DISD Can Remove Confederate Names From Schools, But Can It Remove Entrenched Socio-economic Segregation?

Finally, DISD has stripped the names of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and William L. Cabell from elementary schools. The fourth, Albert Sidney Johnston Elementary, is well on its way.This newspaper has long argued that this was the right direction to go, so kids won't have to suffer the daily indignity of attending school whose names celebrated vestiges to this country's painful racist past.Now that the controversial renaming process is done, we're encouraged that the district's trustees have vowed to start actually correcting the history of racial inequities in its schools.The sweeping resolution trustees approved last week recognizes the district's decades-long racial and economic segregation practices and pledges to right those wrongs. It's an important start, particularly in a district where the overwhelming majority of students are Hispanic and black and where 86 percent of the students come from families below the poverty line.   Continue reading...