A socialist proposal to promote racial equality and integration: federal and equal funding of schooling

The biggest obstacles to progress in racial equality and integration in America today are: (1) the reduction of structural injustices to the individual crime of prejudiced attitude, or ‘racism’; and (2) the focus on solutions like Affirmative Action that leave a black underclass in place while supporting the existence of a black bourgeoisie or middle class.

The best solution is rarely imagined. This solution would solve at least two problems: (1) it would raise the level of opportunity for, in principle, everyone, in a genuine move, which Affirmative Action certainly is not (nor was busing), towards a classless society; (2) it would remove the principle barrier to racial integration, which is not discrimination in housing, but de facto housing segregation as a consequence of unequal funding between school districts whose lines are drawn geographically.

This solution is wonderfully simple. It is to have all public schooling funded on a national rather than local level. (And to make higher education at public universities free of charge again, as it was at one time, before the rise of neoliberalism that began in the early 70s.).

This is of course instead of the current system of funding of schools in districts based on local property taxes, which are based on the assessed market value of homes. This system literally means that, apart from such obviously problematic and very partial measures like the busing of selected students across town to predominantly “white” or “black” schools, school kids get the quality of education that their parents’ income designates them as entitled to.

It would mean that every school child in the nation attends a school which is funded equally with all other schools based simply on number of students. (And perhaps adjusted for local differences in the cost of living.).

This is the solution that busing achieves only for some people, offering everyone only a symbolic benefit. This solution would also make Affirmative Action policies largely unnecessary. (Though it would also be possible to keep them if enough people wanted.).

It is the only solution that would be fair to everyone. It’s not an extreme solution at all; there are other countries where this is done.

The only disadvantage is that it would tie the amount of money that can be spent on schools where many wealthier families send their kids (those attending public school, anyway) to the amount of federal income tax that would have to be paid to fund all schools at that, or at least at the same, level.

Such a proposal would meet its major objections in the form of opposition to higher taxes. But if made into law, this would pose a dilemma for wealthier taxpayers: How much are you willing to pay in taxes to educated your own children if you know that every child in the country is supposed to get the same quality education?

Residential housing patterns would begin to change because this would eliminate one major reason (the other is the desire to live in a neighborhood with relatively low crime) why many better-off white, Jewish, and Asian families choose to live in neighborhoods where there are fewer poor blacks or hispanics.

At the very least, this proposal should appeal to most black Americans and be popular among liberal Democrats. I am not sure why it is not even discussed. It is the surest way to reduce, if not end, racial segregation. And it would do far more than reparations, busing, or Affirmative Action (whether or not any of these tactics is still pursued or not) to improve the lives of poor blacks. (And reduce crime).

The only thing that might remain is what to do about an economy that is so organized that it still needs lots of people to perform jobs that are mindless and boring. I suspect that if more people who wind up in these jobs have a very good education, more will be dissatisfied with those jobs, and that might pose a problem, for whoever has a stake in the current economic system.

But segregation (which most everyone today wants; black Americans now have a culture that affirms it quite insistently, for Black nationalism makes no sense without it), the attack on attitudes of ‘privileged’ people, white, or whatever, and the desire to maintain a strong black middle and upper middle class, instead of pursuing more class-less strategies, these all make it easy to blame the luckier ones. And then we can have mini-pogroms against many people who might become violinists or scientists when that seems so unfair to so many people who don’t.

Needless to say, school curricula should also be nationally uniform, with some autonomy and choice allowed to teachers. Or do you think it makes sense, given our current multicultural identity politics, for white kids to read Shakespeare and black kids to study black history and literature? If anything, it’s white kids who should study black history and culture, while everyone should learn the classics of European literature. The opponents of this, who will claim to be on the left, but are really on the right, will say, “But Shakespeare belongs to the English, and not to ‘us’; we want to learn about our own culture.” An African writer replied to the American Jewish novelist Saul Bellow’s statement that he didn’t believe in multiculturalism in education because there is no Bantu Tolstoy. The reply is: Yes, there is; “the Bantu Tolstoy is Tolstoy.” As surely as people in the 21st century in New York or Birmingham can read a great playwright who came from an English town in the 16th century and lived and worked in London then. But the real issue here is the false one of identity and esteem. The purpose of an education is not to confirm you in your particular identity, but to learn about the world, and how to think (something our schools have largely abandoned for knowledge of ‘true’ facts recallable from memory on multiple-choice tests, which long ago replaced the essay exams still central to primary and secondary schooling in many countries). As for me, when I’m reading Shakespeare, my identity, or at least the only one that really matters very much, is: reader of the play I’m reading. I may be in the Bronx, but it is as if I were in, well, maybe Verona, if not Denmark. Shakespeare’s anyway. Such is the power of art. The problems I started the essay with are of a piece with the identity thing. It is sad that our business society can only think of solutions to social problems that are individualistic, and that offer people comfortable and attractive ways of cultivating the communitarian particularism of their own foxhole, which soon schools may not be needed for at all, since social media sells you yourself and everything your precious ego is connected to. This keeps you in your place. Enjoyment of it does.