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Malaysia Succeeds Because Of Its Racial Integration Policy News The Next PM 2008-10-10 15:41 ALOR STAR: Malaysia is successful because of its policy of racial integration and freedom for its people to practise their own cultures, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Abdul Razak said Friday (10 Oct). The deputy prime minister said that this policy ensured that every race could practise it own culture, religion and way of thinking, had freedom in education and was not pressured to practise one culture. The country's founders were far-sighted because they understood the ethnic uniqueness in Malaysia and that any problems could be overcome through understanding. That was why the government had never thought of implementing racial assimilation, he said. "Malaysia is the only country in Southeast Asia to have Chinese schools teaching in Mandarin. There is no country in the world like Malaysia," he added. He said the government believed that the best way for the people to live in peace was by understanding the way of life and cultures of each race and giving them freedom to practise them. "Culture can be likened to an iceberg where only the top can clearly be seen, meaning the way of life, behaviour and traditions of each race, but hidden beneath the surface, which is hard to see, are the cultrual aspects like philosophy, experience and thinking that drive the culture," he said. Najib said the cultural diversity of the multiracial people in Malaysia had become a tourist attraction. He wanted the people to jointly preserve the existing peace and security by not causing any ethnic misunderstanding or raising provocative and sensitive issues. He also said that the government gave attention to the management of the various ethnic groups by giving them special allocations to help them, as was evident in Budget 2009, to ensure harmony. The three-day national-level festival was also attended by Transport Minister Datuk Ong Tee Keat and Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Seri Ong Ka Chuan. (AP) MySinchew 2008.10.10 http://www.mysinchew.com/node/17198

Monday May 25, 2009

Racial unity must be taught at early stages

National schools must reflect the racial diversity

Racial integration and unity are national assets

Last week a national daily carried a report on a study conducted by The Cognitive and Psycho Social Profile of Malaysian Adolescents (CoPs) on Malaysian teens on a very important issue, racial integration.

It is not surprising that the survey concluded that many youngsters aren't concerned about racial integration. However it is surprising that 10.7% never eat breakfast and 8% have never used a computer. These figures are something for our leaders to give some serious thought as we are just more than a decade away from achieving of vision of a developed nation.

There is no doubt that our education system as it is now is the main cause of racial segregation. Instead of dumping the children of the various races together from a very young age, we have actually separated them into separate classes to facilitate religious instruction. Subsequently, as though this was not enough , we further segregated them into vernacular schools. There is hardly any contact among the various races from a very early age. If this does not breed racial segregation then what does?

It is easy to blame the vernacular schools for the failure of national schools to integrate the various races. We must go a step further to find out why many parents opted for vernacular schools. The reason is obvious and does not a genius to detect - the unsatisfactory environment that is prevalent in national schools. Our national schools have in fact taken a more religious stance for the comfort of non-Malays. Having sent all my children to national schools, I can say for sure we are left with no option but vernacular schools.

I am sure if our national schools reflected the ethnic diversity of the nation among students and teachers, most parents would prefer to send their children to these schools as it was in the sixties and seventies.

The unhealthy environment in our national schools led to the recent call by the Raja Muda of Perak Raja Dr Nazrin Shah for a more balanced racial composition of school leaders, teachers and students that would reflect the multi-racial composition of the nation. I like to echo the recent statement by our Education Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein. “Schools should have a conducive and balanced environment and the ministry must have the political will to handle this well and not make it a racial issue”.

Our children in schools are segregated and they are happy to just interact among those from their own communities. As children and teenagers they do not see the need to interact with others until they come out to work in a very competitive world. Racial unity and harmony are assets that must be taught to be treasured and cherished from an early age

We all know the problem and the solutions but do we have the political will to implement them?

Thursday March 29, 2007
Survey: Many youngsters aren't concerned about racial integration
By SIMRIT KAUR; STAR

PETALING JAYA: Racial integration among the younger generation in Malaysia still has some way to go, judging by the results of a nationwide survey of 4,400 Form Four students. Only 52% of the teenagers said they had a friend of a different race. In fact, mixing with other races was not something that concerned many of the respondents. Only 12.8% felt that it was an issue, while 63.9% were more worried about contracting a disease. The Cognitive and PsychoSocial Profile of Malaysian Adolescents (CoPs) study was carried out in August by a group of academics from the Education Faculty of Universiti Malaya (UM).

Prof John Arul Phillips, a former UM academic and current dean of the Arts and Social Sciences Faculty at Open University Malaysia, said this was the most complete study of its kind because of the large sampling. “We went to 44 schools in rural areas, towns and cities across Malaysia, including Sabah and Sarawak,” he said. A total of 16.6% of the 16-year-olds surveyed also admitted to smoking. They cited emotional pressure (27.6%), a desire to be accepted by friends (25.5%) and wanting to be cool and macho (20.1%) as the most common reasons for taking up the habit. Another 12.6% said they were influenced by the mass media.

Other findings include:
# 8.8% reported using drugs;
# 10.7% never eat breakfast;
# 8% have never used a computer; and
# 3% said they were often not interested in studies.

The study also compared different groups of students. There was no major difference in resilience and self-esteem levels between males and females, but non-smokers were found to be more resilient and had higher self-esteem. In addition, males reported better relationships with their teachers compared with females. CoPs project leader Assoc Prof Dr Fatimah Hashim from UM’s Education Faculty said: “There was very low correlation between academic performance in PMR and psycho-social attributes such as self-esteem, resiliency and family bonding.” In the area of general knowledge, only 23.3% of respondents identified Lee Hsien Loong as the Prime Minister of Singapore and 43.3% knew that Bill Gates founded Microsoft. However, 81% knew that Manchester United was an English football club. Students were poor in civic knowledge, too. For example, only 58.4% knew that Parliament consisted of the Dewan Rakyat and Dewan Negara.
= = == = == = =

Malaysia is just about to be 5o years old and it is too much to expect the major racial components be close to each other in such a short time. From the Christian era we have heard the term “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). It was an ironic statement, for in that society no man loved his neighbor, but distrusted him heartily.

In terms of time evolution, mankind had come to the point where it delighted so in distinctions and differences amongst the different races, those even in small geographical areas - multitudinous groups, cults and nationalities were assembled, each proudly asserting its own individuality and worth over others. In the beginning in those terms, man’s emerging consciousness needed the freedom to disperse itself, to become different, to originate bases for various characteristics and assert individuations and hence the evolution of various races within the human species.

You must realize that your present race is the one into which you were born, in your terms in this place and time. But most of you cannot recall and remember each of you have been members of different races and so each of you have shared in both the advantages and ignominies attached, in historic terms, to such conditions of birth. But alas short is your memory and long is your pain and you have forgotten your many accents and have to be relearned them. Those who remembered are few and can find no identity as a race but as a human species. You are a cooperative species and a loving one.

Your misunderstandings and your distrusts in each other real as they are seldom committed out of any intent to be evil, but because of severe misinterpretations about the nature of good, and the means that can be taken towards its actualization. Many of these will be directly or indirectly connected with old myths and beliefs of your forefathers
= == = = == = = =

Why School Choice Can Promote Integration
April 12, 2000

By Jay P. Greene

Expanding access to private schools is likely to ameliorate segregation in U.S. education, not lead to race wars, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. 

Some people oppose school choice because they fear that it will foster racial segregation, cultural divisiveness, and social fragmentation. Concern for these social outcomes of education is sensible despite the greater attention that test scores often receive. After all, the ideal of the common school, where students learn respect for their fellow citizens by mixing with students of different backgrounds, was and continues to be central to the justification of the public funding of education. Private schools are often seen as antithetical to this ideal of the common school, as havens for homogeneous groups of students. Expanding access to private schools through vouchers or other forms of publicly sponsored school choice, critics argue, would only exacerbate the problem of segregation created by private schools. David Berliner, a former president of the American Educational Research Association, warned that "voucher programs would allow for splintering along ethnic and racial lines." "Our primary concern," he said, "is that voucher programs could end up resembling the ethnic cleansing now occurring in Kosovo." The Harrisburg, Pa., superintendent of schools was even more alarmist when he told a television audience that school choice would help create "Hitlerian regimes."

Yet the facts suggest that private schools are nothing like the places depicted by such critics. Far from being segregationist enclaves, private schools, on average, are better integrated by race than are public schools. Expanding access to private schools is likely to ameliorate segregation in U.S. education, not lead to race wars, ethnic cleansing, or genocide.

Public schools are hampered in their ability to reduce segregation by the fact that most of their students are assigned to schools based on where they live. Public schools tend to reproduce and reinforce racial segregation in housing. Private schools, on the other hand, can and typically do draw students from across political and neighborhood boundaries to gather a more racially mixed student body. While it is true that public school systems have a higher proportion of minority students than do private schools, the distribution of minorities within the public and private sectors clearly shows that, by detaching schooling from residences, individual private schools are more likely to be integrated schools.

According to a national sample of public and private school 12th graders collected by the U.S. Department of Education, public school classrooms are more apt to be almost entirely white or almost entirely minority. More than half of all public school 12th graders (55 percent) are in classes that have more than 90 percent or fewer than 10 percent minority students. In private schools, just 41 percent of students are in similarly segregated classrooms. And private school students are markedly more likely to be in classes that come close to resembling the nation's demographics. More than a third (37 percent) of private school students are in classes whose racial composition is within 10 percent of the national average. Just 18 percent of public school students are in classes that are similarly mixed.

Survey responses suggest that better integration in private schools also leads to better race relations there. Students were asked whether pupils at their school made friends with youngsters of other races. Thirty-one percent of private school students strongly agreed that this was the case at their school, compared with only 18 percent of public school students. Public school students, teachers, and administrators were also as much as twice as likely as their private school counterparts to report that racial conflict and fighting were problems at their schools.

A study of seating patterns at lunchroom tables confirms these survey findings that integration in private school classrooms leads to greater cross-racial friendship.

Private schools' students are almost twice as likely to sit in racially mixed groups in the lunchroom as are public school students.
 
Private schools' students are almost twice as likely to sit in racially mixed groups in the lunchroom as are public school students. The evidence, in short, indicates that private schools not only produce more racial mixing but also greater racial tolerance and harmony.
That's today. What would happen tomorrow if choice expanded the number of private school students?

Early evidence from the school choice program in Cleveland suggests that choice does help promote integration. In the Cleveland metropolitan area, more than three- fifths of public school students attend schools that are nearly all white or all minority. Yet among students who choose to attend private schools with a voucher, only half are in similarly segregated schools. A more dramatic difference: Almost a fifth (19 percent) of school choice private school students are in classes whose racial composition is within 10 percent of the average minority percentage in the Cleveland metropolitan area. Just 5 percent of public school students are in classes that are similarly mixed. In Cleveland, students are using vouchers to move from racially segregated public schools to better-integrated private schools.

Some people have trouble accepting the fact that school choice would promote racial integration because they remember how private schools were used in the South to evade the requirements of Brown v. Board of Education.

It is true that school choice is tainted with this shameful history. But public schools are also tainted by the fact that in much of the land they were segregated by law for almost a century. And following Brown, suburban public schools were used to evade efforts at integration far more often than were private schools.

Rather than judge contemporary policies by their pedigrees, we should judge them by their merits and their actual effects. The evidence is clear that private schools are able to offer better racial integration because they are able to transcend the segregation in housing. School choice offers the potential of expanding this integration by allowing people to associate in schools without regard to where they live or how much money they have.

Plan to enhance racial integration launched

Submitted by admin on 15 May 2007 - 4:48pm.

• Berita Perpaduan

KUALA TERENGGANU: Reducing racial segregation and inter- as well as intra-racial tension are among the five main objectives of the National Unity and Integration Plan 2006-2010.

The plan, which draws up the steps to be taken for the next five years to enhance racial integration in the country, was launched by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin here yesterday.

The plan was launched in conjunction with national-level Unity Month celebrations at Batu Burok.

Among the other objectives of the plan are to boost the spirit of unity and patriotism among Malaysians and to increase the level of tolerance and harmony among the various ethnic groups in the country.

The plan, which was approved by the Cabinet on May 17 last year, was drawn up in the hope of further strengthening racial unity and creating a sense of belonging in this country, as well as a feeling of being proud to be Malaysian. The plan outlined 19 strategies which government agencies and statutory bodies were supposed to implement.

The agencies were to foster close racial relations by applying principles like mutual understanding and to carry out steps like monitoring of current affairs or conflicts and gauging of the impact of unity.

The private sector, non-governmental organisations and the public are to be roped in.

The plan also sought to promote a national identity through a quality education system and to boost the people’s understanding of the Rukunegara and the Federal Constitution. The plan said one of the challenges faced was that integration among the various ethnic groups in the country was still at a “functional level”.

It said there was only integration among working peers while sincerity, a caring attitude, honesty and understanding of one racial group towards another was still not achieved.

On the Bangsa Malaysia concept, the plan stated that the definition was still unclear and had yet to be discerned by society.

During the event yesterday, former foreign affairs minister Tun Dr Muhammad Ghazali Shafie, former Sabah chief minister Tan Sri Peter Lo Su Yin, and previous Sarawak Dayak National Union vice-president Datuk Seri Tra Zehnder @ Philomena Tra ak Jemat received the first “Generators of Unity in Malaysia” awards.

Forging a young Malaysian identity towards national unity

Contributed by Wong Fook Meng

Saturday, 07 April 2007 12:11am

“A nation is a community of people who feel that they belong together in a double sense in that they share deeply significant elements of a common heritage and that they have a common future.” - Harvard Professor Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation. We are gathered in the Bar Council Auditorium today to engage in a discussion on issues of paramount importance such as nation building, social integration and forging a young Malaysian identity. However, life outside this Auditorium is very different. The average young Malaysian does not wake up early in the morning with thoughts of forging a Malaysian identity or nation building dominating his mind. He is more concerned about beating the traffic jam, getting to work on time, surviving the office ordeal and having enough money to pay his monthly bills. According to the recent National Youth Survey 2006 (Merdeka Centre for Opinion Research, National Youth Opinion Poll on Civic Engagement (2006)), 21% of young Malaysians aged between 18 and 32 felt that fuel and price hikes were the most important issues facing Malaysia right now, as opposed to 3% who responded that it was local politics and 2% the Ninth Malaysia Plan. 32 % of the respondents said that ‘completing their education’ was their biggest personal concern while 16 % responded ‘doing well in jobs and career’. Very few expressed concern for the wider society. Another study, which is alarming, is the Cognitive and PsychoSocial Profile of Malaysian Adolescents (CoPs) study where a nationwide survey (The Star, Survey: Many Youngsters aren’t concerned about Social Integration (29 March 2007)). of 4,400 Form Four students was conducted in rural areas, towns and cities across Malaysia including Sabah and Sarawak. The results of the study show that only 52% of the respondents said they had a friend of a different race. Only 12.8% felt that mixing with other races was an issue, demonstrating the fact that racial integration is not high on the priority list. Thus, we still have a long way to go in instilling civic consciousness among young Malaysians. A useful starting point for discussion is identifying young Malaysian identity in the context of a globalized world and an entertainment saturated society. Globalization and the entertainment industry The forces of globalization and the entertainment industry have the tendency of homogenizing Malaysian youth culture. Young Malaysians, regardless of race, religion and geographical location, wear Levi jeans, eat at McDonald’s, watch American movies, support British football teams and listen to the latest music from MTV. Like it or not, Western influences and pop culture has had a far-reaching impact on our young generation. Andrew Fletcher, a 18th century Scottish political thinker, has this to say: “Give me the makings of the songs of the nation and I care not who writes its laws”. In the eyes of our youth, entertainment celebrities are more popular compared to politicians and law makers. However, the forces of globalization and entertainment do not completely remove our Asian roots and identities. Our Malaysian identity is a unique blend between a rich Asian heritage and strong Western influence. While we strive to maintain Asian values such as respect for elders, tolerance, communal spirit and strong religious emphasis, we also reach out to the outside world and embrace the larger global culture. Cultural Diversity Malaysians embrace and celebrate the cultural diversities of the various races living in this country. We have a colourful kaleidoscope of languages, dialects, food, arts and way of life. Cultural diversity is not a threat but a unifying force of Malaysian society. It is the social glue that keeps us together. Take a look at the mamak stalls around us. Malays, Chinese and Indians drink ‘teh tarik’ and eat ‘roti canai’ together while engaging in vigorous conversations about politics and current affairs, often in a mix of butchered English and Malay. The ‘mamak’ stall is a microcosm of Malaysian society. Regardless of skin colour, we all can share the same food, interests and political destinies. Our lives are enriched by the confluence of Malay, Chinese, Indian and other cultures in this land. Having said this, and before I am accused of painting a rosy but inaccurate portrait of Malaysia, I hasten to add that race, language and religion are still sensitive issues in Malaysia. This is understandable because these issues involve basic factors of identity and affiliation. However, as young Malaysians, we need to grapple with these issues in an open and sensible manner, and strive to forge a common future for all of us. ‘Bangsa Malaysia’ - The ‘Rojak Pot Approach’ Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, was quoted as saying that ‘Bangsa Malaysia’ is a general concept and a state of mind. He further said: “I like to stress that it is more towards a state of the mind, meaning that we lose the prejudice, incompatibility among the races, and unwillingness to mix with other races. If we treat it as a state of mind, I think we can avoid the polemics. And if we try to define it, it will raise a lot of questions and debates on the matter.” What then is ‘Bangsa Malaysia’? Taking our Deputy Prime Minister’s cue, I will not try to define it. However, I think I will attempt to illustrate the concept. In Malaysia, we do not subscribe to the ‘melting pot’ approach as in the US where all the various traditions and cultures are ‘melted’ and meshed together to form a new American identity. Ours is more of a ‘rojak pot approach’ or what some call the ‘salad bowl approach’. In a ‘rojak’ pot, you will find crunchy ‘keropok’, ‘tau foo’, ‘jambu air’, mango, papaya, ‘sengkuang’ and cucumber all mixed together with thick prawn paste sauce sprinkled with generous amounts of peanuts. The various ingredients in a ‘rojak’ pot are mixed together but do no lose their individual characteristics. However, by being mixed together, the sum total becomes a new and better entity. This is what sociologists term as the ‘integration approach’ juxtaposed to the ‘assimilation approach’. With this approach, Malays, Chinese and Indians are integrated into a common society but the various races still preserve their distinctive cultural identities as an integral part of the Malaysian national mosaic. So, has Malaysia achieve its objective of forming a Bangsa Malaysia? I think the status is still ‘work in progress’. Outgoing Gerakan President Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik was reported as saying: “I regret that after 50 years of independence we could not instill a greater sense of nationalism among the people.” I believe he is right. At present, our political landscape is still very much segmented along racial lines and this reinforces ethnic identities as opposed to a Malaysian identity. Our economic policies do not distribute equal assistance to all races. After 50 years of independence, race cannot and should not be used as a criterion for the extension of economic benefits. Meritocracy is still not in wide practice. The participation of non-Malays in civil service still leaves much to be desired. Core matters such as justice, freedom, democracy, economic opportunities and security are commodities which are essential to all of us and not the special privilege of any group. Thus, it is fair comment to say that it is still ‘work in progress’ in respect of our journey towards creating a ‘Bangsa Malaysia’. Truth Telling Moving forward, how can we achieve the aims of creating a ‘Bangsa Malaysia’? I believe it is fundamentally important for there to be openness, frankness and sincerity as we discuss inter-communal issues. The underpinning concept is that of truth-telling, where we are able to speak the truth to each other in an objective and rationale manner. Under the Badawi administration, there is definitely greater freedom of speech and discussion. This is a positive development as a mature, intelligent and knowledge-based younger generation would want a safe environment where honest views can be articulated within parameters. It is unfortunate that there is a ‘ban’ on the Article 11 roadshow. Before the imposition of the ban, Article 11 together with the Malacca Bar Committee held a seminar on the freedom of religion in Malacca. There was a huge turnout of about 600 people a respectable figure in a state where most people would rather spend their evenings watching television at home. This demonstrates that the common ‘rakyat’ is interested and vitally engaged in issues such as freedom of religion and other constitutional matters. The Federal Constitution is our social contract, the Charter of the nation so to speak. It is the blueprint for our pluralistic society. There should be the freedom to engage in a discussion on issues of paramount constitutional importance. Unless we can speak truthfully to each other, we cannot create a united and authentic ‘Bangsa Malaysia’. What we can achieve is perhaps a superficial and external form of peaceful co-existence that can easily be undermined by prejudices, suspicions and underlying tensions. I say all this with one important caveat: freedom of speech must be exercised with great responsibility. Freedom of speech does not give us a right to hurt each other and to incite feelings of racial hatred and discord. It is to be used to tell the truth. But the truth must be under-girded with respect, or else the ‘truth’ will be repulsive to the listener. I am very confident that the young Malaysian generation is able to handle truth in a civilized and responsible manner. Role of Young Malaysians All of us share the Malaysian dream. We cannot change the past but the future is ours to make. As young Malaysians, we need to grow out from our narrow communal concerns, and share and work together on a broader national agenda. Instead of harping on issues of racial marginalization, we need to strive together to ensure that Malaysia is not marginalized in the midst of the competitive global race for economic development. Instead of arguing on distributing the economic pie, we need to help each other to enlarge the pie for our common good. A growing economy will have a positive impact on enhancing the stability of a pluralistic society like ours. All of us have a common stake in this country. At the end of the day, it is the choices we make as young Malaysians that count. On a micro level, we must learn to make friends with people outside our own racial community. Human relationships should never be based on skin colour. That which is more important than what we say or do is what we think of each other deep down in our consciousness. The main question is whether in the secret chamber of our hearts, we regard people of a different race as equals in worth and dignity. We must have faith in a common future together. After all, we are all in the same ‘rojak pot’ called Malaysia. A million dreams and hopes are all meshed together in this big pot. Whether our dreams and hopes will turn into reality depends in a large part on whether we are willing to work together as a society. Together, we can build a better and more united Malaysia, and make this a beautiful place where we can all live, work, play and laugh together as equals on this land. *Edited version of the paper presented at the Centre for Public Policy Studies (Asian Strategy & Leadership Institute) – National Young Lawyers Committee (Bar Council) 1st Young Malaysians Roundtable Discussion on National Unity & Development in Malaysia “Challenges and Prospects for Nation Building” held at the Bar Council Auditorium on 3 April 2007.

Racial Integration in Urban America: A Block Level Analysis of African American and White Housing Patterns by Lois M. Quinn and John Pawasarat, Employment and Training Institute, School of Continuing Education, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, December 2002, revised January 2003. [Report is also available in PDF format] Rankings - whether of cities, states, universities, or high school students -- are very popular with the media and the public. These rankings often purport to measure highly complex conditions based on a single statistic and sometimes can be very damaging for the entities ranked. A recent report on Exposing Urban Legends: The Real Purchasing Power of Central City Neighborhoods, conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Employment and Training Institute for The Brookings Institution, examined the damage that marketing firms do to cities by ranking neighborhoods based on average household income from richest to poorest and then using racial and other stereotypes that steer retail businesses away from central city neighborhoods. This study examines the basis for the segregation index, which has been used historically to compare urban areas, in order to determine why Milwaukee was ranked as the 3rd most segregated metro area in the U.S. and to assess the strengths and limitations of the formula used to calculate the rankings. Findings The segregation index appears to represent an obsolete and racially-biased approach based on a white majority view of segregation. Historically concerned with "white flight" and "racial tipping," the index ranks metropolitan areas on the degree to which the African American population is evenly dispersed, with the goal of the same white-black ratio in every census tract.(1) For the four-county Milwaukee area, census tracts that are more than 16-18 percent black are considered segregated by the index. For the Salt Lake City-Ogden metro area, which is ranked as one of the best on the segregation index and close to the "ideal," the desired goal is to have a less than 2 percent black population in each census tract.(2) The index is based on a one-way concept of desegregation where blacks are expected to move into white areas, but whites are not expected to move into majority black areas. Milwaukee's metro ranking on the index (82.16) is based on the "ideal" of moving 197,890 blacks of the total 240,859 black population (or 82.16%) out of their "too black" census tracts and into the remaining "whiter" tracts.(3) In urban areas with substantial black populations, the "ideal" of the segregation index would require most of the black population to move into neighborhoods with fewer black residents. While claiming to be race-neutral, the index has historically been used to measure progress toward the dispersal of blacks into geographic units where they would remain in the minority. Each decade, after the black population fails to move in the high percentages needed to become "evenly" dispersed (i.e., "non-segregated" under the index), the cities are declared continuingly resistant to integration. The segregation index can only rank two races at a time, so that diverse urban populations of Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans are not factored into the black-white segregation rankings. First, all Hispanics, regardless of stated race, are excluded. The remaining black-white racial categories reflect 19th century definitions. Any persons identified in whole or in any part as black or African American are considered "black." Only those white persons with no other racial identity are considered "white."

An alternative definition of black-white integration is presented in this paper, not as a competitive model for ranking cities and metro areas, but to expose the biases and limitations of the segregation indexes. It represents a radical departure from the white domination approach to desegregation that was introduced in the 1950s and that has persisted in the segregation index rankings. Unlike the historic segregation index, the integration measure reflects a democratic perspective that both majority white and majority black neighborhoods may be considered integrated, that is, if an 80 percent white and 20 percent black population is acceptable for a residential block, then an 80 percent black and 20 percent white population should be acceptable as well. Using this new definition of black-white integration, this study analyzed the racial compositon of 8.2 million blocks in the U.S. We find that:

• The five metro areas that the historic index ranks as "least segregated" for African Americans and whites are Albuquerque, Honolulu, El Paso, Orange County (California), and Salt Lake City-Ogden. These five metro areas have a combined population of 6.5 million, but only 48,803 residents (less than 1 percent) living on black-white integrated blocks. The bias of the historic segregation index against "too black" communities and in favor of non-black areas can be seen in the metro areas ranked as "least segregated." These metro areas fall to the bottom using the new black-white integration measure, i.e., are the least black- white integrated.
• Many of the Midwestern cities that are ranked as among the "most segregated" on the historic segregation index show average or above average rates of integration when actual counts are made of residents living on black-white integrated blocks. The Milwaukee-Waukesha metro area is ranked 98th worst out of 100 on the historic segregation index, but its percentage of population living on black-white integrated blocks ranks near the middle - 43rd highest out of the 100 largest metro areas. (See Table 2) The Cleveland- Lorain-Elyria metro area is ranked 94th worst on the historic segregation index, but its percentage of population living on black-white integrated blocks ranks at 36th highest out of 100. The Buffalo metro area is ranked 93rd worst on the historic segregation index, but has a 55th ranking of residents living on black-white integrated blocks. Cincinnati and St. Louis are also labeled among the most segregated metro areas by the segregation index, but are in the top third of metro areas with integrated populations.
• The 20 metro areas with the highest percentages of residents living on black-white integrated blocks (16 to 39 percent) are all located in the South. These were not, however, the top metro areas identified by the historic segregation index.
• When major city (rather than metro) populations are compared, the City of Milwaukee's proportion of residents living on black-white integrated blocks ranks it in the top ten out of the fifty largest cities in the U.S. (Table 1) In the City of Milwaukee one out of every five residents (21.7 percent) lives on a black-white integrated block. Integrated blocks are located on the northwest side, the west side, and the east of the river areas of the City. (Maps 1 and 2) The absence of integrated blocks in the Milwaukee area suburbs and exurban communities contributed to a lower percentage of residents (9.1 percent) living in black-white integrated blocks for the four- county Milwaukee-Waukesha metropolitan area. (Map 3)
• For maps of integrated, predominantly black, and predominantly white neighborhoods in each metropolitan area, see Density Maps of the African American and White Populations in the 100 Largest Metro Areas.

Conclusion

This block level analysis raises serious questions about the white-black dissimilarity segregation index historically used to rank metropolitan areas and its assumptions about the lack of integration occurring in many cities with large African American populations. No single statistic or set of statistics can capture the complex population mix and levels of integration and segregation in urban America, and current segregation rankings of cities and metropolitan areas - while popular in the media - appear to offer little insight into the configuration of neighborhoods in cities with large African American populations. Given housing preferences and electoral successes of African Americans in majority black neighborhoods and cities, emphasis on even dispersal of African Americans throughout each metropolitan area can hardly be considered a national goal with broad-based consensus. Further, in-migration of Latino and Asian populations has brought increasing diversity to urban neighborhoods. In this context, integration may appropriately be defined as successful mixing of diverse populations, rather than the continued dominance of neighborhoods by an urban white majority.

Much of the United States remains racially segregated, with almost a third of the African American population living on blocks that are more than 90 percent black and over half of the white population living on blocks that are more than 90 percent white. The data for Milwaukee and other metro areas clearly suggest the need for remedial efforts to combat racial discrimination and racial steering in housing; to support affirmative housing opportunities, particularly for low and moderate income African American families interested in moving into suburban areas; and to provide public and private support for integrated and diversified neighborhoods.

The implicit goal of the segregation index, that is, integrating urban America by diluting the population of black residents in individual neighborhoods, is one, however, which requires serious reexamination. This preliminary development of an alternative measure of integration - which views black and white populations as equal partners in the integrating process - is a first step toward articulating goals that may assist cities in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of their population mixes. Public policy makers are encouraged to use block level 2000 Census data to develop other tests of racial integration and to develop new measures of diversity in order to identify and address the racial challenges of the 2000s

Racial unity must be taught at early stages

Tag Archive 'Racial Integration'

Malaysia Succeeds Because Of Its Racial Integration Policy

Rakan Muda Should Focus on Racial Integration

Y4C would like to express its grave reservations with regard to the recently announced second phase of the Rakan Muda programme.� Our concerns relate especially to the huge allocation of RM50 million to re-brand this youth-oriented programme which in the past is generally acknowledged to have failed to meet the expectations and needs of young Malaysians.� This attempt at rebranding seems to be nothing more than the bottling of old ketchup in expensive new bottles.

In particular, we are worried that there is an absence of attention of the new Rakan Muda programme to the issue of racial integration. As we celebrate 50 years of independence, the racial and religious divide has deepened especially� among the young generation. However, there seems to be little consideration given by the new program to helping resolve this urgent and worsening national problem. .

On the contrary, the rebranded program may be contributing to greater racial and religious polarization if the activities conducted are not inclusive and do not focus on bringing young people from the different ethnic groups to interact.

The failure to genuinely and consistently engage the different ethnic groups in the� programme design and re-branding� shows the lack of political will to strengthen national unity and nation building. Adequate representation of all ethnic groups and inputs from the various communities in the re-branding of the Rakan Muda program is still not too late and we call on the authorities to correct this important flaw.

We also call on the Government to work closely with civil society groups and organizations� by releasing the assessment report on the failure of the previous Rakan Muda to us. Such a measure will provide the opportunity for civil society partners and the� public to share their expertise on the best ways to address the developmental and other� social problems of the younger generation.

Developmental strategies aimed at the young should not solely or mainly focus on infrastructural inputs.� Rather they should stress on software and human capacity development aimed at making our youner generation more competitive, dynamic and socially cohesive..

Y4C believes that the Rakan Muda programme should not hijacked by the political parties holding power.� .Building patriotism among the youth should not be done through� an emphasis on political indoctrination. In this regard , we wish to express our concerns that the chauvanistic contents and programmes found� in the Biro Tatanegara (BTN) may be reproduced in the rebranded Rakan Muda.

Raja Nazrin Shah, Crown Prince of Perak Darul Ridzuan, in a recent speech outlined seven principles necessary in national building efforts, including fostering a society that is� open, tolerant and forward-looking.

Y4C calls on the planners and implementors of the rebranded Rakan Muda program to fully observe and practice these enunciated principles of nation building which have drawn support from all Malaysians, and to ensure that the spirit and substance of these principles are fully contained in the rebranded Rakan Muda program.� Anything less will divide and demoralize our youth even more.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2009

Peristiwa 13 Mei

May 13 forty years ago was a brief mention in our history books at school. Staying true to the fashion of the Malaysian education system, we were not offered opportunities to critically analyze the event. I would even say this boldly, we were not taught to care.

Page after page of nationbuilding, interracial clashes, economic development in our dull, yellowing textbooks presented our country's history not as lessons we should learn from, think about, and utilize for progress, but instead, were seen just as potential topics for our upcoming final examinations.

I don't know who to blame -- the authors of our textbooks, the ministry of education, a few droning, lifeless teachers, or ignorant and worse, apathetic students?

My point is not that every citizen should be experts of their country's history (I, myself am embarrassed by how little I know), but there should be a curiosity and concern. It should not stop at "Don't know, never heard of it," but should go on to, "really? Can you tell me more?"

But anyway, below are three articles on the May 13 anniversary.

The Day Malaysia Fell Apart
by Debra Chong on The Malaysian Insider
40 years ago, Mohamed Rahmat, a newly elected Johor Bahru Barat MP, received news of the curfew and racial riots that broke out in downtown Kuala Lumpur. He is of Javanese-Chinese heritage (now considered Malay Muslim) and his wife was born Chinese but raised as a Malay Muslim by her adopted Malay family. Talk about being in a dangerous place. Rahmat eventually became Malaysia's Information Minister and in this article, he shares his experience and his thoughts on the similarities between the state of our country in 1969 and today.

“Race relations is a time bomb in this country,” Mohamed quipped, while digging into a salted beef sandwich and a bowl of mushroom soup over a late lunch here yesterday.

“We can't get rid of racial profiling. The cycle of racial conflict will not end until and unless we can see ourselves as Malaysians first,” he added.

“Semua mudah lupa,” he added, referring to the rakyat's failure to identify themselves as Malaysians first even after 50 years of Rukun Negara, which was a formula that had been created to combat the widening gap among the races.


May 13, 1969: View from a food court 40 years later
by Lee Wei Lian of The Malaysian Insider
Lee Wei Lian visited a food court that is a central gathering place among students from Taylor's College, Metropolitcan College, INTI College, which are considered Malaysia's top private colleges. His interaction with these kids makes us shake our heads in disbelief, "Really?? Ini anak Malaysia?! yao mou gao chor ahhhhhh!"

"May 13? What is that?" said Alvin. "I have never heard of it."

CC, 24, who works with a consulting company, says that it is no use fighting over something that happened 40 years ago and that people should choose to make friends with all races.

"I have this Chinese friend who has many Malay friends," she says. "We should learn from the Black Eyed Peas and Bob Marley and promote love and peace."

http://gping9.blogspot.com/2009/05/peristiwa-13-mei.html

INTEGRATION WHERE IT COUNTS:

A STUDY OF RACIAL INTEGRATION
IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOL LUNCHROOMS

by Jay P. Greene and Nicole Mellow

University of Texas at Austin
August 20, 1998

Presented at the Meeting of the
American Political Science Association
Boston, September, 1998

Authors can be contacted with comments
or questions at jgreene@gov.utexas.edu.

Other papers by professor Greene can be
found at http://www.la.utexas.edu/research/ppc/

Abstract

The belief that public schools produce better integration than private schools is deeply held by many people, but it is unfortunately supported by little empirical evidence. In this paper we take a systematic look at integration in a random sample of public and private schools in two cities. Unlike previous studies of integration in schools, our data are drawn from a setting in which racial mixing has greater meaning: the lunchroom. We also develop new measures of integration that allow for easier, more meaningful comparisons between different school systems. Our analyses suggest that private schools tend to offer a more racially integrated environment than do public schools. The primary explanation for private schools’ success at integration is that private school attendance is not as closely attached to where one lives as attendance at public schools. Public schools tend to replicate and reinforce racial segregation in housing. Because private schools do not require that their students live in particular neighborhoods, they can more easily overcome segregation in housing to provide integration in school. The strong religious mission and higher social class found in most private schools are also factors that contribute to better racial integration.

Since Horace Mann’s description of the “common school,” one of the stated goals of American education has been to bring students of different backgrounds together in schools. The belief that government-operated schools would mix students better than private schools was one of the primary justifications for the development and growth of a universal system of public schools. As Secretary of Education Riley recently argued, “The ‘common school’ -- the concept upon which our public school system was built -- teaches children important lessons about both the commonality and diversity of American culture. These lessons are conveyed not only through what is taught in the classroom, but by the very experience of attending school with a diverse mix of students. The common school has made quality public education and hard work the open door to American success and good citizenship and the American way to achievement and freedom.” (Riley, 1997, p. 1) While public control and government-operation of schools has been thought to be essential for producing integrated education, privately-run schools, based on the voluntarily association of individuals, have generally been held as not conducive to integration.

The belief that public schools produce better integration than private schools is deeply held by many people, but it is unfortunately supported by little empirical evidence. In this paper we take a systematic look at integration in a random sample of public and private schools in two cities. Unlike previous studies of integration in schools, our data are drawn from a setting in which racial mixing has greater meaning: the lunchroom. We also develop new measures of integration that allow for easier, more meaningful comparisons between different school systems. Our analyses suggest that private schools tend to offer a more racially integrated environment than do public schools. The primary explanation for private schools’ success at integration is that private school attendance is not as closely attached to where one lives as attendance at public schools. Public schools tend to replicate and reinforce racial segregation in housing. Because private schools do not require that their students live in particular neighborhoods, they can more easily overcome segregation in housing to provide integration in school. The strong religious mission and higher social class found in most private schools are also factors that contribute to better racial integration.

Defining and Measuring Integration

We care about integration in schools for a variety of reasons. As the Supreme Court observed in its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, segregated schools raise serious concerns that the separate education received by different groups is unlikely to be equal. School policies aimed at reducing segregation, such as bussing and magnet programs, seek integration as a way to eliminate disparities in the quality of education provided to different racial and ethnic groups. But our hopes for integration go beyond avoiding segregation and unequal schools. Racial integration in schools has also been pursued to provide students with the experience of interacting with people who are different from them as an important educational goal in its own right. Our hope is that this proximity will help students learn about different kinds of people and become more tolerant of those differences.

A considerable amount of research has examined the extent to segregated schools are unequal in the quality of their academics, the extent to which mutual understanding and tolerance are promoted by integration, and the extent to which bussing, magnets and other policies have succeeded in integrating schools (Schofield 1997, Yu and Taylor 1997, Taylor and Rickel 1981, Orfield et. al 1996, Rossell 1990, Armor 1995, Oakes 1985, Hochschild 1984, Crain, Mahard, and Narot 1982). These issues are not the ones directly addressed in this paper. For our purposes we will assume that racial integration in schools is a desirable goal. The question we address is whether public or private schools are different in their ability to achieve integration.

Unfortunately, commonly used measures of integration were developed largely to address legal disputes about whether school systems are segregated and therefore whether they could be assumed to be providing different, and unequal, educational experiences to different groups. These measures were not used to address whether schools offer a positive integrated experience for those groups. Conventional measures, such as The Index of Dissimilarity (IOD) for example, do not focus on how likely it is that students will have the ability to meet and learn from students of different racial or ethnic backgrounds. Instead, the Index of Dissimilarity simply measures how evenly groups are distributed within a school system. A school system that was 98% white would receive the highest score on the IOD if every school in that system were also 98% white, simply because whites and non-whites were perfectly evenly distributed. This measure would help us address the legal question of whether the school system was segregating a group of students with a presumably inferior education. But the perfect score generated by this measure does not tell us whether students in that school system are likely to come into contact with different types of students, an experience from which they might gain mutual understanding (Rossell 1990).

Another common measure, the Index of Exposure (IOE), is designed to address this problem by calculating the average percentage of one racial or ethnic group in the same school as the average member of another group. Using the example above, the IOE could be used to calculate that the average white student had 2% non-whites in the same school and the average non-white student had 98% white students in the same school. One difficulty with this measure is that the IOE changes depending on which group is the focus of examination. The IOE is 2, for example, if we want to know the exposure of whites to others, yet the same district has a score of 98 if we want to know the exposure of non-whites to others. That is, the IOE would say that integration is lousy in this hypothetical school system if you are white and wonderful if you are non-white (Crain 1984). But what if we wanted to know how well the school system is integrated in general? Or how could we compare this school system to another one with a different racial composition, one that was 50 percent white and 50 percent non-white for example? The IOE does not adequately address these questions. It is also limited by the fact that it can only measure exposure between two groups, thus not allowing an adequate analysis of multi-ethnic integration.

Sometimes researchers present a standardized IOE as a measure of the overall integration in a school system. To standardize the IOE, the racial composition of the whole school system must be taken as a given. That is, the standardized IOE could tell us an overall measure of integration for our hypothetical school system given the fact that it has 98% whites and 2% non-whites. However, standardization just reintroduces the problems of the Index of Dissimilarity. The standardized IOE would tell us that our nearly homogeneous hypothetical school system is well integrated given that it is nearly homogenous in its racial composition. But how could we meaningfully compare this overall measure of integration to another school system that had more minority students but distributed them less than perfectly evenly? The standardized IOE would tell us that integration is better in the more homogeneous system with perfectly even distribution than in the more racially heterogeneous school system with a less than perfectly even distribution. Because the standardized IOE takes the racial composition of the system as a given, it shares the IOD’s defect of describing evenly distributed but racially homogenous school systems as well integrated.

These measures of integration also suffer from the problem of measuring inputs not outputs. The Index of Dissimilarity and the Index of Exposure only measure the extent to which different racial groups are in the same school building; they do not measure the extent to which those groups are in the same classrooms, get to know each other, and learn to like each other. The former is sufficient for addressing the legal questions of whether the school system provides the same quality of education to different racial or ethnic groups, but it is inadequate for addressing the extent to which the system achieves the positive socialization of an integrated experience. The introduction of different groups of students into a school is an input; learning and mutual understanding is an output. If we want to know how well schools achieve the ideals of the common school we should have a measure of integration that more closely captures that output.

In the early 1980’s, James Coleman and colleagues (1982) employed a measure similar to the Index of Dissimilarity to determine whether public or private schools were better racially integrated. Their conclusion was that private schools were better integrated because the distribution of racial groups was more even there than in public schools. Taeuber and James (1982) and Page and Keith (1981) responded that private schools should not be described as contributing to integration because they have a lower percentage of minority students, on average, than do public schools. That is, they argued that private schools may have a more even distribution of minorities, but the general lack of minority students makes them relatively racially homogenous, not integrated. In 1984, Robert Crain employed the Index of Exposure in a comparison of Catholic and public schools in Cleveland and Chicago and concluded that Catholic high schools were better racially integrated than their public school counterparts. But his study is limited by the difficulties of conventional measures, and the fact that he examined only Catholic private schools which, while a large portion of all private schools, may produce results that are atypical of the universe of private schools. More recently, Jay Greene (1998) examined a national sample of public and private school classrooms to determine which tended to be closer to the national proportion of minority students. He concluded that private school classrooms, on average, were more representative of the national minority proportion than were public school classrooms, on average. But measuring the proportions of racial groups in classrooms is still a measure of the inputs of integration, not the output of successful racial exposure.

A New Measure of Integration

In this study we employ a new measure of integration, which we call the Index of Integration (IOI), that we believe better captures the extent of positive socialization resulting from racial integration. Quite simply, we observed school lunchrooms and recorded where students sat by race. We then calculated the percentage of students who had a student of a different racial group sitting next to them. We define sitting next to a person as sitting to the right, left, across, across and to the right, or across and to the left of the observed student. If any of those five seats was occupied by a student of a different racial group, then the observed student was coded as having an integrated lunchroom setting. From this, the percentage of students who have an integrated lunchroom setting can be calculated for an entire school system.

This Index of Integration does not focus on how evenly students are distributed in a school system nor does it adjust for the homogeneous or heterogeneous character of the system, as do the IOD and standardized IOE. For our purposes we do not want to know whether school systems evenly distribute the racial groups they have. Although if a system is racially homogenous or unevenly distributes racial groups, students will have fewer students of another race with which they can mix in the lunchroom and thus this information does weigh into the score. Our goal, however, is to determine whether students ultimately have a positive, heterogeneous racial experience. In everyday usage, this is typically what we mean by integration. Do students have the experience of mixing with students of different backgrounds in a positive way?

Unlike the unstandardized Index of Exposure, this new measure does not generate different results depending on which racial group we choose to consider. The IOI looks at whether students sit next to students who are different, regardless of whether the student is African-American, white, Hispanic, or Asian. And the IOI is better in that it captures multi-ethnic integration more accurately by counting students in heterogeneous lunch settings regardless of which combination of racial groups produces that heterogeneity.

The Index of Integration also allows for more meaningful comparisons between school systems. If we want to compare integration in public and private school systems in the same area, we ought not to adjust for the racial compositions of those sectors. The racial composition of the sector is precisely what has a great influence on whether individual students are likely to have an integrated experience. To say that one school system is better integrated than another because it evenly distributes its racially homogenous population has little relationship to whether that school system actually offers a better integration experience. The IOI tells us whether students in public or private school systems in the same area are more likely to sit in racially heterogeneous groups; that tells us the system in which students are more likely to experience positive integration.

Lastly, the IOI has the advantage of more closely measuring the outcome of integration as opposed to the inputs. Schools are producing successful integration when students of different racial backgrounds are comfortable enough to sit next to each other in the informal setting of the lunchroom. Students of different backgrounds may be in the same school buildings but become re-segregated through tracking (Oakes 1985). Students of different backgrounds may even share the same classrooms, but fail to get to know each other, learn about each other, or gain mutual respect and understanding (Gadsden, Smith, and Jordan 1996, Grant 1990). But the lunchroom is where the race-relations “rubber meets the road.” We can have greater confidence that students are having a positive integrated experience if they choose to sit near each other in the lunchroom.

To be sure there are limitations to this approach to measuring integration. Collecting the data is labor intensive, involving the observation of scores of lunchrooms. Obtaining permission and scheduling visits took months in this project. Accurately identifying students’ racial groups by their appearance also involves possible error. Race is a social construct, not an easily measured set of physical traits. But we have confidence that this error is minimal because the proportions of racial groups that we identified by observation matched the proportions in the data provided by schools based on self-identification of race. The Index of Integration is also sensitive to the racial categories that are considered. In this study we coded students as white, African-American, Latino, or Asian. Because race is a social construct, we could have split these categories more finely or combined some of them. We chose these categories because they are the ones around which people tend to organize themselves and therefore are considered politically relevant. Another potential weakness of the IOI is that it may cast the net too broadly by counting a student as having an integrated lunchroom setting if any one of the five students around him or her is of a different racial group. This broad definition may elevate the measure of integration for all schools, but it is unlikely to bias the comparison between school systems. In fact, the results of this study are not dependent on the particular way we have defined an integrated lunchroom setting; the race of the student or students to the right or across from the observed student could have been used instead with the same results. While any measure of integration will have some shortcomings, the one used in this study appears well suited to capturing the comparative extent to which public and private schools in the same area produce a positive integrated experience for their students.

The Sample

A randomly drawn sample of public and private schools in two cities provided subjects for this study. (The identity of the two cities is being kept confidential until reports can be prepared and reviewed by the public school officials in those cities.) In each city ten public schools were drawn from a universe of all public schools in those cities. Also in each city ten private schools were drawn from a universe of all private schools in those cities. The universe of private schools was identified by compiling a list from phone books and the Catholic Archdiocese. Data ultimately were collected from 38 (19 public and 19 private) schools due to difficulty gaining permission to observe the lunchroom. The race and seat location of all students in the lunchrooms as well as certain information about the schools were recorded (See Tables 1 and 2 for descriptive statistics of key variables). In total, 4,302 students were observed, 2,864 from public schools and 1,438 from private schools. Comparisons of the students observed to aggregate information provided by the public schools suggests that our sample was representative of the population (aggregate information was not available for private schools in both cities).

While we are confident that our samples are representative of the public and private school populations in these two cities, it is always possible that the two cities are somehow unrepresentative of other cities. Only a nationally representative sample could fully address these concerns. Nevertheless, there are no obvious differences between the racial dynamics of these cities and other cities nationwide. It is true that one of the cities from which subjects were drawn has a large proportion of Latino students, but many American cities have a plurality or even a majority of minority students. While some caution should be exercised in extrapolating from these results to public and private schools in the nation as a whole, we believe that the lack of obvious differences between these and other cities allows one to make general statements from the results of this study.

The Results

Of all students observed in private school lunchrooms, 63.5% were in an integrated setting. That is, 63.5% of private school students were sitting in a group where at least one of the five students immediately around them was of a different racial group. In public schools, 49.7% of all students were in a similarly integrated lunchroom setting (See Table 3). This difference is both substantively and statistically significant. Private school students are more likely to be sitting in racially heterogeneous groups than are public school students.

These relatively high-sounding numbers on the extent of integration may be misleading unless one remembers that the definition of integration only required that one of five students sitting nearby be of a different racial group. The numbers sound more bleak if we consider the extent of racially homogeneous lunchroom settings. Slightly more than a third (36.5%) of private school students sit in groups where everyone is of the same race. A little more than half (50.3%) of public school students sit entirely surrounded by people of their own racial group.

The difference between integration in public and private schools is larger once some of the basic characteristics of schools are controlled statistically. Because not all public and private school students in our sample shared schools with the same characteristics, it is possible that some or all of the difference in integration could be attributed to those characteristics, not the public or private nature of the school. For example, the number of public and private school subjects in each city was not even, allowing for the possibility that one city with worse racial relations might skew the results. Public and private schools also differed slightly in the extent to which students were assigned to their lunch seats. If seating was assigned or restricted by class, then the observed integration might be a function of that school policy and not really an output of positive racial socialization. The size of the school and the grade level of the students observed also differed in public and private schools. Controlling for all of these factors (city, seating restrictions, school size, and student grade level) in a logistic regression yields an adjusted integration result for public and private school students (See Table 7 for a presentation of all logistic models used in this paper). As is clear from Table 3, adjusting for all of these differences between public and private schools produces an even larger integration advantage for private schools. After adjusting for these factors, 78.9% of private school students are in a racially heterogeneous lunchroom setting compared to 42.5% of public school students.

These results clearly show that private school students are more likely to have a positive, integrated school experience than public school students. In the following sections we will consider possible explanations for this fact, but they do not alter the fact itself. Regardless of why private schools may better produce integration, the fact that they do is contrary to widely help assumptions about race and private schooling and is therefore an important finding.

Possible Explanation: Income and Social Class

Students in private schools may mix more easily with students of other races because they may have a greater tendency to come from families with higher incomes and social class. Perhaps the obstacle to racial integration is really class segregation. Middle and upper-class whites may feel more comfortable mixing with middle and upper-class minorities than with lower class minorities. Perhaps higher-class students in general are more favorably inclined to the idea of integration. To the extent that private schools have students of higher social class and to the extent that integration level is altered by class, then the private school advantage may be partially or fully explained by the social class composition of private schools.

To test this explanation, we employ a rough measure of social class. From public schools we collected information on the percentage of students who receive free or reduced-price school lunch as an indicator of the average social class in that school. None of the private schools participated in the government free lunch program, so collecting comparable data from them was difficult. We simply asked them to estimate the percentage of their students who would qualify for a lunch program if they had one. As it turns out, the income limit that private school administrators believed was necessary for qualifying for a government lunch program is much lower than is actually the case. Therefore, the estimate of low-income students in private schools is almost certainly an underestimate. This measure of social class is also limited in other ways. Income and class are not necessarily the same thing, and moreover, free or reduced price lunch eligibility is a crude measure of income because it only has two categories.

Despite the limitations of this measure, including free or reduced price lunch eligibility as a variable in the logit model interestingly does not do much to close the gap in integration between private and public schools (See Table 3). Controlling for this rough measure of social class as well as the city, seating restrictions, school size, and grade-level observed in each school yields an adjusted percentage of 67.5% of private school students in an integrated setting compared to 49.9% of public school students. The advantage of private schools at integration is still large and statistically significant.

Possible Explanation: Mission

Perhaps many private schools produce better results because their religious mission is conducive to integration. Perhaps the political ideology attached to many U.S. religions (e.g., we are all equal in the eyes of G-d) prompts religious private schools to make extra efforts at practices that reflect this ideology, such as integration. It is also possible that a private school’s adherence to a religious or other strongly held mission may help the parents of that school’s students overcome anxieties about integration. Shared support for the private school’s mission may be an over-arching objective that reduces resistance to mixing with people of other races.

One way to test this explanation is to examine the extent to which schools with a religious component to their curriculum are better integrated than secular private schools or secular public schools. A logistic regression that controls for the same factors as the models above yields the following adjusted rates of integration: 48.9% of public school students are in integrated settings compared to 44.1% of secular, private school students and 67.9% of religious, private school students (See Table 4). The difference between secular public and private schools is not close to being statistically significant, while the religious private schools are significantly better integrated.

From these results we can conclude that a religious education is positively related to integration. The existence of an advantage only for religious and not for secular private schools, however, is a conclusion that is difficult to make with great confidence from these data. It is difficult to verify this conclusion because of the limited number of private secular schools in our sample. In addition, private secular schools would have been significantly better integrated than public schools had we not controlled for our rough measure of social class. To the extent that the school lunch measure underestimated the number of low-income students in the secular private schools, we are underestimating the rate of integration in those schools. Nonetheless, religious mission appears to be an important component of school success in promoting integration.

Possible Explanation: Segregation in Housing

Private schools may be better integrated than public schools because they depend less on racially segregated housing patterns for selecting their student body. Public schools tend to replicate and reinforce racial segregation in housing. Public policies and private housing decisions have created patterns of racially homogenous neighborhoods. Because public schools overwhelmingly select their student population based on where students live, these schools reproduce the racial segregation evident in housing. (Orfield et al, 1996) Private schools, on the other hand, are only constrained in the geographic location from which they can draw students by the practical limits of transportation difficulties.

But if families resist integration in housing, why would they voluntarily integrate in private schools? By detaching schooling from housing, private schools may greatly reduce the anxiety that parents feel about the consequences of an effort at integration that goes badly. For most home-owners their house is their largest, highly-leveraged, asset. The financial repercussions for those home-owners should the area in which they reside become undesirable due to problems with local school integration are enormous. Families must then not only suffer with an undesirable school from which they cannot easily exit, but they risk losing a large amount of their highly-leveraged asset. If integration goes poorly in a private school, families suffer no more than the disruption of moving their child to a different school. They do not have to sell their house, re-locate, and suffer the financial consequences. By reducing the possible costs of integration, private schools may make families more open to the benefits of an integrated education.

Evidence from our analysis strongly supports this explanation. We collected information on the proportion of students in each public school who lived outside of the normal attendance zone for that school. This figure would include students who participate in magnet or other public school choice programs. While fewer than 5% of all public school students attended schools outside of their attendance zone, we can use a logit model to simulate how integration would change if a larger proportion of students attended schools outside of their neighborhood. With just under 5% of students attending public schools outside of their attendance zones, the Index of Integration is only 49.5%. But if we statistically increase the number of students who choose schools outside of their housing area to 50%, the IOI increases to 74.3%. That is, if half of all public school students came from housing outside of the attendance zone, the percentage of students who would have racially integrated lunchroom settings would increase to 74.3%. (See Table 5) By simulating the detachment of housing from schooling in public schools, we generate an estimated rate of integration in public schools that is comparable to that observed in private schools.

We can simulate the effect of housing on integration in public schools in another way as well. When schooling is based primarily on attendance zones, the size of a school reflects the size of the geographic area from which it draws students. If we statistically increase the number of students in a school, we can simulate the effect of including additional neighborhoods in a school’s attendance zone. Attendance zones that cover more neighborhoods would likely decrease the influence of segregated housing on school integration. Using a logit model of integration in public schools, we can simulate the importance of expanding current attendance zones on schools by increasing statistically the number of students in the schools. If we double the average size of the public schools in our sample from 887 to 1,774, we increase the rate of integration from 49.5% to 82.9%. (See Table 6) Simulating larger schools, thereby modeling the decreased influence of housing on schooling, shows that integration would be significantly higher if the specific neighborhood in which one lives did not determine the school to which one’s children must attend.

Conclusion

These simulations can only be suggestive of the influence of segregation in housing on integration in public and private schools. It may not be realistic or desirable to increase school size or draw half of school populations from outside of an attendance zone. But the point is that these simulated effects of housing on public school integration can generate predicted rates of integration that are comparable to those found in private schools. This suggests that one of the more important advantages for private schools in integration is that they do not determine their student population based on racially segregated housing patterns. The higher social class of students and strong religious missions of private schools may also contribute to their higher rates of integration.

Observing a national sample of school lunchrooms and collecting more detailed information on the class, mission, and housing factors that may influence integration would allow for stronger conclusions. While not definitive, the evidence presented here should help redefine how we think about integration in public and private schools. We should no longer accept unquestioningly the widely held view that public schools are better at integration than private schools. We should seriously consider policy proposals that would detach schooling from housing. This could include magnet schools and other public school choice programs as well as school choice programs that include private schools. If we include private schools in choice programs we should seriously consider including religious schools among the available options because the religious mission of those schools may further advance racial integration in schools. In short, if we are serious about the benefits of racially heterogeneous school experiences, we need to consider abandoning or modifying the long held view that the traditional public schools is equivalent to the ideal of the common school.

Malaysia's Races Live Peacefully -- But Separately Yahoo! News By the Agence France Presse Sun, Aug 28, 2005, 5:52 PM ET Malaysia bills itself as a model of peaceful multiculturalism, but despite nearly half a century of nationhood, the races that make up its population have never been further apart. Separate schools, separate friends, separate social lives -- Malaysia marks 48 years of independence Wednesday but many citizens lament the lack of ties between majority Malays and the Chinese and Indians living alongside them. One of them is 24-year-old ethnic Chinese Kathleen Chong, a recent graduate of the University Putra Malaysia who says it pains her to see the widespread racial polarisation on campus -- a microcosm of the national picture. "The various races only mix among themselves. There is very little interaction," she says. "Please, let us enjoy true racial unity in Malaysia. We need to stop the growing tide of division." Chong admits that she too stuck with her Chinese friends for classes, activities and meals. "This is what every other race does in the campus." Malaysia's population of 25 million people is dominated by some 60 percent Muslim Malays. Chinese and Indians, who began migrating here in the early 19th century, make up 26 percent and 8.0 percent respectively. Without doubt, Malaysia has enjoyed relative racial harmony compared to neighbouring Indonesia, where deadly anti-Chinese race riots struck as recently as 1998, during the Asian financial crisis. The government does not impose any restrictions on minority races, who are free to practice their own culture, religion and education. But despite the veneer, years of positive discrimination towards the Malays, designed to address the yawning economic gap with the Chinese community which dominates business, have taken their toll. Tang Ah Chai, chief executive officer with the Chinese Assembly Hall, a non-profit social organisation, says racial interaction is declining because the minority races feel they are being pushed aside. "Overall, the people live in harmony but there is some degree of tension due to the feeling of being discriminated against," he told AFP, adding that "some politicians wipe up this tension to advance their political ambitions." And the minority groups are not the only ones concerned. Hilmi Abdul Rashid, a state assemblyman with the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in northern Penang state says the lack of interaction is a serious problem. "The young generation are not mixing as much as the older generation. I am worried now. We need to address the issue immediately," he told AFP. UMNO is the dominant party in the National Front coalition which has ruled Malaysia since independence in 1957. The coalition is a grouping of more than a dozen mainly race-based parties including Chinese and Indian groups. Former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was sacked and jailed in 1998, has caused a stir by proposing to reform the political landscape which he says is straining national harmony. "We need to appeal to the Malays, Chinese and the Indians and the rest that we need to go beyond race-based politics. If you continue to harp and support this racial equation, you will never be able to overcome racial divisions," he says. Scholars and politicians warn that the existing peace and harmony in the country must not be taken for granted and have pressed for a national convention to identify a strategy towards a united Malaysian race. Education and language is one of the most visible signs of the problem. Most Chinese and Indians send their children to Mandarin- and Tamil-language schools while the Malays attend national institutions. The government has in recent years established "visionary schools" where students share sports fields, assembly halls and canteens, but conduct classes in their own languages. But the initiative has failed to get off the ground, partly because of a fear of a loss of identity among Chinese. A military-style national service program for 18-year-old youths was introduced last year with the aim of boosting racial integration. Students are chosen at random and taken to camps for up to three months in the hope they will learn team work and absorb each other's culture. But the scheme has been plagued with problems, including reports of race-based fighting, riots and extortion which have prompted opposition politicians to call for it to be suspended. P. Ramasamy, political science lecturer at the National University of Malaysia and an ethnic Indian, describes race relations in Malaysia as "pretty bad". As evidence he cites the UMNO general assembly last month, where powerful youth wing leader Hishammuddin Hussein held aloft a keris, a traditional Malay weapon, while his supporters chanted "Long Live Malays". "What message did they intend to communicate to the Chinese and Indians in the country. Are they saying, if you challenge us, we will impose violence?" he asks. Ramasamy said Hishammuddin's call for the revival of the affirmative action plan known as the New Economic Policy, which for two decades from 1970 gave ethnic Malays a range of advantages, is a step backwards for race relations. "They are using the issue of race for their own political and economic purposes," he says. The New Economic Policy was introduced following deadly racial clashes in 1969, mainly between the Malays and the Chinese. Its aim was to eradicate poverty and restructure society irrespective of race but after 35 years, the Chinese continue to dominate the economy, Malays have moved up the social ladder and control politics, while the Indians have emerged as the new poor. By 2004, Malays held just 19 percent of national equity, up from 2.4 percent in 1970, but well short of an official goal of 30 percent. Anwar has also attacked the New Economic Policy, saying it has only served to feed corruption and cronyism in the government. "Who are the guys who benefit from the NEP. They are the richest of the Malays. They are not protecting the interest of the poor Malay. They are only protecting their own interests," he told AFP. Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse News and Announcements | AAD Home Page Carl Gutiérrez-Jones, Department of English University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 Email: carlgj@english.ucsb.edu

Malaysia's Races Live Peacefully -- But Separately

Yahoo! News

By the Agence France Presse

Sun, Aug 28, 2005, 5:52 PM ET

Malaysia bills itself as a model of peaceful multiculturalism, but despite nearly half a century of nationhood, the races that make up its population have never been further apart.

Separate schools, separate friends, separate social lives -- Malaysia marks 48 years of independence Wednesday but many citizens lament the lack of ties between majority Malays and the Chinese and Indians living alongside them.

One of them is 24-year-old ethnic Chinese Kathleen Chong, a recent graduate of the University Putra Malaysia who says it pains her to see the widespread racial polarisation on campus -- a microcosm of the national picture.

"The various races only mix among themselves. There is very little interaction," she says. "Please, let us enjoy true racial unity in Malaysia. We need to stop the growing tide of division."

Chong admits that she too stuck with her Chinese friends for classes, activities and meals. "This is what every other race does in the campus."

Malaysia's population of 25 million people is dominated by some 60 percent Muslim Malays. Chinese and Indians, who began migrating here in the early 19th century, make up 26 percent and 8.0 percent respectively.

Without doubt, Malaysia has enjoyed relative racial harmony compared to neighbouring Indonesia, where deadly anti-Chinese race riots struck as recently as 1998, during the Asian financial crisis.

The government does not impose any restrictions on minority races, who are free to practice their own culture, religion and education.

But despite the veneer, years of positive discrimination towards the Malays, designed to address the yawning economic gap with the Chinese community which dominates business, have taken their toll.

Tang Ah Chai, chief executive officer with the Chinese Assembly Hall, a non-profit social organisation, says racial interaction is declining because the minority races feel they are being pushed aside.

"Overall, the people live in harmony but there is some degree of tension due to the feeling of being discriminated against," he told AFP, adding that "some politicians wipe up this tension to advance their political ambitions."

And the minority groups are not the only ones concerned. Hilmi Abdul Rashid, a state assemblyman with the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) in northern Penang state says the lack of interaction is a serious problem.

"The young generation are not mixing as much as the older generation. I am worried now. We need to address the issue immediately," he told AFP.

UMNO is the dominant party in the National Front coalition which has ruled Malaysia since independence in 1957. The coalition is a grouping of more than a dozen mainly race-based parties including Chinese and Indian groups.

Former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was sacked and jailed in 1998, has caused a stir by proposing to reform the political landscape which he says is straining national harmony.

"We need to appeal to the Malays, Chinese and the Indians and the rest that we need to go beyond race-based politics. If you continue to harp and support this racial equation, you will never be able to overcome racial divisions," he says.

Scholars and politicians warn that the existing peace and harmony in the country must not be taken for granted and have pressed for a national convention to identify a strategy towards a united Malaysian race.

Education and language is one of the most visible signs of the problem. Most Chinese and Indians send their children to Mandarin- and Tamil-language schools while the Malays attend national institutions.

The government has in recent years established "visionary schools" where students share sports fields, assembly halls and canteens, but conduct classes in their own languages. But the initiative has failed to get off the ground, partly because of a fear of a loss of identity among Chinese.

A military-style national service program for 18-year-old youths was introduced last year with the aim of boosting racial integration. Students are chosen at random and taken to camps for up to three months in the hope they will learn team work and absorb each other's culture.

But the scheme has been plagued with problems, including reports of race-based fighting, riots and extortion which have prompted opposition politicians to call for it to be suspended.

P. Ramasamy, political science lecturer at the National University of Malaysia and an ethnic Indian, describes race relations in Malaysia as "pretty bad".

As evidence he cites the UMNO general assembly last month, where powerful youth wing leader Hishammuddin Hussein held aloft a keris, a traditional Malay weapon, while his supporters chanted "Long Live Malays".

"What message did they intend to communicate to the Chinese and Indians in the country. Are they saying, if you challenge us, we will impose violence?" he asks.

Ramasamy said Hishammuddin's call for the revival of the affirmative action plan known as the New Economic Policy, which for two decades from 1970 gave ethnic Malays a range of advantages, is a step backwards for race relations.

"They are using the issue of race for their own political and economic purposes," he says.

The New Economic Policy was introduced following deadly racial clashes in 1969, mainly between the Malays and the Chinese.

Its aim was to eradicate poverty and restructure society irrespective of race but after 35 years, the Chinese continue to dominate the economy, Malays have moved up the social ladder and control politics, while the Indians have emerged as the new poor.

By 2004, Malays held just 19 percent of national equity, up from 2.4 percent in 1970, but well short of an official goal of 30 percent.

Anwar has also attacked the New Economic Policy, saying it has only served to feed corruption and cronyism in the government.

"Who are the guys who benefit from the NEP. They are the richest of the Malays. They are not protecting the interest of the poor Malay. They are only protecting their own interests," he told AFP.

Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse

Malaysia Succeeds Because Of Its Racial Integration Policy

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Wealth of Culture

ARTS & CULTURE
Malaysia has a rich and colourful cultural heritage. Many of the traditional arts, culture and crafts are diligently kept alive by the various communities. Traditional dances and music hold a ' special place in the performing arts and every community has something to present at festivals or special occasions. Aside from religious festivals, Malaysians find many occasions to celebrate. There are a large number of public festivals and parades at certain times of the year.

Some of these include the Penang street festival known as Chingay, the National Day or 'Merdeka' celebration in Kuala Lumpur on August 31 and the 'Colours of Malaysia' which showcases the cultural heritage of the 13 states consisting of a grand procession as well as traditional dance performances and food promotion at participating hotels and complexes in Kuala Lumpur in September. In Kelantan, a colourful display of giant kites weave in the wind in late May in the International Kite Festival which draws participants from the region and follower enthusiasts from Europe and Japan.

Most states have performance venues for staging dance and music festivals, while top restaurants in the high-density tourist areas also provide stages or open halls where these activities can be observed and enjoyed. A good time to observe these performances is during the festivals held by each ethnic group such as at Hari Raya and Chinese New Year. Traditional games are usually played in the kampungs (villages). These are especially important to the Malay community and most have been preserved in their original forms. There are numerous cultural activities and festivals taking place throughout the year. All are guaranteed to make memorable experiences and interesting snapshots for the visitor to take home.


FESTIVALS AND CELEBRATIONS
Malaysia is a veritable land of festivals and celebrations. The major festivals of its multi-racial communities are celebrated to mark important events or days in their religious calendars. Most of them are colourful occasions when centuries-old customs and traditions are still observed. Prior to major festivals, there is usually a feverish burst of activity as people from the urban centres make the annual exodus to their hometowns while in individual homes earnest preparations are made in anticipation of the auspicious day.

Getting the house in order with extensive spring cleaning and decorations, shopping for new clothes, festival delicacies and stocking ample food is the norm. The holding of 'open house' by the different communities during the Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Chinese New Year, Deepavah, Christmas, Gawai and Ka'amatan festivals is a heart-warning feature unique to Malaysian society. Such gatherings foster goodwill and provide the opportunity to renew social ties in a convivial atmosphere with the hosts usually feting their guests to a generous spread of food and drinks.

There are many other exciting international, national and state events that take place throughout the year around the country. Some have become regular tourist attractions. Tourism Malaysia publishes an annual Calendar of Events which provides a listing of the most important events held throughout the country.

http://www.asia-planet.net/malaysia/wealth-culture.htm