I have had conversations with teachers and others who say that blacks do poorly because racist whites move out and abandon the area after blacks moved in. I always asked, isn’t it racist to think that blacks needs whites around for them to succeed? And why did the whites move away?
I watched this happen in a community I lived in over the past ten years. It was interesting and frightening to watch. At first, everyone was neighborly and there were no problems. Then fights started in schools. These fights always involved multiple black attackers going after one white kid, when they weren’t fighting each other. Class disruptions became daily events and soon no one was learning because the increasingly outrageous, rude, disrespectful behavior by some black students. This behavior necessitated the teacher continually dealing with them and not teaching, so no one was able to learn. The behavior was not amenable to correction, and the teachers and deans were afraid to deal with it for fear of being called racist. State test scores began to plummet and schools that once exceeded state standards were now deficient. White kids were afraid to go to school and weren’t learning.
White people started to leave the area. As they did, home prices began to drop. Some sellers started renting to section 8 clients, which brought people not invested in the neighborhood in, and their children who began tearing up the neighborhood. Crime went up and burglaries began to be common place. There was a big fight of 10 or more black males in the street a few doors down from me. My next door neighbor’s son was jumped by multiple attackers while playing basketball alone in his driveway. I cannot tell you how many times I had a conversation with neighbors who all said the same thing, “I just don’t feel safe. My kids can’t play outside, My kids are not learning at school”. They voted with their feet, and moved. That area is now 95% black. The vast majority of whites did not move because they were racist or blacks moved in. Many were welcoming or simply passively indifferent. But when they no longer felt safe, when their kids did not feel safe in school, and when their children were being denied an education by the uncivilized behavior and failure of adult educators to maintain order; they left.
Whites are not responsible for the behavior of blacks. They also should not sacrifice their kids education or the safety of their families on the altar of political correctness and wokeness. My desire for all those on the New York Times staff is to get to live in the hell that their policies and recommendations create.
I experienced much of what you describe as the deteriorating school situation. White kids were targeted, and usually by groups of black kids. I experienced bullying, racist epithets, threats, and theft. I was quick to get out of the way when I heard angry shouting or glass breaking and furniture being thrown around. I remember climbing out the window once when I was in about 8th grade. Another peaceful protest had begun and it wasn’t safe to be there so I walked home. This was in the late 1960’s to early 1970’s, as unrest spilled over from the big city protests. I was immensely relieved to get out of the public schools and off to college where this stuff wasn’t going on. My college classmates from sheltered suburbs were tremendous liberals of course. They’d never had to deal with this crap and feel unsafe so it was easy to flap their lips about injustice.
“Class disruptions became daily events and soon no one was learning because the increasingly outrageous, rude, disrespectful behavior by some black students.”
The fights can be and are dealt with. It’s all of the loud disruptive behavior short of a fight that wears everyone down. And of course the black kids who were perfectly fine before the families moved in started emulating the new kids. It was terrible. And we lost a couple of families of good kids who had the means to escape the hell their kids classrooms had become.
As you say, the teachers’ jobs become more crowd controller than teacher. Happily in my school’s case, the two families moved away after about a year and several visits to the home by the sheriff’s office. As soon as they left, the school returned to what it had been before. As a public school, we have to take every kid in the district, and it doesn’t take all that much to change the school for the worse.
That's a pretty accurate picture you paint of what happens in areas with forced integration, or even when a lot of blacks move into an area. I wish it weren't true, but I've seen it happen often enough that it is pretty predictable. When I was in high school (a LONG time ago) in a provincial Midwest town, the city elders decided that our lily-white high school needed some black students bussed in from the center of town. Maybe there was some new legislation tying funding with integration, I don't know. Anyway, 10 or 20 black students were bussed in. Things started happening in our pristine school. Graffiti, often carved into the desk, began appearing on desk chairs. Disruptions of a serious nature began in classes. As for integration, the bussed-in students strictly stuck to themselves in the cafeteria during lunch period. As more and more were bussed in, the school tone changed, and respect for teachers dropped. More destruction of school property occurred. This is what actually happened. I saw it firsthand. And then I saw it repeat itself several times over as I grew older, especially when I became a teacher.
One would have to conclude that there simply isn't the respect for education in black culture as there is in white and Asian culture. And that's a shame.