Charlotte’s Chronicle

                  In Troy, we like to believe we're inclusive and open-minded, but we’ve also never been in a situation where we needed to prove it. The metro Detroit area is still one of the most segregated areas in the country, and Troy is no different. It's easy to point fingers at Francis Howell for being racist and closed-minded. However, what would happen if suddenly our school district was placed in the same position?  Desegregation only works when everyone is willing to let it. The parents of Francis Howell believed  “schools failed in the past because black children were forced in… not the other part of the equation, that white families chose to leave”. In reality, “in the schools where white families chose to stay, test scores for black transfer students rose”. This proves that the issue with desegregation falls not on lower income transfer students, but the white families who refuse to accept the change in their comm...

    Earlier this week as we began to discuss modern racism in our area, I was shocked to find that little was known about the dark history of sundown towns in Michigan. Sundown towns were very prevalent in the lives of African Americans in the past as they were potentially dangerous and deadly. They were also all over the country and there were even many near where we lived now, including Livonia and Gross Point. Yet, most of the people in our class didn't know anything about them or even that they existed. The only reason I knew about them was through watching a Tik Tok, a notoriously unreliable source of information, and choosing to do my own research. Sundown towns were never mentioned to me in school, or at least not in a meaningful or memorable way. This predicament brings up the question of whether the knowledge being taught in school is really the most beneficial information for us to be learning. I for one remember spending days learning about the conditions of th...