The news these past few days, when it isn’t consumed by impeachment scandal and military-related panic, has had a particular dedication to the lament of racial and gender homogeneity, what with the latest Democratic debate lacking people of color present and the Academy Awards being “very male, very white,” as one New York Times opinion article put it.
The two sides to these controversies unfold as usual: while one side criticizes “the system” — a fit-all synonym of political perception, social bias, artistic prejudice — the other side is determined to link these homogenous results to a homogeneous entry pools, where participation is low among women and people of color. Talk of a corrupt system and of changing the system also ensued.
But if you’ve ever tried to argue with any old person, ever, you know that peddling arguments and indignation at old institutional biases gets you nothing but your own frustration and their fatherly disdain. As efforts from without give fickle results, perhaps it is time to focus more on changing the system from within.
To change social biases is to change a society’s certain values, which, for most people, become quite fixed once they reach adulthood. The obvious solution, therefore, is to focus on the children; more specifically, on their education.
And I’m not talking about free colleges or Affirmative Action, for while they are noble causes, they would occur far too late in life. I’m talking about accessible quality lower education. Equality should be addressed with equality in education and treatment in those educational environment, and it cannot be achieved without equal funding for public schools, adequate teacher training, and unbiased, secular syllabi.
There shouldn’t be “good school districts” where children grow up to be politicians and “bad school districts” where children grow up to be victims of politics. There shouldn’t be a gap in the fundamental educations of children, who in their nation’s Constitution are declared equal, just because of property tax laws. There shouldn’t be instances of xenophobic educators. There shouldn’t be a higher punishment rates for schoolchildren of color. There shouldn’t be teachers taking to the streets to demand adequate conditions or work multiple jobs just to make ends meet.
There really shouldn’t be any of those things in a country that proclaims itself to be a land of opportunities.
A government that spends its money on pointless things rather than education will produce a future government that continues to spend its money on pointless things rather than education. Ignorance really does breed ignorance, or least it tries to. Case in point, in his years in office, President Donald Trump has continuously slashed the funding of the Department of Education. Even his initial action of giving the post of Secretary of Education to Betsy DeVos is a mark of astounding irresponsibility as DeVos, according to ProPublica, is actively ignoring civil rights violations in public schools, halting more than 1,200 investigations that look into instances of discrimination, mostly against black students.
The civilized heterogeneous utopia you dream of might very well not happen in your lifetime — it’s just a fact of nonviolent, civil progress (though of course there’s the obvious upside of it not turning into a Reign-of-Terror madness). But it is achievable for your children, nieces, nephews, and all of the once-removed cousins, as long as you put into office people who will protect the integrity of their education on the basis of equality and secularism (separating church from state, that is). Because, when you really think about it, isn’t the best hope of bridging the divide between the oppressed and the oppressors their children growing up viewing each other as equals?
