Hee hee. Thanks, jollyroger. And no, I am not Angela Davis. I am black, but I'm not American (though I live here now). Although I came from a modest family background, I, like jollyroger (as well as Barack and Michelle Obama), benefited from an excellent public education that afforded me economic (and geographic) mobility.

Obviously, the racial segregation that existed 50 years ago stigmatized black students. Hate to break it to you, but most black and Latina/o students continue to attend public schools that are overwhelmingly, if unofficially, segregated. Today, unlike in the 1970s, these kids face demoralized and unqualified teachers, prison-like school conditions, searches and patdowns, crumbling buildings, shortages of basic educational tools like books and computers, and completely inadequate educational facilities.

My experience of public education in Canada in the 1970s and '80s, like the experiences of my academic colleagues who attended US public schools during the same era, was completely different from the experience that, say, the cash-starved Los Angeles USB offers its students today. We had good libraries, and full-time librarians, in our schools. My teachers, who were unionized and made good salaries, taught the students the curriculum in the ways they thought were effective, and were not under pressure to sacrifice learning to maximize results on standardized tests. Our schools offered had academic enrichment programs, science labs, language instruction, visual arts, school band, choir and orchestra, and physical education in real gyms and sports fields (not asphalt-paved yards). School violence meant fistfights, not guns. We weren't treated like prisoners.

These schools were far from perfect. Black and Native students, in particular, were disproportionately streamed into non-academic vocational programs. The school administration tolerated a lot of homophobia and sexism among students. But it is hardly plausible to suggest that the public school education available to kids of modest means is better today than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.

When I got to university after completing my public education in "gifted" programs at public schools, I found that I was as well or better prepared for college work than my peers who had attended private schools. That is what I mean by an excellent public education. If you tell me that the average LA or NYC public school student has access to that quality of education today, well, either you're wearing some powerful rose-colored glasses, or you're trolling.