[“If you erect a community of expensive, beautiful homes and prop up the value of those homes by making it illegal to build more housing, which turns your home into a resource so scarce that potential buyers do things like write pleading letters or make cash offers above the asking price or bid sight unseen—behavior that has become commonplace in liberal cities like Austin, Seattle, and Cambridge—then you pretty much want to keep things as they are.
If you design a public school system such that it primarily serves students of professional parents, who have the time and know-how to invest in their children’s schooling, and who can afford to pay for extra tutoring and college prep coaches and out-of-state field trips and therapy, you can create an enriching educational environment and pipeline to college. Economically integrating schools would challenge this design, this social status preservation machine, requiring rich students to share classrooms with poor students who might carry some of the traumas of poverty, speak English as a second language, and spend their summers watching a lot of television because going outside is dangerous. One study found that growing up in a severely disadvantaged neighborhood is equivalent to missing a year of school when it comes to verbal ability. Another found that achievement gaps between rich and poor children form and harden before kindergarten.
It has become fashionable these days to pitch social change to the privileged classes by appealing to their material self-interest. The right thing to do is also the best thing to do! Integrating our schools is antiracist, and it improves the overall learning environment, preparing your children for a diverse workforce! Raising the minimum wage allows workers to buy enough food, and it’s good for business, stabilizing the company’s labor force and saving on turnover costs! When then-presidential-candidate Joe Biden told a room of wealthy donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he were to be elected, he was repeating a familiar liberal talking point: If you join me in this effort to reduce the inequality you yourself benefit from, you won’t have to give up a thing.”]
matthew desmond, from poverty: by america, 2023