Jennifer Guerra

When airlines and travelers complained of long flight delays due to the sequester, Congress jumped into action and passed a quick resolution to end the delays. Meanwhile the millions of low-income families who lives are being impacted by the sequester continue to wait for Congress’ help.

The cuts keep rolling in

We got a lot of response from yesterday's piece about an after-school music program for disadvantaged youth in Grand Rapids.

But here's a little secret: That story came to us pretty much 'as is' - meaning Casey Stratton reported and produced the whole audio piece and sent it in to us. We tweaked it a bit here and there to fit our style, and voila! Stratton and company made their radio debut.

Every once and a while, our State of Opportunity team receives a story pitch from someone in the community who's trying to make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged youth. This is one of those stories. It’s a piece about boys, girls, and the universal language of music.

What are you doing Tuesday night?

If you're like me, you'll be checking out the new, one-hour TED Talk special on education, featuring Harlem Children's Zone founder Geoffrey Canada, Bill Gates and some of the country's leading education experts and thinkers. The promo video says students will also get up on stage and share their thoughts.

Transcript

STATE OF OPPORTUNITY: RACE documentary

JENNIFER GUERRA: It’s time to have the talk. I know, it’s not gonna be easy. Might get a little uncomfortable – maybe make you squirm a little. But it’s time. I’m Jennifer Guerra with Michigan Radio’s State of Opportunity project. For the next hour, we’re going to talk about RACE.

Now I know some of you listening right now are thinking Race? Really? It’s 2013. Aren’t we past this by now?

Good. I was hoping you’d ask that.

<<RING TONE>>

KATIE BRIDGEFORTH: Hello?

It’s time to have The Talk.

I know, it’s not going to be easy. Might get a little uncomfortable, maybe make you squirm a little.

But it’s time; it's time to have a frank conversation about race. Now I know some of you listening right now are thinking "Race? Really? It’s 2013. Aren’t we past this by now?"

Good. I was hoping you’d ask that.

I'd like you to meet two young girls, both freshmen at a high school in Grand Haven, MI. Their names are Katie Bridgeforth, age 15, and Dystany Dunn, 14. Both girls are mixed, half white and half black, and they describe their skin as caramel colored.

The two girls ride the bus together to school every day, and that’s where the trouble started:

This wasn’t some isolated incident. The girls tell me about the boy who wore a KKK mask in the cafeteria, another one who wore it during homecoming weekend. Then there was the time a boy came up to Katie when she was taking a test, and he made a joke about slavery and ‘has she picked any cotton lately?’

When I told people I was working on this special, one hour show about race, a lot of the reactions were along the lines of “race…hmm….interesting.” Like, man, I’m glad I don’t have your job. That’s cause the topic of race is fraught; people hear it and they run for their hills.

One place where parents and teachers are talking about race in the classroom is Birmingham, MI. Birmingham is pretty much as white a city as they come, with a median household income around $100,000. Espresso bars and high end restaurants and shops line the streets downtown, and there’s a four star hotel where out of town celebrities stay whenever they visit metro Detroit.

From the looks of it, Birmingham has it all. But dig a little deeper, and Birmingham has a problem.

Gap #1: Achievement

Jason Clinkscale is the principal at Berkshire Middle School in Birmingham. He says when it comes to student performance on standardized tests, "the achievement gap is alive and well" in his district.

We're not talking about some 5 or 10 point difference here. The achievement gap in the Birmingham district translates to a nearly 30 point difference in proficiency in math at the middle school level between white and black students. By the time those students reach 11th grade, the math gap is more than 50 points wide.

Clinkscale is an African American with two daughters of his own. He uses words like "sobering" and "frustrating" to describe the achievement gap. And the gap isn’t just on paper. You can see it play out from classroom to classroom: minorities are over-represented in lower level classes and underrepresented in honors and advanced classes.

Michigan has a lot to be proud of - top universities, the Great Lakes, a (now) thriving car industry. Having some of the most racially segregated schools in the country? Not so much. 

When it comes to racial segregation in schools, Michigan tops the charts.

True, Michigan doesn’t have any actual segregated schools on the books, those went out a long time ago. But de facto segregation is very real. And it’s hard to argue that we’re moving toward a post-racial society in Michigan when black kids mostly go to school with other black kids, Latinos with Latinos, whites with whites.

Gary Orfield directs the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. He says one thing people need to understand is it's almost never just segregation by race or ethnicity. "It's almost always what we call 'double segregation.' So high concentrated black or Latino schools tend to have concentrated poverty as well, so there’s a double level of segregation."

And for a lot of Latino students, Orfield says it’s triple segregation: segregation by race, poverty and language.

I put a call out a few months ago for poems by students that somehow tied back to the issue of race and culture. The kind folks at InsideOut Literary Arts Project in Detroit, an organization that brings creative writing into Detroit Public Schools, sent me a number of relevant poems by youth from the area.

We would love to read more poems about race and culture. If you think you've got a poem that fits, send it our way! Meantime, here are some poems we'd like to share with you. 

TAKING ROOT

In Southwest Detroit
Life grows best on the roofs of abandoned buildings.
Outsiders look at the graffiti juxtaposed against islands of grass
but don't understand that art and science create wonders.

When I moved near Vernor St.
it took me a while to blend in with the community.
Like oil paint submerged in water, I always stood out.
Maybe I never understood the environment.
Learning the culture was like trying to decode
the meaning of a Van Gogh painting,
except my neighborhood was more like a mosaic
of different backgrounds glued together by struggle,
to prove that those abandoned buildings aren't abandoned.