I find myself knowing a lot about the L.A. Unified School District, thanks to Adam Carolla.
Now here’s David Cole:
In 1984, L.A. decided to crack down on the address falsifiers. Dozens of kids, all white, mostly Jewish, found themselves forcibly “resettled to the east.” I found this umsiedlung somewhat funny. Here were kids I hadn’t seen since elementary school, looking bewildered and a little scared as they found themselves adrift in a sea of shvartzers. But it didn’t take long for a natural order to arise. The small minority of newly arrived “deportees” took over the student government, the theater program, and the school paper. The parents of the resettled poured money into the school’s emaciated coffer. The food in the cafeteria improved, extra security guards were hired, and the auditorium finally got a decent sound system. The Westside parents were obsessively concerned about their kids’ education, something I couldn’t say about some of the black parents. Fund-raisers were held, corporate donations were solicited, and the resulting improvements benefited everyone, including the black students.
A year later, Hami became L.A.’s designated musical-theater magnet school, to ensure that in the future, white kids would arrive more voluntarily. See, back then, the white kids were wanted. It was understood that they brought good things with them. And no one was afraid to admit it.
A lot can change in three decades.
