To open opportunities to all kids, we must confront adults’ ingrained bias

2017, Mayor de Blasio is reported to have said that he does not use the word “segregation” to describe the city’s schools, that schools whose students are almost entirely black and Latino can provide a good education as long as they are funded equally — which is another way of saying that the unconstitutional doctrine of separate but equal might be okay — and that there is little to be done to desegregate city elementary schools because their segregation is caused by residential segregation patterns and no one wants busing. This thinking belongs in another century; the arrival as schools chancellor of Richard Carranza, who far more candidly discusses segregation, has underlined the disconnect. Yet the fear of integrated schools is very much a part of our contemporary present. Just this past May, a proposal in District 3, a school district covering the West Side of Manhattan from 59th St. to 122nd St., suggested giving struggling elementary-school students, many of whom are black, Latino and/or economically vulnerable, priority for admission to most middle schools. High-performing middle schools, usually those with a white, middle- or upper-class majority, would be required to reserve up to 25% of their seats for students who scored at the lowest two levels on state math and English tests.

One parent at a meeting convened to discuss the proposal, Josh Auerbach, whose daughter is a fifth-grader at P.S. 199, said race and wealth should not determine educational opportunity. He stated: “There are some really good middle schools in New York City and it shouldn’t just be rich kids who get to go to them.” He went on to add that though that some parents are upset because “school integration is scary. Even when it’s the right answer, it’s scary.”

A workshop — call it adult education about public education — might help him and others like him to control their fear and not let it control the educational futures of children of color. Parents could come to understand that integration is not a zero-sum game, that children from underprivileged backgrounds can get more access to opportunity without better-off white children seeing their futures threatened.

Despite a half-century of thinking about, and wringing our hands over, balkanized public schools, there are still roads not traveled: diversity training, coupled with aggressive policy interventions such as rezoning. It is time we gather up our courage and see where they lead. History teaches us that without giving white parents the opportunity to face and hopefully overcome their fears of racial and economic integration, there is little hope of our making sustained progress. Rooks is the director of American studies at Cornell University and the author of “Cutting School: Privatization Segregation and the End of Public Education.”