CARLTON FLETCHER: Searching for diversity in a non-diverse environment

Teach your children well.

— Crosby, Stills & Nash

I’m conflicted as I write this. Frankly, I don’t quite know what to say or how to say it. But I feel something needs to be said.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around a comment innocently made by a youngster during a recent visit to the downtown library branch. Introduced to the youngster and his brother by their mom, an exceptionally talented artist and the wife of a young man I have long loved like a son, as their dad’s basketball coach when he was in high school, one of the youngsters asked his mom, “Why did dad have a white coach?”

I laughed the comment off at the time, and the mom mildly admonished her young son by saying, “Coaches come in all colors,” and all of us went our separate ways.

But for some reason, that little boy’s comment has stayed with me, has haunted me as I’ve failed to move past it.

A lot of people tend to dismiss kids’ behavior as products of their environment. And, to a degree, I guess that’s mostly true. But over the years as I’ve encountered these young boys’ dad, we both have made it clear that the love we have for each other — and, yes, I do mean love, an emotion borne of mutual respect and what I know on my part is admiration for this young man and the arc of his life — has not diminished as time since our initial meeting has passed. And while I don’t know this man’s wife as well, having only recently met her, she appears the perfect complement to her husband.

And their kids that I’ve met … as polite and intelligent as any you’d hope to encounter.

That leaves me to look toward another major aspect of their development: school. I don’t know where the youngsters attend school, but I’m pretty certain they’re in the Dougherty County public school system.

I’m  a firm believer in the public school system. While raising my own kids, I often told fellow parents whose children attended private schools that even if I did have the money to place them in private schools — I didn’t — I wouldn’t do it. I have long believed that public schools do a better job of preparing kids for the real world, more so than attending private schools, where they’re given more attention and are usually shielded from the societal issues that are becoming more rampant in public schools.

Looking at the demographics of the local school system, though, I don’t believe students are getting the well-rounded experiences that once were part of the public school experience. At last check, the system’s student population was more than 95% black, and the overwhelming majority of faculty, staff and administration are African American as well. And, yes, the major factor in those numbers is that the population in the county is around 70% black.

But as reports of dangerous incidences in the local system have increased, many of the county’s white students — and a growing number of black students whose parents have the means — are transferring to private schools or are being homeschooled. So the interactions among students of different races, religions and socio-economic backgrounds is becoming rarer and rarer. Students in the local system typically interact with peers who look like them, and they are being taught by instructors who offer an increasingly narrow view of the students’ place in the world outside their classrooms.

Do I have a solution? Of course not. I’m as perplexed as anyone. But I would hope that the local school system and local leaders would encourage parents in the community to enroll their students — and support — local public schools. The state of Georgia’s Republican-majority legislature enacted a voucher program that was a thinly-disguised attempt to draw students away from public schools into private schools, further eroding the benefits of diversity that public schools have always offered.

Am I fretting too much about an innocent comment made by an inquisitive youngster? Probably. But this comment makes me think the benefits of diversity in the local system are eroding. After all, there’s very little diversity here to celebrate.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected].