Judge: No fundamental right to learn to read & write

[Cleopatra7]

Speaking as someone who has spent their entire life being the token black in majority white settings, I have a different view of this issue. I come from a middle class professional background where getting at least one post-bachelor’s degree was always a given; just getting a BA/BS wasn’t going to cut it. I went to majority white schools not for the education per se (I’ve always been autodidactic so I didn’t need to be in a “good school” to be intellectually stimulated), but so I could learn to be socialized among white people from an early age. This is an aspect of school choice/integration that is seldom mentioned in political discourse; if you are a black and brown person and plan or aspire to be in an academic or high level white collar job, then you need to be accustomed to being the only person of your race almost every day. Most people, regardless of their ethnic background, don’t want to be in this kind of situation. That’s part of the fear of Trump supporters, that they’ll become a minority and have to endure the conditions that they impose upon other groups. To do this, you have to be socialized not just to be around white people but socialized to be be around them and not be afraid of them. Thus one of the main benefits of school integration for students of color is learning the habitus necessary to manage as a minority in white environments:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitus_(sociology)

The thing with habitus is that it’s not transferable across environments. The habitus that works at Harvard is completely inappropriate if you want to survive in an urban ghetto or an Appalachian holler. But it’s not supposed to be, because the social capital needed for upward mobility is essentially hoarded by those who already have it. Succeeding academically as a minority is not just about possessing native intelligence or having access to a “good school,” but it’s also about having the habitus needed to fit imperfectly into a world you were never supposed to be in.