In coming to Mississippi, I had a vague knowledge of how the educational system of the Delta remained divided along racial lines. The black kids went to the high-need public school where we would be teaching, while the white kids maintained their distance by attending the private “academies” that are scattered throughout the region. That this practice is an accepted fact of life in many parts of Mississippi was reinforced by an interaction that I had with student at Holly Springs the other day. When I told him that I would be teaching next year at Indianola he replied without any hesitation, “Oh, at the academy.” Like any do-gooder northern white, I was quick to separate myself from any association with a segregationist institution. “No no, I’ll be at Gentry High School.”
In his ambitious focus-paper Re-segregation Maneuvers, Dave Molina attempts to show that, through analyzing three cases (two in Mississippi) in which financial interests intersected with public education, there is “some sort of benefit” to the white establishment in terms of preserving an economic structure that depends on a large, poor, and uneducated work-force. In first Mississippi case he discusses various legislative initiatives by the state of Mississippi that attempted to foster the growth of all-white private schools, and the supreme-court decisions that declared them unconstitutional. In the third case he makes a connection between the fact that the prison system is Mississippi’s fastest growing industry, the relationship between criminality and poor schools, and the fact that the states school system is still controlled by whites (who benefit from “industrial growth tied to criminal labor force”).
I found the discussion of the succession of dubious maneuvers by the state of Mississippi to avoid school integration to be of particular interest. Apparently the state tried a number of times to approve public funding for students to attend private schools in order to avoid the loss of the state’s sales tax receipts from poor white families who would now be spending more money on education. Fortunately most of these measures were struck down by the supreme court, yet the persistence of the all-white “academies” and the segregation of Mississippi’s schools into the 21st century is an example of how the courts can only go so far as an instrument of change
In his ambitious focus-paper Re-segregation Maneuvers, Dave Molina attempts to show that, through analyzing three cases (two in Mississippi) in which financial interests intersected with public education, there is “some sort of benefit” to the white establishment in terms of preserving an economic structure that depends on a large, poor, and uneducated work-force. In first Mississippi case he discusses various legislative initiatives by the state of Mississippi that attempted to foster the growth of all-white private schools, and the supreme-court decisions that declared them unconstitutional. In the third case he makes a connection between the fact that the prison system is Mississippi’s fastest growing industry, the relationship between criminality and poor schools, and the fact that the states school system is still controlled by whites (who benefit from “industrial growth tied to criminal labor force”).
I found the discussion of the succession of dubious maneuvers by the state of Mississippi to avoid school integration to be of particular interest. Apparently the state tried a number of times to approve public funding for students to attend private schools in order to avoid the loss of the state’s sales tax receipts from poor white families who would now be spending more money on education. Fortunately most of these measures were struck down by the supreme court, yet the persistence of the all-white “academies” and the segregation of Mississippi’s schools into the 21st century is an example of how the courts can only go so far as an instrument of change
posted by Bob Jones at 5:17 PM
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