School Choice, Sacrifice and Morality

I think that we can't say, "This school is not good enough for my child" and then sustain that system. I think that that's just morally wrong. If it's not good enough for my child, then why are we putting any children in those schools?

This quote is drawn from an NPR piece about how "individual choices" maintain systemic school segregation. The piece profiles a black woman journalist's choice to send her child to a public school near her home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn where the students were mostly poor and black or Latino.  

The concluding question above is a very, very difficult one. And as a parent who has attended, sent my children to, and championed neighborhood public schools of varying quality, who has also helped to found a high performing public charter school that my children attended, and who may at some point use private schooling, I don't think there is a single answer. Race, class and gender make the question all the more difficult. 

I am somewhat cynical about the whole public education industrial complex. My cynicism grows out of the fact that this complex is partly sustained by what I call the "originalist" theory of education, a notion that has been stable across centuries of U.S. efforts at providing public education. This is the claim that all public educations are at least roughly fungible and that somewhere, somehow there is value to be gained that can be accessed by all. This has never been true. 

School has always been a local, often highly idiosyncratic concern that is very targeted in its individual delivery and deeply personal in its effect. Standards for teacher training and teacher hiring have always varied greatly. School wasn't even compulsory in some states until the twentieth century, and the ages of that compelled attendance have always varied across jurisdictions. Many children scarcely went beyond primary school in the early days of provision of public education. And even now, large numbers of students fail to complete high school. The latter fact is to be lamented. But far more lamentable is the fact that a sixth grader in some public schools is better educated than a twelfth grader at others. We lament, and yet we do little to address this sad fact. Short of overhauling our entire United States education system into something that looks more like a nationally administered, single curriculum, scrupulously same-resourced system that *also* could assure that all children have access to fundamentals such as adequate food and clothing, and safe and comfortable homes and neighborhoods, I really cannot imagine any significant changes coming to public education across the board.

Yes, individual parent choice may promote segregation and other ills. But the choice to use a local public school is not necessarily a virtuous or selfless choice. In my experience across decades, across school attendance zones and across state boundaries, well-educated middle and upper middle-class parents, especially white parents, *always* manage to extract more even out of ostensibly less well resourced public schools. Even when they don't ask for it, administrators and teachers  give them more. Sometimes this largesse is out of pure individual bias. Other times, perhaps the majority of times, the reason is more systemically pragmatic: savvy administrators and teachers want to keep these families in the local schools.

I don't say this as an accusation against parents whose children receive more educational goods (and education is a good; just ask people who have been charged with stealing it) even from otherwise poorly performing public schools. I am somewhat more inclined to blame school administrators in these instances, but the presence of educated, engaged, well-to-do parents and their children in a school tends to help the entire school. Among other value that they bring, children from more privileged backgrounds tend to do better on standardized tests (testing, testing, 1, 2, 3), and high test scores make public schools look better. So I understand why some administrators do what they do. 

But even while I do not accuse parents who receive high value from less well-regarded local public schools, I am very wary of those parents who claim the moral high ground while attempting to dislodge from that windy bluff any parent who does not also choose such  schools. Some of the very same people who disdain those who seek to enroll their children in public schools in more broadly middle class neighborhoods or who castigate charter schools as private-style education because of their localized control over curriculum or funding seem to have no problem at all raising thousands of dollars for their very own local public schools through private foundations that provide new equipment for classrooms, supplementary books, perks for teachers, trips for students, and other extras that local tax dollars cannot or will not buy. Neither do some of these parents have a problem with "gifted" classes, "enrichment" programs, "advanced" courses, or other educational offerings that function as small, elite, and frequently quite segregated academies in the center of otherwise low-performing, often largely minority-serving schools. 

Just as all public education is not the same, neither are all sacrifices. Indeed, some of what passes as sacrifice is what morality theorist Romano Guardini has described as camouflaged assertion of status. It is a fine thing to choose a local public school where your child is "learning a lot" or "becoming a good citizen." But if none of those things were happening for your child, would the local public school still be a viable choice if the only outcome of that choice was to promote greater good for strangers? That is the test of true sacrifice.

Do my children deserve more than other children? That's not the question for me. I would put it another way: Do my children deserve as much as it is possible for me to obtain for them in the way of education? Yes they do.  And with what I hope will be their excellent educations, maybe they can be a part of overhauling the fiefdoms that characterize United States public education.

Their Eyes Were Watching God as a “Legal” Novel

The discussion on Dee Perry's Around Noon today was Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.   You can hear all of the show at the link above. The book is  a timeless classic that, in broad brush summary, is about hierarchy and race, gender and class.  The novel begins where it ends, and ends where it begins, telling the story of  Janie Crawford and her journey from late girlhood to womanhood.  It is often read in literature courses and especially in African-American literature courses.  It combines its gritty realism, black dialect and lofty poetic language to depict the black South of over 70 years ago.  It is not typically thought of as a legal novel.  There is, of course, chapter 19, which depicts Janie’s trial for murder. But that chapter seemingly stands alone in offering explicit language about law.  

There is, however, much more about law in the novel.  Their Eyes Were Watching God is, in large measure, a book about laws, rules and norms.  It is a book about the way that social regulatory regimes shape society.  It is a book about the way that law is and is not created. There is a very apt quote about this in chapter 5 of the book where the author writes, in describing the town's feeling about Joe Starks, its self-appointed, well-to-do mayor:  “The town had a basketful of feelings good and bad about Joe's position and possessions, but none had the temerity to challenge him. They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down." If allusions to Joe are replaced with the word law, then we can get a very clear sense of how norms, whether formal or informal, work, both within the novel and outside of it.   This is because even formal law is often said to be organic—it is molded and remolded at regular intervals, even if that re-molding is slow.  More importantly, we reflect those changes back into the face of law. Law can't happen if we turn away.  To a great extent, law is only law because we allow it to be. That we allow law to be speaks much about our vision for ourselves and for our world.

Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of the Publication of To Kill a Mockingbird

This past July was the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s book To Kill a Mockingbird. Recently I participated in a radio show to celebrate the anniversary. You can listen to it here. The show was a wonderful opportunity to reflect not only on the book itself, but also on the ways in which some of the themes addressed in the book, racism, classism, the role of gender in shaping identity, even access to education, have and have not changed over the last half century. When I first read the book in my late childhood, I was focused first on racial issues, especially on the prosecution of Tom Robinson, and next, on how Atticus Finch, the protagonist, represented what was good and right in America, standing firm in his convictions even in the face of adversity.

However, over the years, especially as I have used the book (and the film based on the book) as texts in law teaching, I see the book and the characters differently. I think that the true hero of the book is Scout, the child narrator who delivers the tale. Scout, because of her age and gender, is able to move between the worlds of black and white and of male and female. Her relative social unimportance allows her a veritable cloak of invisibility from which she can see and hear and thereby gain what comes close to an omniscient knowledge of her community and its people. Tom Robinson, the black man accused of raping a white woman, becomes, with every successive reading, a distant symbol, a cipher, someone who must be convicted and who must die, however unjust such an outcome may be. Tom is, however, no “magic negro” as there is no magic in To Kill a Mockingbird. There is only a finely-wrought and complex sense of truth, but it is a truth that falls well-short of despair. To Kill a Mockingbird troubles the notion of thesis and antithesis often seen in discussions of race, whether fictional or real. Scout and the other children in the book illustrate this, for they are more real than many of the adult characters. They are flawed and imperfect, but joyous, passionate and ultimately just. They are the antidote to our 21st century postmodern, poststructual, and allegedly post racial world.

Dialing Mrs. Murphy (Or, Me Talk Pretty One Day)

I began the search for temporary housing by scouring Craigslist. I had been making calls for months, but now it was time to nail something down. I found a promising ad: fully furnished, all utilities included, Internet and parking. The pictures looked great. Maybe a little more heavily decorated than I’d like, but the place looked well kept. I made the call. Someone picked up on the first ring, whereupon I stated my reason for calling, trying to sound at once business like and warm and friendly. After listening patiently, the person on the other end asked me to hold while she switched phones. She returned and began telling me about the apartment.

“It’s my father’s place. He’s away visiting in Ireland. We figure we may as well make some money since he’ll be gone for so long. It’s part of my house, downstairs. It’s in the nice part of town so you don’t have to worry about security.” The woman had an Irish accent which grew more pronounced as she continued. “We want someone who doesn’t smoke, has no pets, and is the right sort. It is my home, you know. You’ll have to call back and talk to my husband and he can schedule the showing. You sound respectable, you said you’re a law professor, is that right?”

“Yes, I teach in Cleveland. I don’t smoke, and while I like pets I don’t really have time for or interest in caring for any so I have none.” I said it all rather too quickly. After her comments, I felt as if everything I was saying was a lie. Am I the right sort? Will I be a blight on the neighborhood's niceness and security? Am I respectable, or do I just sound as if I am?

Why would I wonder such about such things? Then it hit me.

She probably thinks that I’m white. Why wouldn’t she? I speak crisp, standard, Northeastern U.S. English with, I’m told, a vague hint of Californian that betrays my Los Angeles upbringing. Most people who speak as I do and have the job that I do are, statistically speaking, white. They are also probably men, but the register of my voice no doubt gives away my gender. So, if she thought I was white, she could certainly be forgiven for thinking so. I struggled mightily to curb the impulse to say: “I’m black; will that be a problem?” I didn’t want to ask because I didn’t look forward to any of the three possible responses I envisioned hearing: 1) stunned silence then a stammered “no” which really meant “yes” 2) stunned silence followed by “Yes, it matters”, followed by polite dismissal (or a click as the receiver was hung up) 3) stunned silence followed by righteous indignation at having been asked about whether race figures in such matters (“We’re all post racial now!”). None of the three possible outcomes seemed attractive. I suddenly feared that I had called the wrong number. Could it be...Mrs. Murphy in the flesh?

Many of you know the hypothetical Mrs. Murphy of Fair Housing Act fame.

The 1968 Fair Housing Act (FHA) proscribed discrimination in most housing transactions on the basis of race, color, religion, and national origin. It contained a noteworthy exception, the so-called “Mrs. Murphy” clause found in 42 U.S.C. §3603(b). This section, in brief, allowed landlords who were owner-occupiers of small scale multiple dwelling units or owners of few rental properties to discriminate. Mrs. Murphy, so named during the legislative debates surrounding the clause, was the hypothetical small landlady who ran a boarding house, or perhaps owned a duplex apartment building and resided in one unit while renting the other. Such persons, legislators argued at the time of the enacting of the FHA, should be able to rent their housing as they saw fit, given the small, intimate settings in which their rentals occurred. The exceptions in the FHA, however, did not include discriminatory housing statements or advertising. Under the FHA, Mrs. Murphy could discriminate racially but could not advertise or state that she was doing so. Mrs. Murphy could, for reasons of race, silently turn down applicants who presented themselves. (There are other legal non-discrimination norms that might proscribe Mrs. Murphy’s silent but racist inspired refusal to rent; these I leave for another time.)

I have had my share of racist experiences while searching for housing. (See my blog post How Now, Brown? Parents Involved in Community Schools and the Triumph of Color Blind Ideology.) In recent years, however, when I have mostly sought short term accommodations, I have generally avoided such incidents by dealing with large, impersonal entities such as corporate housing providers who really only care about whether I can pay. When I do deal with smaller, private providers of accommodations, I generally am known to the provider or am otherwise “pre-approved.” In short, I try to avoid the potential Mrs. Murphys of the world altogether.

With the advent of Craigslist, people who would have advertised their housing with a sign in the yard or maybe an advertisement in the local newspaper can now offer their housing to a national or even international Internet audience. So, Mrs. Murphy now has global reach. Really, anyone may dial her number. A caller’s manner of speaking may often reveal gender and sometimes race to her. Thanks to a greater number of integrated social and educational interactions than used to be common, all too often people of diverse racial backgrounds sound like, well, people of non-diverse racial backgrounds. They sound white ("Speaking Standard English is not 'sounding white'," you say! Yeah, I know that song...). When these people telephone out into the world, whether they set out to do so or not, they are phone passing.

Black people know that I mean. Phone passing is when you call to order goods or services and you breeze through the interaction using your best Standard English voice, knowing that in many cases the person on the other end of the line probably assumes your whiteness and treats you accordingly. Not treating you well, necessarily, just neutrally. You get that nice, even, default customer service mode. There’s nothing funnier (in that wry, sad-funny way) than when you arrive to claim the book you placed on hold at the book store (the last one of its type in stock) or to get your vacuum cleaner fixed after talking to the repairman on the phone (who stayed late to accommodate you) only to be confronted with a puzzled “Oh, was that you who called ?” Most such vendors shrug it off and continue to offer the same level of service they offered on the phone. Some are visibly perturbed by what they no doubt see as racial identity fraud and set about giving what is clearly an inferior level of service.

Phone passing presents a thornier situation when it comes to negotiating for longer term arrangements such as housing or jobs. On the one hand, there is an ethic of non-discrimination that theoretically prevails which would eliminate the need for one to announce one’s race. On the other hand, there is the sober reality that race may especially matter in smaller, more intimate situations and the sooner one puts it on the table, the better. I came to that conclusion years ago when first applying for legal jobs. I attended a good number of interviews with interviewers who were clearly flummoxed by the seeming mismatch between my face and my resume. I learned to avoid awkward interactions by prominently listing on my CV items such as “Black Law Students Association Co-Chair” and “National Urban League Scholarship Winner” in order to tip off potential employers.

In the case of my potential Mrs. Murphy, I chose not to give any indication of my race but, the truth is, I have no intention of calling back to schedule an appointment. Am I being unfair in not giving this a try? Maybe. But there’s just too much chance for unpleasantness, and that would be unfair to both of us, non-discrimination norms notwithstanding.

Too bad. She sounded like a nice lady.

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