As a history and leadership studies double major, I especially enjoyed listening to this podcast. I chose to pair history and leadership for what Professor Bezio said at the beginning of the episode: understanding the history behind something helps us better understand that something. I am especially interested in looking at how policy decisions transcend history impact lives today in ways that are often unrecognizable. I took justice with Professor Williamson last semester, and we spent much of the class talking about these issues. Professor Hayter’s introduction touches on RVA’s coded redistricting. Although he looks at it through the lens of restricted voting rights for Richmond’s black community, in Williamson’s class, we looked at the redistricting impacts on Richmond’s Public School system.
RPS is significantly more diverse than Richmond’s suburban public schools, has drastically lower budgets, small engagement in PTA, and reports lower test scores and graduation rates. The impacts of Richmond’s housing redistricting, which destroyed housing projects for marginalized communities and built highways to give suburban residents direct access to the city while also encouraging movement to the suburbs (where wealthier, whiter residents reside), which in turn eliminated the people left in the housing project’s walkable access to downtown helps to explain the disparities in Richmond’s public education. Furthermore, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which allowed for Southern politicians to continue to segregation efforts via loopholes, such as restricting public bus access, in conjunction with RVA’s housing developments reveals these disparities. As for Hayter’s argument regarding voting, this marginalization of Richmond’s black communities left the public schools voiceless in being able to make changes for themselves. The efforts of Southern politicians in Richmond to continue racism, discrimination, and oppression have long-lasting impacts that affect the same communities today. For this reason, it is incredibly important to learn about and study history in order to understand why the problems that we have today exist, and how to solve them.
Recently in my justice class we also talked how the Richmond versus the Henrico school district. We specifically talked about how things like housing were used to effectively maintain segregation within schooling after Brown v. Board. Like you mentioned many of these policies have long lasting impacts that are still continuing to this day, like on where certain communities congregate. We need to use history to understand how we got to where we are and to examine the current state of our society, as well as to understand how much more progress we need to make in our society.
There is an incredibly interesting book entitled “Ten Miles Apart, A World Away,” that describes the education issues in Richmond that you mentioned in your post. Although the book covers many aspects of why these disparities exist, the one that sticks out to me to this day is the fact that wealthier, black-owned homes were torn down and replaced with far lower-quality low-income housing projects. The very same people whose homes were torn down were forced into these projects, degrading them and limiting access to outdoor spaces while limiting the money that comes with owning a home.
Thank you for this recommendation! I will definitely read.
I agree that it is incredibly important to learn why the problems we have today exist. It is the first step in solving them. Similar to how you learned about Richmond Public schools, right now in my education class we are learning about NYC private schools vs public schools, as well as issues with racism and classism in housing districts. They are tearing down projects and lower-income neighborhoods to build fancier and more expensive upper-class apartments in NYC, leaving thousands of families with no place to live or a much farther commute to school. This effects everything from having a tougher home life, to having more school absences due to a longer commute. I hope cities like NYC and Richmond can begin to make positive changes soon to have more inclusive school systems and opportunities for everyone.