Race in Class, After Integration
By Lise Funderburg
The Nation
June 5, 2000
Evelyn Gay is a computer programmer for Prudential Insurance; mother and wife;
modern-day race woman (co-founder of a small but thriving African-American education
fund); and a solid member of the upper middle class, having surpassed her parents
(to their great pride) in both education and income. She lives in one of the
country's handful of renowned integrated communities, Montclair, New Jersey,
and if there were a slot in the upcoming municipal elections for town booster,
she would be a shoo-in.
"There is demand to move here," she says of Montclair's reputation
for harmonious race relations, "and there are plenty of lily-white suburbs
where the houses are cheaper, right in this vicinity, that white families
could just move to if they wanted to. But the demand is to move to Montclair.
So that means the type of people who move here have a very special mindset."
Yet good intentions, the town's residents have discovered, can't insulate
them from broader societal problems. Last September Gay was shocked to read
two newspaper accounts of the racial achievement gap in Montclair, where,
despite their parents' financial success and advanced degrees, many black
children are still testing lower than whites [for an analysis of the nationwide
disparity, see Pedro Noguera andAntwi Akom, page 29]. In Montclair's public
schools, according to one article, only 54 percent of black ninth graders
scored above half of the total test-taking population on a recent standardized
reading test, compared with 95 percent of white students. Math scores were
only slightly closer.
"That really, really just upset us terribly," Gay says of the
black middle-class parents she knows. Generally, Montclair citizens are known
for their activism -- a quick perusal of the local paper shows countless
task forces and coalitions -- but an unprecedented number of efforts to address
the achievement gap have formed in just the past few years. Gay credits the
news stories for galvanizing the fifteen or twenty black parent-organizers
of a new effort that will be launched this summer. The Community Tutorial
Committee, as it is currently known, will offer as many as ninety children
SAT preparation, general tutoring, subject- based field trips and exposure
to African-American role models whose professional achievements demonstrate
the payoff of doing well in school.
The program's multifaceted design stems in part from the complex nature
of the problem -- "If this were easy," says Montclair Assistant
Superintendent Dr. Jean Pryor, "we would have fixed it a long time ago" --
and the complex makeup of the town. In the 1990 census, Montclair (pop. 37,487)
was 66 percent white and 31 percent black -- a mix that has roughly held
for more than thirty years. Along with its vibrant arts community and proximity
to New York -- former Brooklynites regularly run into each other at the town's
two Starbucks -- Montclair's diversity and voluntary magnet-school program
make it an increasingly desirable suburb. Though concrete data are scarce,
most observers see an entrenched, multigenerational black working and middle
class, a growing black upper middle class and, despite skyrocketing real
estate values, a concurrent swell of black poor fleeing the decay of nearby
Orange, Irvington and Newark. Montclair's once vibrant Italian-American poor
and working-class contingent has all but disappeared, putting, for all intents
and purposes, a black face on poverty in the town.
Physical integration was once thought to be the solution to racial inequities,
but in Montclair, where that has been more or less achieved, the spotlight
shifts to even more insidious -- and difficult to repair-- consequences of
uneven distribution of resources and opportunity. Within the interstices
of race, class and community -- laid bare precisely by virtue of such extensive
physical integration -- Montclair's black middle class seeks solutions to
the achievement gap.
Arthur Powell, 46, a mathematics professor at Rutgers University and father
of a fourth-grade boy in one of Montclair's seven elementary schools, regularly
meets three friends -- all African-American men, all successful in their
field-for Sunday morning breakfast at Montclair's Midtown Diner. Two years
ago, over plates of eggs and waffles (and real maple syrup, which they bring
in), the conversation made its way to the black middle school students they
knew. Many were not receiving honors at graduation and seemed to be shying
away from accelerated programs. The reason, Powell and his friends surmised,
was that to do so would put them on the outs with their friends.
The four men decided to attack that anti-academic culture. They started
the fully grassroots -- no funding, all volunteer -- Montclair Youth Enrichment
Program (MYEP). Each Saturday morning, they spent three and a half hours
with twelve black middle-schoolers -- nephews, neighbors, friends of neighbors.
As a draw, they initially offered SAT-preparation tutoring, but early on
they found that despite good grades, the children couldn't handle the prep
materials. "So we backed up," Powell says. MYEP redirected its
curriculum toward math, reading and current events, and included parent conferences
and counseling on how to navigate the school system. Over the course of the
year, as MYEP revealed more deficits in the students' education, parental
dissatisfaction grew. By spring, Powell notes, there was an unanticipated
result: "Parents of half of the kids switched them into private schools."
Another unexpected outcome was the discovery of an apparent work-ethic differential
between low-income and middle-class minority kids, which further complicates
the long list of factors academics use to explain the gap. "We noticed
that middle-class students did not work as hard as students who were from
poor backgrounds," Powell says. He links the lax attitude to being first-generation
middle class. "They have an image of themselves that says, 'My parents
have it all, I'm fairly well taken care of, and this will go on into the
future.'" What the kids don't realize, Powell believes, is that newcomers
to the middle class lack the cushion of generations of accumulated wealth. "The
kids aren't aware that if both parents were to lose their jobs, they're probably
just six months away from not being middle class."
Being middle class and black today isn't the same as it was a generation
ago, says Evelyn Gay. Gay's parents were middle class, but neither went beyond
high school. Still, they always expected her to go to college, she says,
even if they didn't have the experience to guide her through the process.
In a planning meeting for the community tutorial program, Gay mentioned to
the other parents that while she was growing up in Newark, schools were open
year-round -- not true in Montclair. "So I would go to summer school," says
Gay, now 47, "and take courses before I got them in regular school.
When I said that, others raised their hands and said that was one of the
ways they prepared themselves for coursework their parents couldn't help
them with."
Gay also believes changing cultural influences have reshaped the social
challenges today's black children face. "We were energized by the civil
rights movement," she remembers. "And we saw ourselves in a totally
different way from the way kids see themselves now. They're more influenced
by this hip-hop nonsense." (Gay likes the beat well enough, but not
what she views as the music's glorification of gangster and drug culture.)
Gay's neighbor, Sandy Byers Harvin, 44, is the mother of twin ninth-grade
boys who attend Montclair High School. Harvin, an editor at the New York
Times, volunteers with Gay on both the education fund and the new tutorial
program. "I've had pretty positive experiences," Harvin says of
the town's schools. "But I think that in Montclair, as anywhere, we
have to be eternally vigilant. We deal with our children's education just
as any parent would, but at the same time, we have to anticipate and recognize
when they have problems that arise because of perceptions that people have
of them." This won't please Montclair's we-are-the-world idealists. "People
in this town who are not raising black children may not want to hear that," she
says, "but it is a truism."
Vigilance, according to Harvin, includes digging around for the useful tips
that are passed along on soccer field sidelines and at dry cleaner counters,
such as knowing that parents have a say in whether their children take high-honors
math courses. "It's like an oral tradition," she says. As another
black parent notes, even if it's not intentional on either side, many middle-class
blacks in Montclair aren't privy to the inside information and "guerrilla
tactics" that whites of the same class share.
After much deliberation and hesitation, Arthur Powell and his wife, a political
scientist at Hunter College, decided that next year they'll send their son
to a predominantly black private school in Newark. This move conflicts with
Powell's belief that black middle-class children and parents should stay
connected with public education. "The kind of influence we can exert
is important," he says, "and I think it's important to have a multi-classed
school." He also thinks that all children benefit from being part of
an integrated town -- which is why he'll retain a seat on the new tutorial
program's board and restart MYEP in the fall -- but the positives didn't
outweigh a long list of concerns, including safety, overcrowding and low
expectations.
Low teacher expectation had been an issue all along -- his son, an early
reader, was in kindergarten half the year before the teacher realized he
could read. "And she was a good teacher," Powell says. But now
his son has begun to confront low peer expectations. "I don't see the
principal of his school or any of the other principals as capable of tackling
the problem," he says. "And we simply don't want him to grow up
thinking that African-American kids aren't achievers."
It's not that the district isn't trying. Assistant Superintendent Pryor
speaks of achievement gap issues with palpable concern. "If acting white
is smart," she says, referring to one of the gap's identified causes, "then
what, in the name of God, is acting black?"
Montclair seems to be aiming at every possible solution, small, large and
in-between. Pryor and Superintendent Michael Osnato belong to three task
forces -- including the national Minority Student Achievement Network, which
is working with the College Board to devise strategies for closing the gap.
Osnato has firsthand knowledge of managing diversity from having been one
of a few Irish Catholic kids in Jewish-majority schools in the Bronx. In
his second year with the district, he has developed a reputation for reaching
out to parents and contingents often left out. Furthermore, Osnato supports
Montclair's longstanding practice of publishing test scores, which some districts
refuse to do.
"I'm a firm believer that data produce change," Osnato says. "What
are we hiding?"
Pryor, who dealt with years of backlash when the test results were first
released, understands other districts' reluctance. "When you put out
data that show your white kids in the 90th percentile and your black kids
in the 60th," she says, "be prepared for a flogging. But you can't
fix what you can't face. Over the years, Pryor notes, the response has changed. "We've
moved away from the finger-pointing and the blaming to where not just the
school system but this community owns the problem."
"We can't address all of the root causes," concedes James Gaither,
a Colgate-Palmolive manager and parent who has volunteered to chair the tutorial
program. "But if we can get some of the kids turned around, then we're
a success."
Overall, Pryor, who's worked in Montclair schools for ten years, seems hopeful. "We're
on the right track," she says. "It's just that the train isn't
moving fast enough." Pryor also subscribes to the prevailing opinion
that no panacea exists. "An after-school tutorial program is great," she
says. "But by itself, is that gonna do it? No."
Montclair's demographic jumble presents unique challenges, but appropriate
ones, says Pryor, "if we're going to be a microcosm of what the future's
going to be for our kids. I take personal and professional pride in our ability
to prepare young people for what the world is becoming. Kids who come through
Montclair High School see kids who are bright, who are different, who look
different, who speak different languages. Everybody who goes there doesn't
see himself in the mirror every day."
Osnato's strategy includes promoting groups outside the district walls --
he initially called together the parents who went on to formulate the tutorial
program. He says he's trying to create ombudsmen, but he's also acknowledging
that some steps, such as the inculcation of high expectations, the district
alone cannot take.
"I don't want to make it sound like we've got this all sewn up," Osnato
says. "We don't. But we're working to create a coalition." Osnato
is also mindful that coalitions can't be exclusive in a community as diverse
as Montclair, one where the high property taxes largely support the schools,
conferring a widespread sense of ownership over each dollar spent. "You
can't project- nor should you, in an integrated community like this-that
your only interest is the African-American student," he says. "You
have to build a system that represents your entire clientele. So the dilemma
here is advocating for the needs on the minority achievement gap while attracting
and retaining the middle-class Caucasians. Also, you gotta be careful that
you do not lose the upper-class African-American population. What you've
really got to do is project that you want to elevate the standards for all.
I think people understand that. I hope they do."
James Gaither, who has three children in the public system, sees the participation
of children from all racial and ethnic backgrounds as essential to the tutorial
program's success, even though it was initially conceived as a response to
low black scores. "I think we will lose a lot of support if we say we
are targeting a specific ethnic group," he says.
Educator, activist, father and Montclair native son Kabir Baber does his
own share of bringing children together, but he also credits Superintendent
Osnato for uniting parties interested in tackling the gap. Baber, 47, will
help with the new program's parent outreach, but also runs a highly regarded
mentoring and tutoring program called Project Success (initially targeted
at black children but now open to all). He says that while the inequities
of education are formidable, this town has the best chances of remedying
them. "If you can't do it in Montclair," Baber says, "you
won't be able to do it anywhere." Even though the population is diverse,
they're "hungry and eager to make sure all children learn," he
explains. Indeed, middle-class black parents aren't the only ones involved
in the effort to improve the schools -- it's just that the recent data have
provided a new, focused call to arms. "So that's why I don't have a
problem sitting at the table with Dr. Osnato or anybody else," Baber
says, "they all want to level the playing field."
The playing field has proven itself to be a minefield, but still one that many Montclair parents enthusiastically traverse. "We know it's not that our kids aren't smart," says Evelyn Gay. "We have kids come out of our schools who go to the best schools in the nation, and they may not be the children of parents with economic means or educational backgrounds. So there's got to be a way to address this.