Real equality, not affirmative action: Equal school funding for all from federal taxes

Comment published on New York Times blog, in response to op-ed essay by Jeanne Theoharis, “What King said about Northern liberalism,” January 20, 2019:

One cause of continuing racial segregation, and racialized poverty and its consequences, like mass incarceration and over-policing, is unequal education. Solutions to this problem are often misconceived.

"Low-income students of color languish in underfunded schools while wealthier students attend better-resourced ones. And white parents are still tremendously resistant to school rezoning, just as they were 50 years ago."

School rezoning is like Affirmative Action: It takes a pie divided by extreme inequalities, which distributes chances in a competition whose prize is supposed to be good jobs and incomes, and it changes who gets the better piece.  

Far better would be to have equal funding for every school child in the nation. Funded by federal taxes, instead of local property taxes, which guarantee stratification of schooling opportunities by wealth of the neighborhood.  

The equal opportunity ideology has conditioned every form of identity politics. In each case, the problem identified is real, in that some demographic categories have been markers of subjection of many of their bearers to oppression, hatred, injustice, or disadvantage. And in each case, the solution given is to provide handicaps and chances.  

The problem is three-fold: a) excess inequality and poverty, b) an ideology of competition, which legitimates outcomes by citing personal responsibility, and c) moralities, policing, and punishments that target losers. The common name is capitalism.