A very progressive school district where I worked was located in a community just over the border from a very poor and very violent section of Chicago... a mostly-black area (to use the language in place at that time). That community (generations of whites) reacted to a sudden influx of African-Americans at a particular point in the town's history by deciding to take on race concerns, head on.

A progressive housing policy was drawn up and VIGOROUSLY supported, decade after decade, by the originally-mostly-white political party in power. The policy openly and aggressively encouraged integrative housing policies and backed them up with extremely progressive school registration policies to continually massage folks together.

In no time at all, people of ALL ethnic backgrounds flocked to this town because it was truly a place where diversity was not only important, but something SO important that people were willing to try new ideas to achieve it. Openly. Persistently. Creatively. I tell you what, it was a thrilling place to live and to work. Not a melting pot. A paella.

Now I can't recall what the formulas and policies were, exactly. I do know that within the very small footprint of that town, busing helped maintain the policies; no one, however, was bused very far because it was, in total, a very small place with a very high population density due to a good mix of apartments and single-family houses on smallish lots-- a lot of people to "juggle." Around the time I was there, they were starting to transform most of the elementary schools into a series of magnet schools-- an arts emphasis here, a science emphasis there, and so forth. With a permissive-transfers policy.

Well, by the time I got into this picture, "diversity" had spread throughout the community. At businesses. At lunch tables. At wedding showers. On school boards. In back yards. Around police and fire personnel. In town gummint. In both active political parties. On 20-30 extremely active town boards and commissions. Not diversity in name only-- friendships, alliances, dynamic partnerships, business opportunities. And "affirmative action" didn't have a thing to do with it. "Affirmative action" LEARNED from it.

Was it perfect, hell no. But people still wanted in on it, into it, to work with it. Multiculturally.


Since this decision came down, my main thought has been, "They must be flipping now." I cannot imagine that they are going to be willing to go backwards. I hope the same creativity and ability to work together that made the town what it became will inform their response, now, and continue to show us the way.

~Susan