The story which led to this post is as follows.  Back in May, the US District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi issued an order mandating the Cleveland School District desegregate.  Specifically, the order required the district to consolidate its two high schools and two middle schools.   People around town were not pleased.  The story quickly blew up.  Within days, the whole country was gawking at this backward Mississippi town which seemingly hadn’t quite heard of the whole civil rights thing.  Much of the coverage was decidedly unfavorable and often inaccurate.

As one might expect the issue goes back decades.  I’m not going to recount the whole history of desegregation here.  Others have done so well enough.   However the situation here prior to the ruling was as follows.  Contrary to what some have reported, the strict de jure segregation which once was a fact of life is a thing of the past.  There is one consolidated schools district.  Students have a choice as to which Middle School and High School they attend.  Some programs, for example the International Baccalaureate program, were only offered at one school.  So from a certain point of view, the schools were already desegregated.  People around town certainly believed so.

The Federal government saw things differently.  I’ve written before about the divisions in Cleveland.   They extend to education as well.   Let’s start with a map of the district: http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/Locations?District=117 .  Look familiar?  Compare it to the dot map:

The pattern of building schools mirrors the racial make up of the town.  And to a certain extent so do the demographics of the student body for the schools themselves.  On the one hand school choice has been around for some time due to previous integration efforts.  As a result Cleveland High School, formerly all-white is now nearly 50% African American.  However East Side High School remains 100% African American.  The same is true of the middle schools.

Therein lies the real issue.  Past desegregation efforts have enabled the African American community to integrate.  However the white community has not done so.  Many people simply continue the same old patterns of life from years ago.  I have personally witnessed few, if any examples, of open racism.  However old habits die hard and bias works on an unconscious level.  Whether people admit it or not, true integration requires an active, on-going effort.  It’s not enough to just repeal the laws.  We have to take steps to overcome the assumptions we’ve grown up with and stop ourselves from passing them on to the next generation.  Hence the focus on education.  People who grow up in diverse environments have a very different view of the world than those from more homogeneous ones.

None of these issues are unique to Cleveland.  Much of the country is dealing with entrenched racism.    So Cleveland doesn’t have as big of a problem as a lot of other places.   Nevertheless people are concerned about the future.  The big fear is white flight.  If the integration plan goes forward many are afraid the remaining white population will flee to private schools.  Such has been the case elsewhere. Indeed there already is one such institution in town.  Only time will tell if Cleveland suffers a similar fate.  However as long as Delta State remains here the town as a whole will thrive.  And being isolated there are few places for people to “escape” to.  There are no suburbs to flee to or gated communities to wall oneself up in.  So the very nature of the Delta’s location might put a ceiling on white flight, should it materialize.

For now we all wait with bated breath.  The school district was required to submit its timeline for implementing the government’s plan several weeks ago.  Presumably they did so although there was talk of an appeal.  Regardless of what happens the local paper will probably cover it.  So I’m sure the outcome will penetrate even my newsless bubble.  In the mean time there is TFA, summer break, and the Fourth of July to worry about.

Though I am not involved in the movement as anything more than a supporter, a few points jive with my experience.  First of all, there is the perception of backwardness.  Really this needs no explaining. People both inside and outside of Mississippi are well aware of its perception around the country. Within the state, the Delta is seen as a rough land of poverty and desolation, forgotten by time. Certainly the facts do not look good, but as I will mention below they are not the full picture. Second, Mississippi is more diverse than most outsiders realize.  A lot of folks, particularly up North, think that everyone down here is all about God, guns, and the SEC and really not much else.  But I’ve found that not everyone is religious or a football fan or deeply conservative.  Just like much of the rest of the country is not monolithic, neither is the South.

Some of that the perception is shaped by a few people.  Politics in Mississippi tends to be dominated by a few people who pass policies which, at best, are unhelpful to the rest of the state. Likewise businesses and money are concentrated in a few places such as the Jackson area.  Not everyone agrees with this state of affairs, but there does not seem to anyway to change it.  So people shuffle on as best they can.

But its more than that.  Take, for example, this article from the BBC from a few years ago.  It talks about poverty in the Mississippi Delta and what progress has been made since the 1960s.  The answer the give is: very little.  Yet articles such as that one tend not to mention Cleveland.  Admittedly there are better known Clevelands (such as that one up in Ohio).  But I’ve seen folks come right through town and not even mention it.   Anthony Bourdain even went to the Senator’s Place which is in Cleveland and did not so much as mention the name of the town.  We manage to attract people from all over the world and yet the media hardly mentions us.  It’s frustrating enough that I can see the point the authors of the Advocate article were trying to make.  A little recognition might do some good for projects like the Grammy Museum which will be opening next year or for Delta State itself.

Then again it may not.  In regards to poverty, there are a lot of macroeconomic factors at work. The Delta has decline in part due to white flight, but there have been changes in the nation as a whole. Cotton is grown in many places other than Mississippi.  The Delta has other crops too, but farming can only employ so many people.  Then there are the politics.  Those are not so easily changed. People vote the way they do for a variety of complex reasons.  Its hard to see outside influence having much of an impact on state politics.  Just look at what happened to the Affordable Care Act down here. And on the issue of LGBT rights you run into the power that religion holds on the culture of the state. The fact is this is a very religious state and its hard, for me anyway, to imagine that changing just because of increased funding for some groups. You can certainly change laws, as may happen this week, but cultural attitudes are a whole different ballgame.

However people are fighting all the same.  As a progressive it can be difficult to see the bright side of things in a year like this which is exacerbated by my tendency to not follow local politics.  But there is opposition to the status quo in this state as embodied by groups such as Mississippians United Against Personhood, The Campaign for Southern Equality, and Mississippi First and people such as Congressman Bennie Thompson who is a member of the House Progressive Caucus.  These folks tend not to make national headlines which makes their fight harder.

So we need to be careful about self-fulfilling prophecies.  Politicians have a way of staying in power whether or not they have any true support.  By buying into stereotypes about places like Mississippi, people end up glossing over the complexities of the situation.  Just because a situation is bad doesn’t mean it has to be so.   People in this country often live in bubbles and its important to examine our assumptions about places we’ve never been to.