The new system, approved by the School Committee last March after more than a year of research and debate, is quite different from the old one. For 25 years, the city divided schools into three sprawling geographic-based zones, under a plan to comply with court-ordered desegregation that offered families a choice of about two dozen schools.

Schools are no longer divided into assignment zones. Instead, a computer algorithm generates a list of schools that considers such factors as distance from a family’s home, school capacity, and MCAS performance. The algorithm guarantees a minimum of six school choices, including at least four of medium or high quality. But in many cases, families in densely populated neighborhoods with many nearby schools are receiving more than a dozen options.

Popular schools have become synonymous with the choices of white middle-class families, principals and families say. And the demand report reflects the choices of families who choose early.

Oliver said parents of color and those in low-income communities “don’t always go in to make choices when the lottery starts. We have a lot of people who can’t make a commitment until June or even Labor Day.’’

School choice is “pretty complicated stuff, and people are always eager to come up with pretty simple solutions,’’ said Curt Dudley-Marling, a Boston College professor who studies patterns of school failure and success. “It always seems to me that it’s rigged for parents who have the most resources.’’

Not all families have the benefit of active parent groups that organize school tours to help families vet their options, which in Boston could mean as many as 20 public school options, not including charters. Single parents, families new to the country, parents of disabled children, or families struggling with the demands of life often are unable to investigate every option.

“I can’t imagine they have time, much less the resources, to go to fairs and all these things,’’ Dudley-Marling said. Instead, they, like most people, default to what they have heard within their circle of influence.

...


Boston is seeking to overhaul its school assignment process, but city officials are adamant that parents will always have some degree of choice. “The question,’’ said Superintendent Carol R. Johnson, “is how much choice is enough and what are the . . . choices parents have?’’ 

The racial formula was a condition imposed by court decisions dealing with desegregation in the 1970s.

NoHo school budget cuts due to high white student percentage sparks outrage

Outrage has grown at Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, as the school faces layoffs and increased class sizes due to a law limiting funds for schools with a higher white student body.

The Los Angeles Unified School District provides more funding for schools where the white population is below 30 percent.

"Thankfully we're going to keep our librarian. We're going to keep our nurse, but we may lose a few teachers, but not as many as we once thought," said Sheila Edmiston, one student's parent.

Several jobs will still be lost and class sizes could grow. For many parents, the race-based reason of "too many white students" has made the cuts more difficult to swallow.

In January 1955 in Hardin County, Texas, Leo Carr had to pay $1.50 to vote. That receipt for Carr's "poll tax" now resides in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. In today’s dollars, Carr paid roughly $13.

“It’s a day’s wages,” explains William Pretzer, the museum’s senior history curator. “You’re asking someone to pay a day’s wages in order to be able to vote.”

Pretzer says the museum accepted the donation of the receipt from Carr’s family as a vivid and a significant example of the way that voting rights were denied to African Americans. Poll taxes, quite simply a tax to pay to vote, were enacted in the post-reconstruction era from the late 19th to the very early 20th century. But they remained in effect until the 1960s. (...)

Donald Trump lit up the mainstream media spectacle by stating in his presidential candidacy announcement, "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.... They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." (1) The mainstream press could not let such an opportune racist outburst go unnoticed. After all, it was perfect fodder for fueling the corporate media's never-ending spectacle of entertainment. Mouthed from one of America’s favorite billionaire buffoons, his racist and xenophobic statements have been defended as brave, dismissed as uncivil, or set aside  as the colorful discourse of a cantankerous, rich eccentric. Such commentary collapses into the realm of the personal by privatizing racism. That is, it ignores the deep seated contours of systemic racism and xenophobia and the conditions that promote it, instead focusing on the individual who spouts such poisonous racist language. Rather than viewing Trump’s comments as a political virus that has deep roots in nativist apoplexy and a long legacy of racism and state violence, his despicable remarks are reduced to an uncivil rant by a bullying member of the billionaire class with no reference to the unmarked status of white privilege and its underlying logic of white supremacy.  Such commentary at its core is superficial, duplicitous, and represents a flight from responsibility and a politics of denial.

Not only did mainstream media replay Trump's statements over and over again, without any serious criticism, but also they filled the 24/7 news cycle with endless interviews in which Trump defended his remarks, proving the obvious about his arrogance and stupidity. Treated more as an indication of Trump's no-holds-barred personality than as another example of the myth of the United States' claim to the comfortable status of an alleged postracial society, Trump's remarks were viewed as indiscrete and colorful rather than symptomatic of the racial hatred lying beneath the culture of dominant politics.

The real issue that needs to be examined is what kind of society produces a Donald Trump.

The racial cleansing machine was in full operating mode as the dominant media apparatuses rushed to interview a variety of faux commentators about how they felt about Trump's remarks with little attempt to take the high ground and challenge many of the remarks that were made. On the contrary, the only truth or sense of injustice displayed by CNN, NBC, CBS and other major news outlets lies in the assumption that the meaning of any issue rests with making sure that the public is exposed to a narrow array of views in the interest of balance and journalistic objectivity.

According to this logic, balance - not morality, justice or evidence - is the ultimate arbiter of truth. Hence, Trump's vicious, racist remarks enabled the mainstream media to let the American people hear from Sen. Ted Cruz who argued that he liked Donald Trump and was glad he was bringing attention to the issue of "illegal immigration." (2) Former Sen. Rick Santorum joined Cruz in praising Trump for focusing on "illegal immigration," absent of any serious criticism of his racist remarks. (3) Other conservative politicians such as Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Gov. Rick Perry condemned Trump's remarks but nothing was said in the press about how they had played a key role in supporting legislation that was both vicious and racist. (4) (...)