Sobering read from Naomi Nix of 74 Million, an education website devoted to the 74 million children under 18 in America. Her piece focuses on Bassick High School’s failures just minutes from some of the wealthiest suburbs in the country.
“What’s wrong with Bridgeport is that for quite a few years now not enough people in Washington have cared what’s happening here–and in a hundred other Bridgeports across the country … What frustrates us is that in this crowded, unplanned, unlovely city, there is so much to be done that no one can tell where to start.”–Nancy Hendrick, Bridgeport Sunday Herald, January 8, 1961
(Bridgeport, Connecticut)–When veteran Bridgeport journalist Nancy Hendrick greeted the start of 1961 with a blistering column called “What’s Wrong With Bridgeport,” the inequalities that afflict the city today were already evident everywhere she looked.
“Suddenly we are all aware of the sharp contrast between private opulence and public squalor that exists within our unprecedented prosperity,” she wrote, going on to describe the “rabbit warrens” of the South End, where “the unloved, unwelcome minority groups live in jammed-in discomfort” as well as “the dilapidated sin-tenements on the East Side that should have the torch of public indignation set to them.”
Bridgeport evoked a similar response later that week among state educators wrapping up an evaluation of Bassick High School. The Connecticut Post headlined its January 12 coverage: “Report ‘Indicts’’ City For Educational Ills,” telling readers that the evaluators were laudatory about the school’s teachers but withering in their assessment of the city’s lack of financial support–noting with special emphasis that students were forced to pay for their own books, science equipment, globes and maps.
… Fifty-five years later, Bridgeport is now largely a poor community–though Connecticut remains one of the richest states in the country–and life at Bassick High School has only gotten worse, even as the greater powers that Hendrick tried to awaken continue to largely ignore it.
The stakes are no longer who pays for books and globes but how a school that has struggled for decades can rise to the challenge of preparing students for the 21st century–for an economy that requires increasingly high levels of skill and knowledge even as low-wage jobs disappear.
Full story here.
Wow: Great, timely OIB segment, Lennie! This piece encapsulates a half-century of Bridgeport’s sad, modern history. It should feed into a tremendous outrage of the people of Bridgeport regarding the half-century of pillaging, rape, and federal and state abandonment of this city that contributed so much to the economy and defense of our democracy.
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?!! It certainly hasn’t been expressed in this year’s electoral process. We keep bending over and accepting more of the same from the same Democratic and Republican parties that abandoned us more than five decades ago. Talk about slow learners and failing to get it!
WOW!!! OMG, well there it is and this was the time Bridgeport was turning black and brown.
Ron: The red-lining of Bridgeport began with the elitist exodus of the white middle class to the suburbs in the early 1950s. The suburban elitists had managed to politically kneecap the cities in Connecticut by the elimination of county-based government by 1960. (It has been all downhill for the cities since then.) The suburban elitists knew once they disempowered the cities, the resources of cities would be at their disposal and the suburbanites would be able to enjoy life in their elitist enclaves at the expense of the red-lined cities. This is the history of modern Bridgeport (e.g., the enjoyment of the suburban lifestyle by Trumbull at Bridgeport’s expense).
The replacement in Bridgeport of the still-predominant, white middle class by largely poor black and brown families in the early 1960s did indeed hasten the red-lining of Bridgeport by the suburbs, while it provided further incentive for suburb-based state and federal legislators and elected officials to turn attention and resources away from cities while availing them for exploitation and abuse.
Racism alone is not the reason for the distress of Bridgeport and other cities, but it provides an additional twisted rationalization to the white elitists responsible for the political perpetration of the neglect/red-lining and exploitation of poor, urban areas.
The perpetuation of the income-education gap of poor, urban and rural areas in the US is as much about economic class as about race. Wealthy elitists need a lower class to exploit. Exploiting a lower class comprised of a large proportion of dark-skinned people just makes the exploitation emotionally easier for the white (racist) elitists. (Understanding elitism and racism come from the most primitive, most vile aspects of human nature, it isn’t hard to understand when another very primitive, vile aspect of human nature–greed–is thrown into the mix, you wind up with the deliberate maintenance of unlivable, exploitative conditions of poor urban and rural areas/residents, these latter conditions requiring the deliberate maintenance of an income-education gap. Exploitation is the key word here. Get rid of the income gap, and you get rid of the education gap. Get rid of either gap, and you can’t have the greed-based, exploitative condition.)
That is not really true.
The replacement in Bridgeport of the still-predominant, white middle class by largely poor black and brown families??? As of the 2010 census, there were 144,229 people residing in the city. The racial makeup of the city residents was 39.6% White; 34.6% Black or African American; 3.4% Asian; and 4.3% from two or more races. A total of 18.1% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. Although whites do not outnumber a combination of all races they are still the largest single race in BPT.
There is also evidence to show the education gap leads to the income gap, not vice-versa.
The reasons for the ‘white flight’ of middle class working people in industrial cities is the loss of the job base (Bpt, Detroit). Industry moved away. The same phenomenon was not seen in cities with a financial or agricultural industry based economy (New York, Boston).
Please, put a white person next to a black and a Hispanic and it’s easy to pick the white person standing together but it gets easier when let’s say they all apply for a home loan, now it’s easier because you know and read who they are even for those Hispanics who look white but their bio separates them. Think about this, 74% of the city residents are people of color but do not hold 74% of the power, decision making and influence.
No, as of the 2010 census it would be closer to 60%. ‘39.6% White.’ As in 100% – 39.6% = 60.1%.
Also, who’s at fault for the ‘power’ problem? BPT has a perfectly viable Hispanic candidate for mayor in Rick Torres. Did you vote for the Hispanic guy or one of the white guys? You have met your enemy and he is you.
I have not seen any statistics on home loans. Can you verify your data?
This is information on home loans:
www .federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2014/pdf/2013_HMDA.pdf
It states:
70.2% of home loans went to non-Hispanic whites with the ethnic information missing for 8.2% of the borrowers.
Non-Hispanic whites are 63.7% of the population and white is listed as 72.4% of the population.
The data does not list home loan applications by race, i.e. the slight difference between home loans by ethnicity and the population could be attributed to one segment of the population not applying for a home loan.
Income aside, this does not show a significant bias in home loans based on race.
It also doesn’t list red-lining.
BOE SPY is a simple, generic, suburban-elitist cultural genre that knows its free ride in American society is coming to an end. We are hearing the last, tired, feeble, brain-deteriorated gasp of that necrotic segment of American society. Bye, bye Spy(ies). Don’t worry; Bernie will leave you a few pennies to spend at the country club (after it becomes commercialized in order to avoid becoming another one of Donald’s condo developments).
Aren’t shore-side country clubs and resorts pivotal to your plan for BPT’s recovery? You’d better hope I have a lot more than a few pennies left or your BPT recovery plan just went to hell.
BTW–Bernie and his Brown Shirts are not even beating Hillary. Even after the death threats. He is tearing the Democratic Party apart.
Isn’t that the same thing you said about Ganim? Do you ever get tired of being wrong?
*** Goes to show you not everything was better back in the good old days, no? Not public education anyway; seems as though it was headed downhill, just only at a slower pace than say the last 20 years or so! Wonder if there were any charter schools in Bpt 50 years ago. Hell, in the summer of ’61 I was riding a cherry-red two-wheel bike with whitewall tires I got for my B-day that came from The Western Auto Store! *** WHOOP ***
No, it wasn’t. In 1950 the graduation rate was ~50%. Topping out in 1977 at 72% with today’s being almost the same at 68%.
www .edweek.org/media/34gradrate-c1.pdf