re: #53 freetoken

So, I continue to plow through the myriad of house flipping/renovating/buying&selling shows (why… I don’t know)… and the same old stories come up again and again but there is something so clearly upfront in so many of the episodes that I think it deserves more comment.

Namely, parents seem to always want to move so their children can get into a “better” school district.

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Now, I have no experience with this. When I was growing up there was just one school district.

There is a undertone of social disorder going on in these shows (besides the naked materialism and desire to boast).

It’s not always about bigotry - though I suspect there is an element of that.

There is something very very bad about the entire real estate industry that is designed to make people feel inadequate.

We’re having a horrible battle in our school district right now. The southern part of the district….not where we are, other half…is deeply segregated by race and economics. Now the wealthy white/Asian areas are overcrowded so the district wants to send those kids to the “black” schools.

Problem is, those schools have been hit by institutional racism for 50 years. They are dilapidated, their academics are 20% lower than the new feeder schools, there is more violence, etc. There is much less money flowing in from the community. So even if the feeder school’s parents aren’t racist (plenty of them are) they are dealing with the effects of years of racism towards these black kids and neighborhoods.

I don’t know what the district is going to do. Those of us in the four high schools in the north, which are among the most diverse in the country, are keeping our heads down. It’s a disaster.