Borsuk: On race, 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and Shorewood's challenges with best intentions

“The power of proximity can bring us together.” That was one of the things said by Bruce Perry, a founder of the Child Trauma Academy, based in Houston, in the opening address at a major forum on building healthy communities in Milwaukee in September.

Perry told more than 1,000 people at the Fiserv Forum — it seemed like just about everybody involved in trying to make children’s lives better in the city was there — that we all should do more to get to know people different from ourselves.

Spending almost all our time with people similar to ourselves increases our “implicit biases,” Perry said, and if we don’t address those biases, we’re not going to overcome the impact of traumas and negative stresses on so many children in the city. We won’t move forward, he said, “until unfamiliar becomes familiar.”

But a few moments online turn up some older thoughts about familiarity — like a quote from the late 1600s about familiarity breeding contempt.

“Can we all just get along?” That’s the famous 1992 quote from Rodney King, whose beating by Los Angeles police officers triggered riots in that city.

I’d like Perry to be right about the benefits of proximity. I’d like the answer to King’s question to be yes.

Best intentions not always rewarded

But it’s way more complicated than wishing this were so. And sometimes, it’s those who are making the best efforts on these scores who find themselves in particularly trying circumstances.

I applaud the relatively small number of schools and school districts in the Milwaukee area that are committed in all the best ways to diversity, equity, open communication and the creation of positive environments for all students. I’ve talked over quite a few years with both adults and students involved in such efforts. They are among the most idealistic people I know.

But they are also tackling some of the toughest challenges in education. To be blunt, it’s often easier to run schools with students who are almost all of similar backgrounds — especially if the backgrounds involve stable homes and good incomes — than to run diverse schools.

Support for integration wanes

Best as I can see, there is nowhere near the level of support now for integration, in any of its forms, that there was a few decades ago. This is true in the Milwaukee area. It is true nationwide. And it is true for many of those in every racial and ethnic community.

An example: The Milwaukee area’s voluntary city-suburban school integration program known as Chapter 220 was all-but ended by the state Legislature in 2015, with hardly a whimper of support for the program.

ARCHIVES: As school options expand, landmark Chapter 220 integration program fades

As we approach the 65th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that found intentional school segregation to be unconstitutional, data suggest that nationwide, the number of students in schools that can be considered segregated has increased in recent years. Some analysts attribute at least some of this to changing demographics, but, at best, the trends on integrating education are not firmly positive.

This is definitely true in the Milwaukee area. With a handful of exceptions, and especially for elementary and middle schools, name a school and I bet I can tell you the racial or ethnic identity of the school.

It’s important to say that some schools where all the students are black or Hispanic are excellent and many parents have logic to why they choose segregated schools. And school segregation reflects the still-huge segregation of housing in the Milwaukee area.

Shouldn’t minority kids in the city be able to go to excellent schools in their neighborhoods, just as white kids in the suburbs do? That’s an argument that has been made by some for years.   

Creating integrated schools is hardly a sure answer to closing gaps or creating healthy social environments. Nationwide (including in the Milwaukee area), those issues exist within schools that are, by the numbers, integrated.

'New tribalism' and race issues

Just about everything about race-related issues seems to have taken a turn for the worse in the last several years. The stands of the current president of the United States are not the only reason why. As Perry told the audience at the Fiserv Forum, there is a “new tribalism” shaping much of what goes on around us.

These thoughts are largely triggered by the situation at Shorewood High School in recent days. A scheduled production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” was canceled, rescheduled with some differences, then canceled again. The use of an inflammatory term in the 1964 text was the specific focus of protests, but the broader context of tensions and perceptions, going well beyond the school, is certainly relevant.

RELATED:Shorewood High cancels 'To Kill a Mockingbird'; critics planned protest over use of racial slur

One of the ironies of the controversy is that a big reason why the play was selected was to increase and improve communication and efforts, in general, to deal with the racial divides that are a fact in all of our lives. It’s another case of those school communities willing to take on important and challenging issues finding themselves in some of the most stressful passages.

Is it too much to hope that better understanding can come as a result of this episode? Can we do better at making the unfamiliar become a healthy and forward-moving form of familiar? Can we all just get along?

Alan J. Borsuk issenior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.