Soham Ghoshal
12th grade
Stuyvesant High School
Orientation
Week:
What topic in educational equity do you consider to be the most
important?
I think the most important topic n educational equity to consider
is the topic of the students getting an education that correlates directly to
the neighborhood they’re in. Many students around the country are not getting
equal public education or even the opportunity to succeed. The NYBOE will spend
about $8k annually on a the education of a third grade child in a NYC
public school. But if you placed them in the white suburbs of NY, the student
would be receiving as much as $18k annually — more than twice the amount(Kozol
45). Studies also show that districts with higher poverty rates have fewer
highly educated and experienced teachers and the students in these same
districts have little to no chance of getting into or sometimes even testing
for gifted-and-talented schools. In the article titled Still Separate Still
Unequal, a student writes that “we don’t have n gardens, no Music or Art, and
no fun places to play. Is there a way to fix this problem?”(Kozol
44).
I think it is unfair that the the public education system relies
on wealth and which neighborhood you are in. After all is said and done, this
system only helps one type of people: the rich. This system directly benefits
the rich and wealthy because they are able to grow up in an equitable environment
where they have relatively little competition with the majority of people who
are impoverished and cannot escape from that situation. This is reflected in
the pay of the teachers who work in these different situations as well—a
teacher who works in an average NYC school makes about $43k, whereas teachers
working in Manhasset and Scarsdale (which are places that are a half hour drive
from queens) get up to $81k in their teaching. So no wonder they would put more
effort into teaching, and be able to supply for more. I believe that as long as
schools are paid for based off of where you live, this kind of inequitable
situation will continue to exist.
Week 1:
In what ways has Brown Vs. Board of Ed achieved its goals of
insuring education equity? And in what ways has it not?
America is supposed to be the land of the free and the equal—for
reason which Brown v. BOE of Topeka was passed. This decision overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, which stressed that the citizens of the united states remained
“separate but equal”. But of course separate wasn’t equal and the warren court
stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”. The
passing of integration was successful in that it definitely ended a period of
straight out segregation where people were forced to go to different schools.
It ended the racism and the inequalities set forth by the Jim Crow Laws. But
saying everyone is now equal is different from actually making them equal.
What Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka did not stress was equity. It
made everyone equal, but it did not give everyone the same opportunity to rise
in power. People who were in all-black schools often had terrible learning
environments and just because they were allowed to go to white schools with
better teachers and facilities, didn’t mean they could. People would physically
stop black people from going into white schools and thus many black people
remained in their oppressed zones and bad neighborhoods. This can be seen today
as well: in the projects of Bronx, or the lower east side in Manhattan, or in
East New York in Brooklyn—it’s everywhere. Majority of “colored” people still
do not have the opportunity to move out of their homes and into better
neighborhoods, and although by law everyone is equal, by practice they are not.
Week 2:
Assuming
the premise that reverse racism is “a condition in which discrimination against
a racial group takes place, often as an attempt at redressing past wrongs”,
affirmative action creates reverse racism. Affirmative action in the United
States is often seen regrading education and employment and often times it is
referred to as “positive discrimination” or “positive action”. Favoring members
of a disadvantaged group who have to face discrimination within a certain
culture via gender or racial quotas is indeed trying to favor a group because
of a past wrong. Hence, it does create reverse racism, but that’s not to say
that it is inherently bad.
As the term racism denotes a contemptuous feeling towards another
group—often caused by a feeling of superiority—reverse racism focuses on fixing
that problem through a positive discrimination. Setting racial quotas for—let’s
say, african americans—allows for the application process to be more equitable
for those who would not otherwise have the opportunity. This however, does make
it unfair for others who may also not have equal opportunity and are not
falling under policies of affirmative action. In 2003, the supreme court ruled
Affirmative action unconstitutional in the case of Gratz v. Bollinger, saying that The University of Michigan violated the Equal
protection Clause of the Fourteenth amendment because it attributed a point
increase in its ranking system to people of certain races rather than making
individual determinations. Although affirmative action may be beneficial to
some minorities and it helps bridge the gap in educational equity in some ways,
it is still unfair to the rest of the world who do not fall under those
minority groups. Thus, Affirmative action does indeed create reverse racism.
Week 3:
I
think that diversity in the classroom is often looked over and ignored because
it may not be part of a certain curriculum since there usually aren’t classes
devoted to talking about social issues. One way to combat this is to encourage talking
about diversity as a whole—by incorporating it into our curriculum or even by
reading more books that pertain to racial issues. Personally, I’ve never read a
charged book about race in school— something like To Kill a Mockingbird was
never part of our curriculum, but I think it is a very important book. I think
by incorporating things that already speak on the topic of racism and at least
introducing the topic of microagressions, we can encourage diversity in the
classroom as a whole.
There are different races and different cultures with different
beliefs, but it isn’t wrong to speak on the topic of micro aggressions and how
to stop them. I don’t think it would cause any issues or stem into another
Edwards V. Aguillard supreme court case by speaking on this topic but to slowly
introduce it into things that are not only literature would help encourage
diversity in the classroom.
note: This may be a repost because I was looking through my posts
and I don't think my post from last week went through. Ignore if it is a
repost!
Week 4:
I think that micro aggressions and other inequities will
inevitably persist largely due to the dominant middle class culture and power
because majority of the solutions to micro aggressions and other inequities are
not complete solutions and there’s no way to stop them. Micro aggressions come
about because of the culture that we live in in which we judge other based off
stereotypes, generalizations, etc. One example of a stereotype is that black
people love rap/hip-hop, drugs, and violence, which stems from the dominant
middle class culture of music and entertainment. Since most rappers that are in
the media are black, the media acts as a filter, making the general population
believe that all rappers are black and that most black people like rap.
Changing this stereotype would require a lot of time and effort because even
though there are many white rappers and other race rappers, the general middle
class public do not correlate rap to them. When people hear rap they usually
think about Jay-Z, Drake, Meek Mill, etc, but they usually don’t correlate it
directly to white rappers like Macklemore or Hoodie Allen. The hardest part
about changing these microagressions is that most people do not even realize
that they’re doing it and since theres no one to tell them that they’re being
unintentionally racist or biased towards a group, they won’t be able to recognize
that they’re in the wrong or that they should change what they’re saying.
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