Gibbs-Bowling: 'Segregation is not an accident of American history. It is the story of American history.'

Like virtually everywhere else in the country, Seattle and the broader Puget Sound region are largely segregated based on race and income. This isn't without handfuls of exceptions, but on the whole, it's true.

Our schools are a reflection of our society. My son just finished first grade at Emerson Elementary in Seattle's Rainier Beach. There are quite a few white families in the neighborhood, and almost none are sending their kids to Emerson.

Nathan Gibbs-Bowling has written another sharp blog post, this time reminding us that this segregation was no accident:

We have the power and tools to dismantle segregated schools. To do so, we must disabuse ourselves of the notion that somehow, organically, in every major urban area in our nation, a uniform pattern of segregated housing, segregated schools, and disproportionate policing practices simultaneously arose. That is, at best, magical thinking. Segregation was constructed by the government, at the behest of the people (for more on that construction see here, here and especially here). It something we chose to build; it is no different than the transcontinental railroad or the Washington Monument.

We make a choice, we make it everyday. When young, white professionals, live in a working class, mixed race neighborhood as long as they must, but flee to whiter wealthier confines, as soon as they can or when it’s time to have children, they serve as the foot-soldiers of neighborhood and school segregation. Most urban segregation is the result of the absence of white families--white flight. Put differently, people of color do not choose to live in segregation. Segregation is created by white families when they make the choice, conscious or otherwise, to leave communities, en masse. This framing is essential in understanding and solving the problem.

The hallways of my school tell this tale all too clearly. Abraham Lincoln High School was built in 1913 and we have portraits of every graduating class from 1914 through the near present. These are amazing historical markers. I often walk my students through the pictures. I point out famous grads, we discuss how the senior classes in 1942-45 were smaller because so many males enlisted. We note the appearance of the first afros. Every year the same question comes up… “What happened to all the white students?”

The photos are nearly uniformly white until the late 60s (there are a few Japanese students in the late 30s photos, but they vanish after the internment). And then poof somewhere between 1968 and 1972 everything changed. Lincoln is now 75% students of color; it is situated in a city that is 65% white, in state that is 77% white--nearly the perfect inverse. These figures are neither organic nor an accident. 

School segregation is the result of intentional policy choices and governmental interventions. It was constructed, and to end it we must deconstruct it through further interventions. We also must acknowledge that segregation was created at the behest of middle class white voters and business leaders and it can only be undone at their behest.

Let's revisit that last paragraph one more time, because it's important: segregation can only be undone by middle class white voters and business leaders because it was intentionally created.

But not here, right? Segregation? Racism? Couldn't be. I live in progressive Seattle, where everybody's raising chickens and going to farmer's markets and voting Democrat. Where the ills of a Trump-addled America are beneath us.

Or where, as a friend puts it, "gay people can smoke weed at their weddings, but black kids can't get an education."

To be clear, it was a triumph to have been able to vote in favor of marriage equality. But we can't rest on those laurels. We are closing our eyes as a city and as a region to the intertwined realities of race, class and the rest of our lives, and it seems to me that it's happening because it conflicts with our self-image. Our collective ego is so wedded to the idea of being unimpeachably liberal that we can't acknowledge our shortcomings.

As long as that persists, the racist, classist systems that built our segregated liberal bastion will persist as well.

Let's take a deep breath. Here we are. What are we going to do about it? What are we going to do differently?