rates and improving child health, which are huge problems in Alabama.
But we live in a country where 18.2% of African American males are unemployed (national average is 9.5%) and a state where the African American population makes up 26% of the residents but only 12% of the students at the University of Alabama. Add to this that the poorest and worst performing schools are usually the ones with the tannest children, then you see when we're talking about race, we're talking about economics no matter how much you want to believe everyone has an equal opportunity in this great nation. Read one of Jonathan Kozol's books, such as Savage Inequalities or The Shame of the Nation, and you'll be pissed off about the "education gap" too.
But my friend is correct, because we can choose to change the situation, but only if we pool our resources and pump talented people and resources into our poorest and tannest schools. As the late comedian Bill Hicks once said, "Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, into a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year and, instead, spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would do many times over––not one human being excluded––and we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever." So to answer my friend, educated people change what goes on inside and outside their own households, and you can legislate and enforce real equal education.
As we moved around the table, the African American doctor said the problem is that white people don't know what it's like to be black. I wanted to tell him, "Hell, white people don't know what it's like to be white, because we've never understood the position of privilege our skin affords us." (Most of us haven't read Tim Wise's wonderful book White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, where he does a great job explaining white privilege to us.) The doctor said he's had his children invite the white neighbor's children to swim in their pool several times. "You think they've ever swam in my pool? No." He also said he has a white neighbor whom he waves to every day, but the man never waves back. He confronted him one day about his lack of waving, and the man said, "Well, I don't know you."
And there's the problem. There is not enough interaction between the races. Sure, there's a ton more than there was in the 1960s, but, by and large, we still live in incredibly segregated neighborhoods and attend segregated churches. If you're not friends with people who don't look like you, why would you ever give a shit about them? So I raised my hand at the end of the forum and asked if they'll be organizing any informal social events, like happy hours at bars and whatnot (because this is where real change and deals and friendships happen). I said, "You know, I had some great conversations tonight, but I didn't get to speak to those people over there, or the people in the back, and I don't know if I'll see the people from my table again." Because, after the forum, everyone got in their cars and went back to their own parts of town, to their own worlds clouded with their own problems, and we forgot about the bigger problems we face as a culture and community.
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