The Rules Are Different In NYC (Cont.)
06/18/2012
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A slide show in the New York Times about a public school in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn: "Hopes for Diversity at a Brooklyn School." The accompanying article is entitled "Integrating a School, One Child at a Time," about federal tax dollars being used to desegregate Brooklyn public schools.

During a kindergarten ballet recital at Public School 257, in Williamsburg,  Prairie Jones [a little blonde girl] had a question for the dance instructor. Kylie Cao, to Prairie’s left, is the only Asian student in the kindergarten. 

The school was named a magnet school of the performing arts in 2010, with a mission, under the federal magnet program, of diversification. P.S. 257 is still predominantly Hispanic, despite its recruiting efforts.

This terminology may seem puzzling to readers familiar with the currently conventional uses of the words "diversity," "integration," and "desegregate" in the New York Times, as a euphemism for More Non-Asian Minorities: e.g., the Miami Heat are diverse, but UC San Diego is not diverse. Sure, this might be a little puzzling to the Man from Mars, but we're all 21st Century grown-ups here and we're familiar with how words are used these days.

In this case, however, the NYT is using terms like "diversity" and "integration" according to their old-fashioned dictionary definitions: a school becoming less Hispanic is becoming more diverse and more integrated, which is Good. 

How come? Because we're talking about Williamsburg here. There is very little that subscribers to the New York Times care about more than the possibility that certain public schools in Brooklyn will become non-NAM enough for subscribers to send their children there. After all, putting two kids through private school in New York from K-12 costs about a million bucks. But if enough white people can send smoke signals to each other to agree upon which public schools they'll all flock to, then ca-ching!

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