I sit

in my bed on a Sunday evening, the day before MLK day, and I read Martin's Big Words. It is a beautifully illustrated children's book that outlines Dr. King's life and includes quotes from his some of his speeches and letters. I am no Civil Rights Slouch, but never before have I read of King's life and death and choked back tears. I realize that there are a few reasons for my different reaction this evening: I am an adult, a mother of a biracial child, a wife of a white man. I see his story now through different eyes than I ever have before.
So now that I'm in a zone of sorts, I pick up another children's book on my shelf- this one about Ruby Bridges, who at six years old was the first black student to attend Frantz School in New Orleans. Bridges' book - like Kings' - includes a Civil Rights chronology at its end. Something about this timeline combined with the brief update with which Bridges concludes her book makes me angry. On paper, it seems to me that:

1. The Civil Rights movement happened and resulted in desegregation.
2. Many people violently resisted initially, taking their children out of integrated schools, then finally relented and accepted the change.
3. A few decades passed, and people decided they didn't want their children in certain schools and neighborhoods any more. Enter: suburban "white flight."
4. Inner cities are now largely composed of ethnic minorities whose schools are rapidly losing valuable educational and vocational programs in favor of moving said programs to suburban schools. (I will be frank: The students at these newly constructed, high-falutin' schools probably already have these sorts of opportunities available to them anyway. Inner city kids: not so much.)

I will clarify these last two steps. I was born and raised in Dallas, and at the end of middle school, I applied and was accepted to the Man and His Environment cluster (law and psychology) at Skyline High School, a magnet school with many vocational clusters to choose from. Each year, Skyline's incoming freshman class, which was composed of cluster students and those who lived within the district lines for Skyline, had a record-breaking number of students. My class was no exception. Twelve years later, overcrowding at my alma mater is a problem. DISD sees in this problem a solution to another problem it has: a recently constructed high school that is so far removed from a reasonably-sized population that not enough kids are attending it. The district's solution: take many of the clusters away from Skyline and put them in this new school.

In my still-idealistic mind, I ask what sense it can possibly make to take opportunities like the ones students receive at Skyline out of a neighborhood where kids need it rather than making more opportunities for them.