Gregory Freeman: Desegregation Praised By Student. P-D 4/16/1996

Headline: DESEGREGATION PRAISED BY STUDENT
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Tue., Apr. 16, 1996
Section: WAR PAGE, Page: 9B, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

AS U.S. DISTRICT Judge George F. Gunn Jr. ponders the future of school desegregation in St. Louis, a 24-year-old wishes the judge had listened to students who participated in the program.
During recent hearings, Gunn declined to hear testimony from parents or students who had gone through the program.

Richard Gummels thinks Gunn may have missed hearing something important.
"The program did more for race relations than people realize or want to acknowledge, " said Gummels, a white, 1990 graduate of Parkway North High School.
"I feel that most of my fellow high school classmates would agree with me that the desegregation program, if nothing else, taught people - black and white - more about each other's race than we would have learned in attending racially segregated schools."

Gummels knows that the debate on school desegregation is usually held by adults who never went through the program. As a result, he says, they may not realize the good that comes out of it.
   Gummels says the program exposed him to people of different races and different economic backgrounds. "That was good for me, " he said.
   "I was raised in West County, " he said. "Before the program, I had no connections with the city, except baseball and hockey games. About 5 to 10 percent of the students in my school were black. But even they were kids of parents who were well-to-do, whose folks were doctors or lawyers.
   "Desegregation started when I was in the seventh and eighth grades. . . . The desegregation plan let me meet black students from the city for the first time. It let me get to know black kids who came from a different background. That helped me grow a lot and helped me learn how to deal with people who are from a different race or different background."

Gummels says some suburban whites would like to see the program end because they have seen an increase in gangs and guns in schools. But he contended that gangs and guns are not direct results of bringing black students into white school districts.
   Gummels is scheduled to graduate with a degree in criminology from the University of Missouri at St. Louis and plans to go into law enforcement.
   "A lot of people have the stereotype that all gang members are black, and that they all come from the city, " he said. "I know that there are just as many white gang members, and that they come from the county as well as from the city. Gangs are a real problem, but you can't blame desegregation for that problem."
   Gummels further suggests that many alleged gang members don't belong to gangs, but are instead "wannabes, " who often do more damage than gang members because "they play by their own rules."
   "And there are more wannabes in the county."

Gummels says that because of the desegregation program, "I consider myself more open to differences and more knowledgeable about different races."
"In the real world, there are people from all over the board, all kinds of people, " he said. "If we never get a chance to meet and understand some of those people when we're in school, when are we ever going to do it?"

School desegregation - despite the inconvenience, despite the problems it sometimes causes, despite the distance that some students must travel - often provides students with an intangible: They get to know each other and often develop relationships. To some, that may seem unimportant. But to anyone interested in a society in which people of different races can get along and work together, it should be considered vital.

Diversity - one of the virtues of school desegregation - is not just someone's pie-in-the-sky idea of people of different races holding hands and singing "We Shall Overcome."
   The knowledge students gain of people different than themselves may not show up on some scholastic aptitude examination. But it does show up in the ability of those who have gone through it - like Gummels - to understand different people.
   It helps people value their own culture while learning to respect that of others. In today's world, where civility and understanding often seem to have gone out with the horse and buggy, any efforts to improve matters should be welcomed with open arms.
   "I think we'd be a lot better off if every school participated in the desegregation program, " Gummels said. "I got a great deal out of it. In my opinion, the kids who didn't get involved were shortchanged."

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