This is Democracy – Episode 39: Contemporary Segregation and Exclusion in American Society

Unknown Speaker 0:05
This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial intergenerational and intersection of unheard voices living in the world’s most

Unknown Speaker 0:13
influential democracy.

Jeremi Suri 0:18
Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. Today we’re going to talk about one of the most difficult and often controversial issues in our society, but an issue that that has become more prominent, and in recent years and months, the issue of segregation and not just segregation in traditional ways, long racial lines, but segregation in terms of class. And in terms of our basic societal institutions, why is it that our societies still seem so segregated? And what can we do about it? We have with us to help understand this issue and solve this problem. We have my good colleague and friend, the distinguished professor here at UT, Neil Joseph, who, among other things, is a brand new book coming out on Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Personal thanks for joining us.

Peniel Joseph 1:05
Thank you for having

Jeremi Suri 1:06
and a former student of mine, who’s now I think, doing some of the most important work with the Austin Independent School District cell, so by as Celso as the assistant director of community engagement and external communications at Austin Independent School District, but it’s also great to have you here. Pleasure to be here. Thank you, Jeremy. Before we turn to sell someone Piniella, we have of course, Zachary’s poem, what is your poem call today? overdue overdue? Let’s hear it.

Zachary Suri 1:35
I take issue with the old adage that there are kids starving in Africa, a continent supposedly steep too low money per capita. But I take issue with the old adage because I know that on the other side of the track, there are entitled people starving under roofs filled with cracks. And I know I’m not supposed to say that it’s all because they’re brown and black. But if oppression is an accident, and the fates must have for racism, a real knack, it is a tale that is filled our nation’s somewhat subconscious baggage. Two factor segregation is a fact of our prosperity, algebra, the victor and the evicted is all decided by your side of the traffic. It’s the triumphant duplexes against the right tattered damage. And I take issue with the old America. I take issue with the old America the old highways cutting through cities, the red lines beneath the eyes of the American equivalent, and the constant replaying of the stereotypical vernacular that I am tired of the repeating Selma in their action. lyst pities the bleeding rivers from our own attack. And I am tired of singing the same songs. I am tired of having to write poetry about the bleeding, the lunch of students of America suffering the same old beating, I am tired of hearing of kids who must always be witness to the savage, the bullets, the cycles, the inadequate education and the constant defeating. I am tired of the old America and I am awaiting the overdue change.

Jeremi Suri 2:57
Wow, that’s really powerful. Zachary well is what is your poem about?

Zachary Suri 3:01
my poem is really about just feeling anger about all the inequality I see around me and how it all still, it’s very similar to what many of us learn in school is something that has been gone for decades. But it’s really still here today. And that’s really important to recognize,

Jeremi Suri 3:19
right? We often don’t talk about it, right? Well, personal Why? Why is it still here? I mean, you’ve just you’ve written so much about this, you have a new book coming out on on Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, as Zachary says, This is normally taught as history. Why do we still confront these issues in the same way?

Peniel Joseph 3:38
Well, yeah, I think it’s a very powerful poem, Zachary. And, you know, the poem speaks of red lines, and segregation and oppression. And these are things that we relate and equate with the 1930s, and sort of the New Deal and FHA home loans and two tiered liberalism, one for black one for why, but they were supposed to have been obliterated with the Great Society. Right. And I, I think what we see now is that legislation really matters. But hearts and minds matter as well. And as soon as you had the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and civil rights act and 64, there was pushback. So there was a revolution, but there was a counter revolution. And the counter revolution allowed, for instance, suburban whites, whether they were in Orange County, California, where they were in Austin, Texas, to create their own school districts. When we think about racial integration and the brown decision in 1954, the high point of racial integration, according Gary Orfield and others, it’s around 1988. And one of the big high points is the 1970s. In places like Charlotte, North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia, where they were court orders, not so much for busing, but to create unified school districts. And we saw we had racial integration where unified school districts, even though there was a plurality of whites who took their kids out, but you still had racial integration. And starting really, in Milliken and court decisions, the court said, well, you don’t need these unified districts. So what a unified school district allows us, for an entire district to be a feeder school, to different parts of the community. So even if you live in Rosedale, and I live in East Austin, we may end up at the same school and you have integration,

Jeremi Suri 5:19
right? I can’t do it actually going

Peniel Joseph 5:20
kids go to school. So even if we don’t live around each other, but when you don’t have unified school districts, what you do if you’re in Rosedale if you’re in Hyde Park, is you basically create your own school district, right where the kids in East Austin or in another community that might be racially segregated, are never going to be allowed to even go to school with with Zachary or Natalie, right, or any children. So that’s one. The other is things like tax and zoning policies. What cities did once racial integration came was they rigged the game cities and states they set up? And some some places didn’t do this. You think about Columbia, Maryland, where they had planned interracial communities, right? So there are there are little success stories that are dotted along the United State. But for the most part, the federal and the state and city governments have really pushed us into segregation, but a new kind of segregation, because if you’re if you’re African American, or Latinx, certainly you can buy into a neighborhood. But no one’s talking about why a lot of times you don’t have the capital to do so. Right. Right.

Jeremi Suri 6:19
Right. So So Celso, sitting in your position at the Austin Independent School District in a city that considers itself progressive. What How do you see these issues playing out on a day to day basis?

Celso Baez 6:31
That’s a great point. Jeremy, it’s a very timely conversation to have, as you mentioned, you know, as looking at even this May the 65th anniversary of Brown versus Board of Education very timely, I think I have a Google Alert set. Because you know, I work at the school district, I kind of want to see what’s happening around the countries and various other urban school districts, and how they’re dealing with the real opportunity to provide social, socio economic diversity and in return great in school districts. And I think Austin has a real opportunity to your point about Austin really touting itself as being progressive. After I’ve been here about 10 to 12 years, and in my four years at the school district, I’ve kind of asked myself in, in reflection, is Austin really progressive? Or is it tolerant? And I think by way of this process, that we’re undertaking right now, and looking at our school district, given that we have the capacity for 88,000 students, and only 80,000 students are filling those seats. And so we have an opportunity to look at not doing as the business as usual, where folks, uh, rightfully, that have been historically marginalized, have criticisms of the district that we, you know, based on precedent, historical precedent, based on the 1928 plan based on, you know, the Jim Crow years? And when busing is the district going to make right by, by the decisions that we’ve done in the past? Are we going to close schools, just solely based on enrollment, where there are more Black and Brown students. And so we have a real opportunity, I think, to look at the district holistically, and look at regional planning in a way where we look at it east and west, as opposed to traditional thoroughfares and dividing lines between North and South of the river, east and west of 35. to really look at a school in East Austin that may be under enrolled, and look at a school west of 35. And if that school is over enrolled, we could probably reassign some students to east of east of 35. Right. And I think we’re going to really come to a reckoning with ourselves. And I’ve I’ve always said, kind of in an off color kind of way. I think Austin’s white guilt will be tested.

Jeremi Suri 8:54
And 35. Of course, for the for those who are not for monsters, the highway that divides in some ways, the city, east and west, what kind of resistance do you face? Because most Austin nights would say that therefore, you know, integration. So what where do you see the resistance on a day to day basis,

Celso Baez 9:13
you know, what’s unfortunate, and I think I told you this in class at some point, you know, about a year ago, a superintendent at a Houston is d that was hired by Mayor de Blasio in New York, immediately kind of was trailblazing and within six weeks said, Hey, I’m going to do it desegregation integration plan, and immediately went to the schools in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, that were majority, you know, Asian American, comprised of Asian American students. And with nothing short of coated racism. You saw those parents that after school meetings, say, you know, we we like our school just the way it is. And what’s unfortunate, is by way of this process, it will yield results. That could mean boundary changes could mean changes to attendance zones. And could mean that your student based on a house that you bought, because of the school that you wanted your kid to go to now, could be different. And so change is highly visceral. And it’s it manifests in different things. But often, more often than not, it’s not called out,

Jeremi Suri 10:25
right. And personal. We’ve had, you know, 60 plus years of work on these issues. Why have we failed to make progress on this basic point of getting kids in schools with kids who look different from them?

Peniel Joseph 10:40
Well, a couple of things. One is residential segregation, and never being able to really, we have how Housing and Urban Development and HUD, we have the 1968 fair housing or open Housing Act, and that’s never really been implemented. Another is how we fund schools, right? We fund schools through local property taxes. So when we think about school funding through local property taxes, and certainly there’s federal money, but federal money is just the carrot versus stick, right? But we spend school through through property taxes. So if you’re in an affluent community, you can segregate yourself from the rest of the city, and have a very affluent elementary school and high school, right? And what were those parents, and some of these parents are very, very progressive people politically, but they don’t want in terms of actual fact, students who are non White, who are from lesser privileged backgrounds, attending school with their children, for a number of reasons. They could say it’s cultural, they could say these schools are going to lower the test scores. And I want my kids to be competitive enough to go to the ivy League’s, they’re going to say that we don’t want to have a tracking system for these other students. Right. So we’re going to have a two tiered school in one school. And we think about Lawson other players is here. We already have that. School magnet schools become two tiered schools where you have sort of the white students are tracked in AP. And one of the things we know Data Wise is that African American and Latinx students are much less likely irrespective of their scores to be allowed to be in gifted and talented programs, right? Because most of the teaching population is white, most of the administrators are white, and they’re just not finding that kind of talent in our our children. And also our children are more likely to be punished, expelled, you know, be part of a punishment system in the public school system. But But one thing I could say to Jeremy, one of the things we lost and this is where it’s this Zachary’s poem reminds me of this is we’ve lost the the moral clarity about racial integration. And, you know, Celso talked about white guilt, but it’s really not white guilt, the really the phrase we should use is this idea of white privilege, and white supremacy. If we’re ever going to get equality, we’re going to have less racial privilege. And men. And Jeremy knows this too, because I know Jeremy is a feminist. And so as Zachary as well, we’re going to lose male privilege, because it’s not equal, we’re going to lose male privilege. And we have to embrace that we have so we don’t run away from it and say, Oh, my gosh, why do women want equal fail, we say, we love our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, and we can say we learned from them and are mentored by them, right? That’s what we say, right? But we’re still we’re still men, we’re still human beings. But we don’t have to dominate anybody to be who we are. So part of this is politics of racial privilege. But part of it is really that, morally, we’ve lost sight of why racial integration patterns, and

Jeremi Suri 13:43
this is what you write about. So Well, I mean, there was this moment in the late 60s, when we had prominent leaders, white and black, who were willing to take a strong stand on issues, right. Yes. Do you see that in the school system cells? Or is there a willingness to take these strong moral stand? Is it possible to do that?

Celso Baez 13:58
I think it’s possible, I have some hope I see it every day among parents and I, you know, there’s been several, you know, publications, and again, in areas where urban school districts are going through these kinds of processes to integrate. You look at Seattle, you know, there’s some good publications coming out of some parents that have organized in the PTA that really talked about, it’s really putting the onus on on white parents. And not only that, but let’s say you integrate, looking at the dynamics of when you’re integrated, looking at how our Black and Brown students are learning and how we’re teaching our black and brown student, right. You know, you could very well have affluent parents of privilege that say, you know, there’s too much screen time and iPad with iPads and

Jeremi Suri 14:47
sounds familiar is accurate.

Celso Baez 14:49
If you Villone the entire, you know, student body, a computer, but then you have, you know, parents have lesser privilege in a school that’s integrated, that say, Well, you know, I don’t have access to broadband internet. And so I need to learn, right? And so, you know, the dynamics of actually being integrated are also very interesting, too, because you also have new parents that black or brown parents kind of hesitant to send their their kids to school. Yeah, that is integrated.

Jeremi Suri 15:20
Right. Right. And connecting your point with perennials. One thing I’ve certainly noticed is there are definitely even among those who think they’re very progressive or activists, there are categories and stereotypes we can we carry with us and and they’re used and deployed in ways that harm children from disadvantaged backgrounds, even when you have teachers and administrators who come from those backgrounds themselves. I’ve seen this in high school athletics, for example, a presumption that kids who look a certain way are going to do certain things and not perform in other ways. So it’s not so deeply embedded right, in many ways accurate. You had a question? Right?

Zachary Suri 15:53
Yeah. I was wondering what role you think education and lack thereof on these issues plays to do we find that part of there isn’t that there’s not as much action is that the white community feels that everything that needs to be done has been done that, that it’s a finished issue, and it’s not worth discussing?

Peniel Joseph 16:09
Well, it’s a great question, Zachary. The new Pew poll on race suggests that whites who are more educated have a realization that more needs to be done in terms of racism and anti racism. And whites who are less educated feel that either enough has been done or too much has been done. And it’s really in terms of whites, it’s a longer partisan divide, about 53% of the whole nation feels that more needs to be done, the country has become more racist since the last election. for blacks, it’s around 71%. for whites, it’s around 56 58%. But there’s a big partisan skewed, those who identify as republican or conservative leaning, tend to think that we’re fine. And those who identifies democrats tend to think that we’re more liberal and progressive tend to think that a lot more anti racist were work should be done. So I do agree. Part of this is an education process, and our public schools like ASD, and I’d love to ask, sell. So this, what are we doing in terms of curriculum reform, and making sure you have black and Latinx history that’s entrenched in the curriculum?

Celso Baez 17:16
Yeah, that’s very important. But a year ago, I think one of our trustees brought that to the forefront and made sure that we were making deliberate efforts to make that curriculum available to our students, that’s reflective of their history, and so that they can see themselves in that history. That’s something we’re doing through SEO, social emotional learning. And that is something we’re doing with curriculum in high schools, particularly in social studies, to make to really have an emphasis on it. In our world, our white students getting access to this because I think it’s it’s important for the white students. Absolutely, yes, absolutely as color. And I think the politics and the nature of doing all of this from a governance for perspective, if you’re on the board of trustees at any school district is really tough when you look at ASD, because I feel like ASD is one of the last sort of districts located in a city where the liberal elite send their kids to public schools. You think of the folks that are moving here from the East Coast or west coast. And you think of those cities on the east coast and West Coast. You know, they come from traditionally what what is known to be bad public schools, right, as they proceed that, you know, schools in Chicago schools and Boston schools and LA. And when they move here, they often don’t think twice about really not giving us a chance. Because they assume that public schools are bad. I think the public schools are awesome. here in Austin is the but there’s a lot we need to do and mitigate barriers to entry for kids of color to make it into the losses into the killings. And looking at the application process. And and you know, there’s there’s still things that need to be done, really break down those barriers, even when you look at New York and what’s in statute in law over there. With the application process to get into I think maybe you’re almost

Jeremi Suri 19:08
in high school, Stuyvesant High School has six African Americans and its new class of 900. That’s right. I was when I was there. In fact, we might have had a few more but yeah, nice. Yeah. But it’s also largely non white. I mean, these issues get very complex, because diverse, and then when I went to high school in Cyprus, and now is majority Asian American children of immigrants, so they’re not privileged. I don’t see themselves as being privileged in a traditional sense, right. But it’s been able to point out their privilege in a different sense. Absolutely. Right. And that’s why these these issues get very complex because they say, Well, look, we’re not white. Don’t Don’t hold us to the to that baggage, but they don’t realize they’re carrying their own baggage.

Peniel Joseph 19:42
And we think about testing and how do we get access to elite schools for students of color and families of color? I know, for African Americans, their access to elite schools now is around the same percentage as it was in 1980. Right. So it’s, it’s stayed for the last almost 40 years. stagnant?

Jeremi Suri 19:58
Right? Yeah, absolutely. Actually, in New York, it’s gone down. It’s

Peniel Joseph 20:01
gone down. Yeah. So yeah, so we’ve got major issues. But part of this when we think about education, and curriculum reform and segregation, it’s really about blacks, whites, Latinos, and others, working, living and dying separately. You know, we’re very, very lucky to be at the university and connected to these universities, because these universities are engines of not just social transformation, but their engines of their own kind of racial integration. So it doesn’t mean universities are perfect. But universities bring people together,

Jeremi Suri 20:34
right, though, of course, we could do a lot better. Yeah, as you pointed out, working with Leonard more, and others on campus very, very, very forcefully. So we have a couple of student questions, particularly on the positive things we can do. Our first question is actually about about Black Lives Matter. And this is from Misha of Kami, if we can hear me she’s question.

Unknown Speaker 20:54
How can movements like Black Lives Matter improve racial relations in the United States?

Peniel Joseph 21:00
Oh, that’s a great question, Misha. Um, I think movements like Black Lives Matter are very, very important in terms of raising educational consciousness. So I think when you hear Zachary’s poem and people having an understanding of not just Martin Luther King, Jr, and Selma, but mass incarceration, what’s happening with immigration, because Black Lives Matter policy platform looks at immigrants, both Spanish speaking immigrants, but also African immigrants, usually usually important. And it also lets us know that the struggle for racial justice is intrinsically tied to a struggle for American citizenship and democracy. And that we can protest through nonviolent civil disobedience in a way that’s very reminiscent of people like Dolores Huerta and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez, and and and others, right. So I think it’s been hugely important. And also just in terms of policy, Black Lives Matter, movement, change policy at the local level, they got meetings with President Barack Obama, the Justice Department changed some policies. So it’s hugely, hugely important because we need our young people in our students to have a understanding of what’s going on

Jeremi Suri 22:13
just raising consciousness about these issues, usually, absolutely.

Celso Baez 22:17
I think groups like Black Lives Matter, have been very important and have been the linchpin for even in our laboratories of democracy. I mean, it’s, I think it’s no coincidence that in the past year and a half or two, you know, whether it’s a name only if those are some of the criticisms which there are, because I’ve heard them, it’s no coincidence that, you know, the city of Austin hired an equity officer, right, that Austin is D is in the process of hiring an equity officer, and activist groups, I think play play a big role in ensuring that those things happen. And then and that these positions in these big bureaucracies have the structural authority to implement the change that we need.

Jeremi Suri 22:56
And it’s been one of our themes on this podcast and in the scholarship and teaching at all, all of us do, which is that activism matters. Democracy only progresses, when people raise their voices change comes from below. Absolutely not above, right. And

Peniel Joseph 23:07
sometimes we we support the activism of lobbyists. But when people are in the streets, lobbying, we say, this is not good. Right? Right. But when people are in suits and ties, and they go up to the Texas ledge and have these closed door meetings, that’s fine. Or you go to Capitol Hill, right? And that’s fine. But we need activism is just lobbying, right. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a lobbyist, right. But he was a lobbyist on behalf of social justice Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, they are lobbyists and they’re lobbying. But they’re there. They’re not in suits and ties. Right. And and they don’t a lot of times have access to the billionaires. Right? Very, very, very rarely. So, yeah, Black Lives Matter. We can think of it as not just the social justice group, but a lobbying group for racial justice and equality. And

Jeremi Suri 23:53
we have to recognize that there’s nothing more historically American than lobbying for the interests of your group. I tell my story, Thomas Jefferson was a lobbyist absent the Declaration of Independence is a lobbying document absence. So this brings us to our last question, we always like to close on an optimistic note, even though this is a difficult subject, and on an activist note, and so our final question is from Matthew Co. And he asks very specifically about what college students can do if we can hear Matthews question,

Unknown Speaker 24:24
what steps can a college student take to combat modern segregationist zoning laws?

Jeremi Suri 24:30
Sell so what what what do you say to college students who have come out of school districts like the Austin Independent School District, the New York school district and wanna while they’re in college, and after they finish college, want to get involved in making a difference?

Celso Baez 24:44
Yeah, how can they do? That’s an excellent question. I still view myself as a college student. I think I graduate in a few more weeks. Yes.

Jeremi Suri 24:50
Yeah. Amazing. Maybe finishing a Masters though? Well, beyond college,

Celso Baez 24:56
as a as a, as a non educator, in public administration. You know, I often we partner with the university a lot in the School of Ed here, I think it’s important for college students to really, you know, identify the problem, call it what it is tackle it directly, and continue to nurture it productive dialogue and conversation. And here, especially at the university, I know, I have conversations with a lot of colleagues here about what the ED school is doing, as they, you know, cultivate a new wave of principles for those that are seeking principal ships. For those that are looking at the superintendent’s II program and seeking to be a superintendent, how are we really training our future leaders of school districts? And I think it’s important for college students, you know, at universities, whether or not they’re in, you know, the the discipline of at of education, to really move the needle that way as well and have a dialogue with

Jeremi Suri 25:50
us at the at the college. I love the notion of keeping these different institutions connected. Absolutely. nipple Penny, oh,

Peniel Joseph 25:56
yeah, I think how student can do a number of different things, especially when it comes to zoning laws. Get together with your neighborhood association meetup with your local city council person, whether it’s a she or him

Jeremi Suri 26:10
know who that person is, know who

Peniel Joseph 26:11
that person is. You can write and lobby to the mayor. You can write and lobby to your university. There’s so many different things you can do. Because I think it’s an awesome question because of zoning is part of the reason why we have segregation. It’s about you know, we need a new city plan for housing. And we’re working on that code next is out. And one of the things that we want to do in the city of Austin is have mixed use where people can build several kinds of housing. And we can have mixed income neighborhoods, right. So we don’t just have to have neighborhoods like Tarrytown versus, you know, some some other very, very poor poor area.

Unknown Speaker 26:53
Fantastic. I

Celso Baez 26:54
want to add, you know, college students. One thing is is vote right. Yes, please, Democrats doesn’t vote at the rate it really needs to. Right. And so I think particularly in Austin, when we see the demographics changing the way they are, with with, really the bubble not popping at all, right? majority runner, very economically segregated. If you look at the very core of the city, it’s like a donut. If you listen to Ryan Robinson, the city demography talks about how people really my age are putting all very traditional milestone things like getting married, having a having a kid purchasing, you know, a house or car. And so when you have college students are very are after you graduate young people. It’s really it’s really important for them to be invested in what’s happening at the school this Yes, I am a city planning

Jeremi Suri 27:49
to be involved voting, making their voices heard going back to your schools. Great points, Zachary. Does this resonate with you? Do you think this do you think your generation is going to make a difference on this?

Zachary Suri 28:00
I do think there’s a lot of awareness. But I also think there’s a lot of ignorance, especially among the people who I interact with. I think a lot of them. I think there’s too much looking at certain people or certain neighborhoods or certain schools, and in ways in very black and white place, in terms of like that that’s a bad school, or that’s a bad area or those are bad people. I think that’s it’s it’s a problem that really needs to be addressed by parents and teachers, and other students. I think there needs to be more education around those issues.

Jeremi Suri 28:37
Well, I think that’s a perfect note for us to close on. Because these are issues that will require decades of work. And that work can only begin with raising awareness. And the solutions are not simple. But if we don’t talk about it, we’re going to continue to backslide. And I think today’s program has really given us a chance to think about these issues in a sophisticated way, and to be begin to talk about ways that we can all get involved at the very least. So thank you cell so thank you, Neil. And thank you Zachary and thank you for listening to this is democracy.

Unknown Speaker 29:17
This podcast is produced by the liberal arts development studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison lumpy, and you can find his music at Harrison lemke.com.

Unknown Speaker 29:32
subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday featuring new perspectives on democracy

Transcribed by https://otter.ai