Kozol: Still Separate, Still Unequal

I have chosen three quotes to focus on. The first focuses on how we use language to disguise the problem in our segregated schools - "Visitors to schools like these discover quickly the eviscerated meaning of the word [diverse], which is no longer a proper adjective but a euphemism for a plainer word that has apparently become unspeakable." Just as Johnson pointed out that we must use the words, here Kozol is addressing the same issue. If we don't call it what it is, then how can we recognize the problem? However, I think Kozol is putting more onus on society than Johnson, in that it is a purposeful misleading or cover-up going on. After all, the last time people recognized segregation as a societal evil there was civil unrest, protests, marches, and violence. It is like a dirty little family secret that everyone refers to with a code phrase. Our dirty secret? Our schools are not actually integrated. In fact, they are quite segregated with fewer than 10% white students attending public urban schools in the countries largest cities and not in the South - in the North, too - Chicago, Hartford, Seattle, etc.

"This...would not happen to white children." These are the words of a principal of such a school, in reference to the disrepair of the building. This quote has great meaning because Kozol is again pointing a finger. We have allowed segregation to continue and for the inequalities to arise again. If the schools were integrated white parents, politicians, journalists would be ensuring that their children would not go to school under such deplorable conditions. Indeed, they don't. But they also don't try to stop it from going on. Additionally, excuses are made and stalling around issues of economics. Both ideas of there isn't money and money wouldn't help are used to withhold from these "diverse" urban schools. These are lies to cover up the dirties secret of all. That in fifty years we have not gone away from that leaky one room shack school house in the woods, but rather we are moving towards it again. And it begins at two years old with "Baby Ivies" and moves up to elementary schools run like Nazi camps for minimum wage workers, lacking in recess, art, music, and many other programs, where students are prepared for a high school that does not prepare for college, where nearly half of the students will not even graduate.

My last quote is from a student in reference to another student who is upset that she is forced to take remedial/home ec courses instead of having the opportunity to take AP courses. He says, "You're ghetto, so we send you to the factory. You're ghetto - so you sew!" This student much like Kozol is pointing to a conspiracy to keep the powerful and wealthy at the top and the poor and disadvantaged at the bottom. It is difficult not to see it this way when so much evidence is presented. How could "we" not see what is going on? Why are we not taking to the streets? Are we conspirators or do we live in some foggy dreamworld where we believe "The Dream" is real because we aren't forced to look at the problem because we go to different schools and use words like diverse? And we have a Black president - evidence of all our great progress...