On Saturday, Unity for Our Community will hold a discussion about the elephant
— the one that everyone pretends not to notice, even though it’s standing in
the middle of the living room. It’s easier to just ignore elephants like this
one, because noticing it means you have to talk about how it got there and how
to make it go away. And with the particular elephant on Unity’s agenda, there
are no easy answers.
Inspired by the recent 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education — the landmark civil rights case that paved the way for the desegregation of public schools — the discussion will encompass everything from the achievement gap between black and white Springfield students and the new proposal to discontinue desegregative busing to the controversial remarks made by Bill Cosby in Washington D.C. last month.
David Welch, chairman of Unity’s education committee, requested this discussion in the weeks after Cosby publicly criticized “lower economic” blacks for baggy pants, bad grammar, petty crimes, promiscuity, and poor parenting.
Some commentators criticized Cosby for making sweeping generalities, unsupported by statistics, and encouraging racist stereotypes. But others, including Unity leaders, have applauded him for sparking a needed debate.
“It’s one of the battles that we fight for sure, the stuff that he’s talking about,” Welch says.
Unity co-founder Roy Williams also agreed with Cosby’s speech, even though “it’s not news to me,” he says. Putting it on the Unity agenda, though, was another matter. “I can see it going a lot of places that initially you’re not thinking about.”
Unity leaders have been conferring among themselves about how to format such a discussion, and as of Wednesday still hadn’t decided on a panel or a free-for-all.
The recent proposal to end busing for desegregation makes the debate more meaningful. On Monday night, the school board decided to accept public comment about the proposal for about 30 days. Cheryl Wise, the board member who made the recommendation, normally attends Unity meetings, and plans to be present on Saturday.
Wise based her proposal on the fact that parental involvement affects student achievement. “If we take students away from their neighborhood, we take families away from their neighborhood schools. . . . We will have designed a barrier whereby parents are less likely to be involved in their child’s education,” Wise wrote in her proposal.
But so far, neither Wise nor Welch has been able to use standardized test scores to show that kids are more likely to succeed in a school close to home.
For example, Welch says he heard teachers from Owen Marsh Elementary, on Springfield’s upper-middle-class west side, complain that it’s difficult to involve parents of kids who are bused for desegregation purposes. And he questions whether it benefits these children who could instead go to a school like Matheny Elementary, on one of the toughest streets of the East Side, where special grant funds, after-school programs, and reading tutors are available.
However, statistics show no real difference. According to 2003 Illinois Standards Achievement Test scores, most black third graders are reading below standard level at both Owen Marsh and Matheny (67 percent at Owen Marsh, 70 percent at Matheny). White third-graders, by contrast, are scoring better, with only 33 percent at Matheny and 19 percent at Owen Marsh falling into the below standard category.
While there’s potential for the discussion to be emotional, Welch trusts it will be amicable.
“In the big picture, everybody wants the same thing,” he says, “which is for things to be better than they are.”
Unity meets at 9 a.m. Saturday, June 12, at Union Baptist Church, 1405 E. Monroe St.
This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2004.
