Saturday, January 15, 2000
The forgotten children are our future, too
BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
My, how we do celebrate the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
A freedom-fighter's life comes down to a three-day ski weekend for us, or a freebie Monday to wash the car. Maybe one of these days we'll figure out a way to commercialize it like Christmas.
And look at what pleasant use we've found for his words. We've managed to find reassurance, not a blow to our conscience, in the dreams he held for his children. Surely we tempt Providence when we take comfort from words meant to inflict righteous discomfort.
This weekend would be a fitting time to think about issues of justice in this country, and the plight of American children. There is cause for celebration; there are facts we can't ignore.
For the most part, the children of our cities have never been more isolated, more left to their own neighborhoods, schools and devices. Re-segregation has run through urban districts like a fever. Suburban schools and private schools walk wide circles around them; afraid, it appears, of catching their disease.
And reform movements, like some untested treatment, cure only some of the children and leave the rest to languish.
A social code at schools
And then there are the other schools, the ones our own children are more likely to attend. Things look better there, considered in terms of equity and diversity. The student body is not one race, and maybe not even one income level. Dr. King's dreams could come true there, we'd like to believe.
But those of us who are in schools regularly — and willing to be honest — know that different standards exist there for different groups of children. So does a subtle but powerful code of social stratification.
Funny thing. Playgrounds seem to have invisible but impenetrable color zones. Lunchroom tables almost appear to be arranged by hue. And in schools where children do genuinely mix by color, economic class becomes the Berlin Wall.
These are very unpleasant matters. Troubling. We don't normally choose to go there. But let us, if only for one weekend each year.
All it takes is a few straightforward questions. How many poor kids are invited home after school by a middle-class classmate? How many make the birthday-party circuit? How many times is a certain segment of the class or school, for all practical purposes, nonexistent?
Students who disappear
Really. They just disappear. Almost every school has them. They come to the school every day from a poorer neighborhood, from families of a different race or occupational class than the majority. Every day, they move in their own orbit, with friends who come from the same background, and are relegated to the same caste.
They aren't necessarily hated, or even taunted. They aren't excluded by forethought at all. They are simply not seen, never counted as part of the group in the first place.
Everyone keeps polite silence about such arrangements. No one seems to notice that the children from “that” neighborhood appear to only interact with other children from that neighborhood.
No one appears worried that the odd man out in the classroom — the child from a different race, religion or ethnic background — never seems to be on the same social page as the rest. His parents seem absent as well.
Segregation, it appears, hasn't been cast off at all, but indeed brought closer. Perhaps if you do it nicely, it doesn't really count.
It's an apt question to struggle with now, for one day those discounted, uncounted students will come to us with a question of their own.
Which dream was it that was mine?
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202, or e-mail her at krista_ramsey@hotmail.com.
