[misterbowfinger]

He links to a study on unjust school funding:

http://viz.edbuild.org/maps/2016/cola/resource-inequality/#s...

The analysis here is flawed. An example that doesn't make sense is NYC. If you use the dropdown to go to New York and checkout NYC, your conclusion would be that all NYC students are unjustly funded and have much less than everyone else. But.... that makes no sense. New York City has some of the best public schools in the country.

Yes, the funding is imbalanced and unjust. But it doesn't support his claim that it's biased towards whites and asian-americans. Asian-Americans are in many poorer neighborhoods in NYC but perform well in test scores despite the lack of funding.

I should clarify - I'm not saying that school funding shouldn't be more balanced, or that imbalanced funding doesn't have a strong impact in other municipalities. But suggesting a one-to-one mapping of school funding to education quality by race is ridiculous. And yet, people make that lazy argument all the time. No one wants to dig into root causes.

[kafkaesq]

If you use the dropdown to go to New York and checkout NYC, your conclusion would be that all NYC students are unjustly funded and have much less than everyone else. But.... that makes no sense. New York City has some of the best public schools in the country.

No, your conclusion, going by the coloring on the map, would not be that "all NYC students are unjustly funded". But rather, that "On average, NYC students are underfunded compared to the statewide average."

Do you understand the distinction?

[misterbowfinger]

Yes, exactly! And yet, the schools are still really, really good!

Partially it's because the analysis is at the county level, and not at the district level. But I'd argue that using "averages" in the first place is extremely lossy and a classic Stats 101 mistake.

[kafkaesq]

And yet, the schools are still really, really good!

This is a particularly weird statement to make in regard to NYC school performance, across the board.

[Shivetya]

Segregation has always been bad in North but that was and has been continuously swept under the rug for decades. Even Malcolm X called them out on it when everyone was going after the South.

Still I want to see job prospects numbers across fields and education levels. Are we comparing apples to apples here? If you just say "all whites" and "all blacks" that discounts people with good education versus poor ones. So does this trend hold true at all income levels? All education levels? All areas of the country?

Obama blew such an opportunity to change the culture of destruction many black Americans face in cities. He had eight years to lead that change through being inspirational, through challenging the young men and women, even the adults into, working towards a better day for their own children. When your focus is your party and not the people you have made the wrong choice.

[infosample]

Obama gave plenty of respectability politics[0] speeches. This argument is as old as U.S. Reconstruction. The problem isn't inspiration, working hard, or wanting a better day for their children.

Actual laws set up these neighborhoods, schools, prisons, and employment consequences.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respectability_politics

[misterbowfinger]

The Obamas are definitely doing something about it:

http://www.mbkalliance.org/