New York City's elite public high schools are not a hotbed of racial and ethnic diversity.

There are nine "specialized public high schools" in New York City for either the "academically or artistically gifted" student. Eight of those schools require an admissions test. One, LaGuardia High School, which is more arts-based, requires an audition.

According to a report, those nine public high schools have appallingly horrible rates of racial diversity representing the city of which they are a part.

Of the eight schools that require testing, students identifying as African-American or black made up 3% of accepted students. Those identifying as Latino or Hispanic made up just 5%. When you consider New York City is made up of 70% of people identifying from those racial and ethnic backgrounds, this would seem like a tiny, slight imbalance.

At lower Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School, considered the city's best public high school, nine African-American/black students were accepted for the next academic year, compared to 178 white students and 682 Asian students.

Time to pause. Those numbers might have blended in a paragraph for you, but this is important. Here it is again.

9 African-American/black students
178 white students
682 Asian students

...all accepted into next year's class at a public school.

If you're not sure whether grimacing, scowling, or awkwardly sighing is the right reaction to such a statistic, all three at once is acceptable!

Until you learn that Stuyvesant High School is a downright racial utopia. Why? At Staten Island Technical High School, another of the testing eight, not a single African-American/black student was accepted. Not one. Zero. Nada. Zilch.

0.

This is New York City we're talking about, not Salt Lake City.

This is a city where over 27,000 students took the specialized admissions test, a test with almost a 20% acceptance rate, better than most Ivy League and "second tier" colleges--and, this can't be noted enough, is still a public institution representing the city these schools exist within--a city that is 70% black or Latino. This is a city where the link to the city's specialized schooling website shows photos of six students on the page and four of the six appear to be either black or Latino. It's bad when stock website photography for a specialized school is more accepting than the actual specialized public school.

It's not just a New York City issue. It happens in every major city at their own "specialized" high schools. Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and so on. Despite the obvious statistics, the moral outrage (hey!), nothing will be done to solve this. Politicians and school administrators and colleges and universities will pay wonderful lip service to say a change needs to be done. Studies will be commissioned. A movement will begin.

And the cameras and microphones will be put away. And there's another story to cover. And we forget. And we move on.

And, still, barely a single black or Latino kid will be admitted to an elite public school in the city of New York.

Book Review: The Marrow of Tradition, by Charles Chesnutt

This is part of the continuing series of random book reviews that'll be nothing like a New York Times book review. Gone is the ten thousand word analysis. Instead, here is a book review like you'd tell your friends.

The book: Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition

Story:

A professor I was working with as a TA in an American Lit class used this book during the semester out of pity for a Ph.D candidate who had spent seven years building his dissertation around Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition. She even agreed to let the Ph.D give a lecture in her class around the book.

The Ph.D candidate--obviously--loved Marrow. The professor hated it, but never told the guy. Again, pity.

So imagine what a book club would be like. One person will make a fuss over the sad/happy ending, while some cynic in the group will argue the race riots are a dated ploy for attention. At one point some book club attendee sitting quietly in the corner will pity everyone reading Marrow, and silently hope next month the group will read The Help.

The Marrow of Tradition is that kind of book. That kind of book everyone either loves or hates, even the academic types that make a career out of such things. You pity someone who loves it, you pity someone who hates it--but everyone feels a little pitiful if they haven't even bothered to read it.





For the record, I side with the Ph.D student, without the slightest hint of pity.

Mix It Up at Lunch Day is really a mask fo----oh, for crying out loud.

Mix It Up at Lunch Day is celebrated on October 30th by an estimated 2,500 schools in an attempt to have children from different social cliques sit with one another during lunch, all in hopes of opening channels of communication and stop bullying.

Started 11 years ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the program hopes to see children break down differences and make a new friend.

Not so, says the American Family Association (AFA), a conservative evangelical group, which says Mix It Up at Lunch Day is a "nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools" by creating acceptance of others--whether that acceptance is of the geeky kid who loves him some Star Wars a little too much or the disabled kid in a wheelchair who has had a string of bad luck in life--and is now encouraging parents to keep their children home from school on October 30th.

Because if there's anyone to keep an eye on, it's that kindergartner who has an affinity for the Teletubbies.

The AFA claims that Mix It Up at Lunch Day is actually an "entry-level 'diversity' program designed specifically...to establish the acceptance of homosexuality in public schools"--which is news to the nearly 2,500 schools who took part in Mix It Up at Lunch Day last year without any flotilla of a gay pride moving through the cafeteria.

Nonetheless, the New York Times reports upwards of 200 schools have canceled their own Mix It Up festivities this year, potentially because of frightened parents calling schools. Of the twenty schools the Times contacted, only one would go on record as to why they canceled. That school--Chattahoochee County Education Center in rural Cusseta, GA--claimed they canceled because teachers were too busy trying to meet the basic state teaching requirements to hold Mix It Up at Lunch Day. At lunch. When teaching isn't happening.

"The decision had nothing to do with taking a position on gay rights," Tabatha Walton, the school's principal, told the Times, presumably with a straight face.

The American Family Association's director of issue analysis, Bryan Fischer, claims the Southern Poverty Law Center is actually the hate group here, because the SPLC accepts gays and lesbians. "The reality is we're not a hate group," Fischer told the Times. "We are a truth group...We tell the truth about homosexual behavior."

Wait--it gets better from Fischer.

"Anti-bullying legislation is exactly the same," Fischer told the Times. "It's just another thinly veiled attempt to promote the homosexual agenda. No one is in favor of anyone getting bullied for any reason, but these anti-bullying policies become a mechanism for punishing Christian students who believe that homosexual behavior is not something that should be normalized.”

Take a minute to wrap your head around that statement. Really, break it down logically. I'll wait.

-------

-------

-------

-------

Doesn't make a lick of sense, right?

In case you're wondering what kind of flag-waving, pro-homosexual activities the Southern Poverty Law Center promotes for Mix It Up at Lunch Day, they include such saucy gay behavior as...

...making friends...
...teamwork...
...addressing cliques...
...and empathy.

Empathy. It's a gateway behavior to undressing Ricky Martin with your eyes.

Maps tell us where you're moving.

Not in a creepy way though. This isn't Facebook or Google stalking your every move. Just the US Census Bureau, who is much less crafty at playing the role of a jealous lover than Google is.

The US Census Bureau completed is 2010 census a little while ago, and now pretty little maps are being drawn up by random people to show us how the data looks.

Now, you're wondering what this has to do with this blog. Well, I'll tell you: it'll have an effect on the books you read eventually. 120+ years ago, books were heavily bent toward northeastern writers, themes, plots, etc. (Think: Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Poe, Howells, you get the idea.) But the northeast isn't where everyone lives any longer, which means future literature will have all the appeal of a Phoenix, AZ, subdivision.

So onto the maps...:

Report: Pennsylvania school implements occasional segregation and/or epically bad ideas.

Oh, this will go over well.

A high school in Pennsylvania decided to begin experimenting with segregation based on race and gender because statistics showed it improved test scores. The school says the occasional segregation also improves student self-esteem, as well as strengthens bonds between students and mentors.

If anything, it's good to see officials just throw caution to the wind and base this off just test scores. You wouldn't want decades upon decades of American history to subtly hint that this was a bad idea or anything.