In practically any big city, you’ll notice that it contains its parallels. The very wealthy on one side of town and those who are struggling to get by on the other. It sounds fairytale-like, that such high degrees of separation could remain in a society that’s supposed to be so interconnected. We have a plethora of tools to give us more information—phones, iPads, laptops. Yet, still it seems that people cannot comprehend the fact that segregation based on economic class and race is still very much alive. 

A 2022 report found that, “more than a third of students (about 18.5 million of them) attended a predominantly same-race/ethnicity school during the 2020-21 school year … And 14% of students attended schools where almost all of the student body was of a single race/ethnicity.” Moreover, schools where the predominant race is not white are many times severely underfunded and receive professionals who, in many cases, are underprepared for the role and find themselves quickly growing frustrated with their students and job. 

I know many teachers who have complained about the children in their classes misbehaving and mistreating them. Meanwhile, though, these students are not receiving the education that they are entitled to, and many times, not even taught why their right to education is so important. Why would you care about something that you’ve been forced to go to and is taught by people you can’t relate to, who seem, in a way, determined to see you from their own biased perspective?

Out of at least fifty teachers, I only had one black teacher—an assistant to the main instructor—up until I graduated from a relatively socioeconomically diverse high school. One time at my predominantly white elementary school, I was waiting in the lunch line with a girl, probably three years younger, and I could feel her eyes on the side of my head. When I finally looked over, she smiled sweetly then asked “Are you black?” Thinking I’d misheard her, I asked her to repeat the question, bamboozled when I heard the same thing. The girl wasn’t that much younger than me, yet she was still unsure about my race, so unused to seeing anyone other than a white person in our school that she was genuinely curious when she saw me in line next to her. At the time, the question made me uncomfortable, but now I understand that it was an honest inquiry from a kid simply trying to understand her surroundings. Another time in middle school, when talking about music, I’d said to my lunch group that I enjoyed pop, to which one of my classmates responded, “Really? I thought you’d be into, like, smooth jazz.” During election years, the school would run mock presidential elections, the same party candidate always gaining around ninety percent of the votes, highlighting an obvious lack of diversity of thought. And while these may sound like small incidents, believe me when I say that these were not even close to the most troubling events I endured. Living in bubbles, constantly surrounded only by people of our culture and skin color, can make us ignorant, especially when encountering new, diverse perspectives and people. 

My middle school was right next to a school where almost every student was black. While these kids came to school on yellow school buses, the kids at my school were dropped in the carpool line by their parents and walked inside by a security guard. We enjoyed the privilege of an updated playground, multiple security guards, iPads, two gyms and a wide array of teachers, advisors and professionals at our disposal. We had fundraisers and fun weekend events, all put on by the school and professionally managed. I furthered my love of learning at the school, growing more passionate about reading and writing and receiving a fair amount of praise for my achievements in addition to challenges I had to fight to overcome, which made me a more competitive student.  

But I also blindly accepted microaggressions from students and teachers as normal until I got older and realized the impact of the segregation of the school system and the entire city. People grow up knowing the kids they went to middle and high school with and stay in those bubbles, not wanting to venture outside. They form incorrect assumptions about people of other races and cultures and decide to not even ask questions like the little girl who questioned me in the lunch line. They prefer the comfort of what they know, subconsciously assuming that they are even better than the people they are separated from. This ignorance extends to our school system as a whole. When we have teachers, who don’t understand the culture that they are catering to, they can come across as insensitive and ignorant. They may not understand the African American Vernacular English that some black people speak, assuming that their students are simply uneducated and in severe need of correction. I know a professor who has even said to me that, “Black students are not [her] best students,” which is a wildly insensitive thing to say to a student asking for help, but I digress.

Perhaps black students are not this professor’s best students because time and time again they have been placed in underfunded, segregated schools in segregated cities with a glaring lack of money and professionals equipped to help them gain knowledge. And so the cycle continues again and again and again. Instead of complaining about underperforming students, something should be done at the root to change how these students are expected to go through the school system. This starts with funding public education in all subject areas—math, English, science, the arts. It means not putting convenient “political” limits on what children are allowed to learn. We cannot sugarcoat something like slavery or the Civil War because it “keeps the peace,” nor should we want to. It does not keep peace; it promotes further ignorance. And ignorance promotes complicity. We must force our government to make intentional efforts to affirm that schools will not be separated by race. We must encourage a wider distribution of wealth because money is power. And most importantly, we must actively try to understand the people around us. Your way of life is not superior, it is simply a way. Humility is the only way we’ll accomplish anything of substance.