Hey, Cap'n, somebody told me just now that they thought that you believed Tom Robinson's story agin ourn.
You know what I said? I said, "You wrong, man. You dead wrong! Mr. Finch ain't taking his story against ourn."

Well, they was wrong, wasn't they?

You taking his story ...?

What kinda man are you? You got chil'ren of your own.

Mr. Bob Ewell, To Kill A Mockingbird

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Last week's Talk of the Nation on self-selected segregation in American neighborhoods and schools was unsettling and a little confusing:

Dr. Brantlinger: By high income, we're basically talking middle class, educated people, many of whom had doctoral degrees and masters degrees. So it's not the elite, it's really, uh, educated middle class.

Interviewer: But people who you would expect, perhaps, to have liberal, progressive views about, uh, about diversity, and about the need and the benefits of integration, for example.

Dr. Brantlinger: In fact, they talked about that on a theoretical level but when it came down to their own child, they worried about a downward trajectory ... So, in spite of their rhetoric about the importance of integration and, you know, the social values of interaction, they choose to push for privilege for their own children.

I guess what confused me was how freely Dr. Brantlinger interchanged race and class in presenting the results of her research. She seemed to be saying that high income whites don't want their children in classrooms with either blacks or low income children of any race.

For my own children, my concern was that the public school would not be diverse enough. I didn't look at any data to determine how diverse the public school is. I simply looked up and down my street. But, as I rack up more years in this crazy little town, it seems likely that the public school may be more diverse than I've imagined.

Now it's a question of class size and resources ...