Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Maximizing Poverty
How schools data make Memphis look like it has no middle class.
Posted by John Branston on Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 12:48 PM
The federal government has a new way to measure poverty.
According to the Census Bureau report that came out this week, 49 million Americans, not the previously reported 46 million, are living in poverty. Sixteen percent of the total population, and 25 percent of black Americans, are poor.
Bad news, but if you measure poverty the way Memphis City Schools, Shelby County Schools, and the state of Tennessee measure it, you could conclude — mistakenly — that the poverty rate among black Memphians is three or four times that. Here's how:
Start by taking out all the people who live outside Memphis but in Shelby County, even if they grew up in Memphis, work in Memphis, and have family in Memphis. This, of course, is what we do now with our separate school systems that will stay in place until 2013.
Next, take out all the people who live in Memphis but don't have children in Memphis public schools, the families with children who go to optional schools or private schools, and the families with school-age children who are not poor by any definition.
Define "poor" as a family of four with an annual income of $41,348. Classify a school, and by extension its neighborhood, as poor even if only 40 percent of the families fall below this standard. When federal funds are at stake, it pays to look poor.
Define "black schools" as all-black schools, not schools with 70 percent or 80 percent black majorities.
This is how you get to "Memphis: America's Poor Black Racially Torn City." This is how you get to the Memphis City Schools and Tennessee Report Card finding that 89,784 of the 103,500 students are economically disadvantaged and that the whole system is Title 1, which is government-speak for poor.
And this is how you could conclude, by reading an article last week in The New York Times on the schools merger that Memphis has no black middle class and an impoverished central city and is doomed to repeat the white flight of busing and 1973.
Like it or not, the schools merger is the window through which America is going to view Memphis and public education for a while. As the Times noted, it is "the largest school district consolidation in American history."
For all its problems, however, Memphis is not as poor as it looks in school stats. Nor is it necessarily doomed to repeat the past, as some of those quoted in the story believe it is, including Joe Clayton, the 79-year-old Shelby County school board member and former principal who left MCS for Briarcrest Christian School in 1974.
"There is the same element of fear," Clayton told the Times.
Also interviewed was Marcus Pohlmann, a political science professor at Rhodes College and author of books on racial politics and school integration in Memphis.
"There are no middle-class black schools in Memphis," Pohlmann said in the story. "They're all poor."
I know Clayton and Pohlmann and respect both of them. Their statements are right, as far as they go. I have a quibble with them, but I think it's an important quibble.
You can kill a city with statistics, and you can kill it by tying it to its past of racial separation and strife. I'm not crazy about Memphis being America's "civil rights city" in pro sports and national journalism and literature.
It isn't forever 1974, even though city schools are more segregated now than they were then. The separation of county and city school data makes Memphis look worse than consolidated districts in Tennessee and other states. The buildings and the books are newer. There is an incoming corps of young teachers, principals, and foundation money. The school boards are at least meeting together now, which, as their colleagues in Hamilton County and Chattanooga suggested, may be the main thing.
Black doesn't equal poor. There are middle-class schools in Memphis that are majority black. The 7,800 white kids in MCS can't skew the data that much. The black poverty rate here is not three or four times the national rate. You only get there by using different methods and data. And with all due respect to Joe Clayton, he is not the future. The future is Kenya Bradshaw, who was also quoted in the Times article. I asked her what she thought of it.
"Overall, I thought it was a good story, but I thought the call to action for the community was missing," she said. "The story portrays the challenges, but I think we need to seize this opportunity and challenge our community to come together."
Comments (10)
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Great thoughts. Memphis has played the victim for a reason, but we also have to pay consequences for it. I assume the police department gets money from First 48 to drag our name even lower nationally, and I would call that a very poor investment. It is time to become a city that does not need to make things look worse for a federal handout.
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I remember reading this article and wondering where his data came from as well. I have noticed most of our neighbors send their kids to the local elementary and middle school and we all live in East Memphis.
You can look at statistics in various ways. The 2010 Census results tell me that middle income black families are increasingly moving to the suburbs. The major growth in DeSoto County's black population clearly reflects that. Over the past decade, DeSoto had a greater gain from the in-movement of African Americans and other minorities than it did from in-movement of white residents. There was also a significant increase among black and other minorities in Shelby County outside Memphis while the suburban white population declined. I think economic figures will show that median household income figures have held up well in both DeSoto County and Shelby County outside Memphis.
I agree with Ms. Bradshaw's statement in the article that we need to learn from our history and not repeat the mistakes of the past. In the history of African slaves and their descendants in America, there are thousands of examples of faith, courage, perseverance, discipline, hard work and many other positive character traits exhibited by our ancestors during far more trying times than what we are currently experiencing in 2011. Unfortunately, the leadership in this community and many others like it across the country refuse to view low-income people of color as equal human beings.
Individuals and organizations who stand to profit from a permanent underclass allow statistics to be manipulated so dollars can be used to maintain the status qua. Period! If those of you who are reading this response want to do something for an impoverished person of color, expect the same of them that you would expect from your brother, cousin, or best friend. And if you thin that they can't rise up without help from the government or rich benefactors, you need to do a little research on my "Fab Five for Freedom: Gabriel Prosser, Charles Desolondes, Denmark Vessey, Nat Turner and John Brown".
After reading the papers in Memphis for about 8 months, I've concluded that there is no hope. The citizens of Memphis have discarded the nuclear family in favor of government handouts which are guaranteed to keep them poor. The media spends all of its spare column space whining about needing more government money because of a variety of reasons, none of which include the actual reason, and blaming "the county" for every possible problem, including the schools, which have never even been a part of SCS in all of history and have been operating on substantially less money per student than MCS.
It just keeps snowballing. The new supper plan for students staying late has been announced, and I have yet to hear anyone in the media say a word about the stupidity of creating a situation in which the parent(s) of students will not have to provide any food for those kids 5 days a week. No one mentions that providing students with 3 meals at school makes no sense unless one presumes they are not getting fed at home, so the problem is being shifted from the parent(s) to the schools. Clearly, the program will be successful, and the local media and politicians will then call for more federal money to expand it, "for the children".
Just out of curiosity Bakeman90, why not replace John Brown on your list with Spartacus?
It is your list, of course, but many would consider it tarnished by including John Brown along with other real heroes. Spartacus set the standard for slave rebellions for all time. It matters little that he wasn't an American because he was a slave, which turned him into nothing in the minds of the Romans. He was considered a nothing until he was free, just like the slaves in America; also, he would add some diversity to your list.
@uhoh: Since John Brown received financial backing from the Secret Six, I have decided to replace him with David Walker. So, in chronological order, my Freedom Fab Five consists of Gabriel Prosser, Charles Desolondes, David Walker, Denmark Vessey and Nat Turner. My own "Fantasy History" Team, if you will. They are most certainly a better line-up than my current Fantasy Football Team!
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