>For example, as a white worker, I can recognize that the schools in
>neighborhoods and communities in my city which have significant numbers of
>white students, whether they be white working class or more integrated middle
>class schools with a significant white component, are academically better
>than schools in neighborhoods or communities which are predominantly
>populated by students of color. Looking at the prospects for making all
>schools quality schools regardless of their neighborhood and racial make-up,
>and the likelihood that will take place in the short run, I may decide, in
>what is a race conscious way, to send my children to the 'white' schools. I
>may even end up moving to a more racially segregated neighborhood to achieve
>that end. Nothing in the set of choices I make requires me to accept a
>Hernstein and Murray _Bell Curve_ argument about the intellectual inferiority
>of people of color, or indeed, to have any particular understanding about why
>the schools divide in such a way, along racial lines. I could even have a
>very radical analysis of that phenomenon, and still decide that I was going
>to send my children to the school where they would receive the better quality
>education, because the act of sending them to a 'non-white' school would harm
>my children without doing anything to change the schools for the better. I
>could even be an African-American parent with the capacity to send my child
>to one of those 'white' schools, and do so, without accepting for a minute
>that there was something superior about the intelligence of white folks.
It is clear that individualism of many parents & non-parents, be they white or black or Latino or Asian, has & will further help to undermine public education in the USA. No wonder the idea of school vouchers has become popular (sadly especially among African-Americans -- who have traditionally been more consistent supporters of public goods than whites -- according to some polls I have seen). What's the point of paying taxes for public schools if the only concern is your own children alone? Why not cut taxes & privatize education? Why support unionized teachers, who cost more than non-unionized ones?
"_Apres moi le deluge!_ is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation," says Marx. The same cannot be the watchword of every worker & every clique of workers. The working class must overcome racism & individualism which in every instance make it easier for the ruling class to exploit us more.
Yoshie