Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Reverse discrimination?
There’s a good question in the comments under my recent post that showed black kids graduate at a much higher rate than white kids in Dayton. “Elementaryhistoryteacher” asks, “what is the ratio of white teachers/adm. to black teachers/adm.?”
Others commenters have come out even more directly and suggested there is reverse discrimination going on in Dayton — that perhaps white students are ignored or worse. Commenter “None Yabiz” describes the experience as a white student at Colonel White High School in 2001 as so unpleasant that he or she opted for a GED instead.
But is there widespread reverse discrimination in the district? Are teachers and other students actively pushing white students out?
The answer to Elementaryhistoryteacher’s question seems to suggest it can’t be too widespread.
I was unable to quickly find a racial breakdown for teachers in the district today. But I found a story I wrote in 2002 that looked at teacher race. At that time I was surprised to discover that a strong majority (63 percent) of Dayton’s teachers are white (I would probably have guessed the breakdown would be closer to 50-50).
Even more interesting, though, was how little that breakdown had changed over the prior 25 years. I would have expected at least something of a swing toward more black teachers starting after court-ordered desegregation brought cross-town busing to Dayton. But in fact, the racial makeup of the district’s teachers was virtually unchanged from 1976, when it was 63.6 percent white.
If teacher race has been that steady for that long it’s probably not terribly different today. Does it seem likely then that there would be widespread discrimination against white students in a school district where nearly two-thirds of the teachers are white? I wouldn’t guess there would be.
What is likely is that white students, at schools where they are in extremely small numbers, feel the same sort of prejudices and stereotypes that any small, isolated minority group feels. It’s just far more common in the U.S. to see black, Hispanic or Asian kids in these situations.
Several months back I wrote about UD professor Ron Katsuyama’s studies of children, how they perceive race and when those perceptions evolve to stereotypes and prejudices. The study found far less prejudice and discrimination among kids in schools with high minority enrollments of 29 to 40 percent.
The problems were worst at schools with extremely low minority enrollments of less than 10 percent. This is a strong argument for truly integrated schools. When enough diverse kids mix together they tend to understand each other better and display less prejudice. Both the majority and the minority kids benefit from this understanding.
In Dayton, with a high school enrollment that is 80 percent black, integration is an enormous challenge. And currently more than three-quarters of the white high school kids go to either Stivers or Belmont high schools.
That means extremely small numbers at the other four major high schools. White enrollment is less than 10 percent at Patterson, Colonel White, Meadowdale and Dunbar high schools.
So perhaps the discomfort that students like None Yabiz feel is the unfortunate, but predictable, result of very unbalanced schools.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Comments
By Rick
July 9, 2006 12:18 PM | Link to this
Scott, I believe that you are trying to make a case for what you want to be the truth rather than the facts as they are. When I was active in trying to get the DPS to improve people would come and tell of all sorts of discrimination/hostility to whites. Have you seen the bill boards for ISUS? I quote, “No bullies.” Hello, what could they be talking about. ISUS is meant to address drop outs, and guess who a lot of them are? Sorry, Scott, but bigotry by black students against white students is widespread and serious.By Mary
July 8, 2006 6:00 AM | Link to this
Maybe the situation is just part of the herd mentality of many education environments. If a student does not have or want his or her own herd or clique to hang out with, the education environment becomes torture. I think teachers and staff also become part of the herd mentality. Minority groups of races, thinkers, sexes, etc are less likely to be absorbed into the herd.By Darla
July 7, 2006 6:25 PM | Link to this
There is no such thing as “reverse discrimination”. Whether it is towards blacks, whites, hispanics, Asians, Indians, or whoever, it is discrimination. Anyone who denies anyone education, employment, medical care, housing or anything else based on race is practicing discrimination. And whites can be victims of discrimination too.By Oldprof
July 7, 2006 6:07 PM | Link to this
Is it happening, or is it an individual thing? I don’t doubt None Yabiz’ experience, but we have only one side of that story. Were there other Anglo students in that high school who had better relationships with non-whites? Did None report egregious instances and require the school authorities to implement effective intervention? I attended high school back in the 19XXs (I’m old but I’m not tellin’ HOW old) in a place with under 10% minority enrollment—I didn’t have to worry about race-based prejudice, the other white students were aggressively violent enough for anyone to feel endangered. BTW, why do we continue to use “reverse discrimination” instead of the simpler, more accurate term, “prejudice”? Would the “reverse” of something actually be its opposite—the reverse of racial discrimination (note how we lost the “racial” qualifier since the days of King and Shabazz) would be complete equality, wouldn’t it?By elementaryhistoryteacher
July 7, 2006 5:25 PM | Link to this
I was surprised to see my name listed in the intro part of your post and thought to myself, “Oh my, what have I gone and done now.” However, I appreciate you taking the time to delve into this matter a bit more. I’ll admit that I did wonder about reverse discrimination when I saw None Yabiz’s comment. However, after reading your follow up I would tend to think you’re right about the white students suffering from minority-itus. The thing is….white or black, purple or green, it shouldn’t be happening and, I wonder how it can be fixed.