The Support System

A Trib editorial today attributes the dropping minority enrollment numbers at the U. to the failing of Utah public schools. Unfortunately, this is where the much-vaunted family "support-system" is showing cracks. When confronted with the lowest per-pupil funding in the country, most legislators proclaim that Utah's strong families are there to fill the void. That's great when you've got two parents who themselves are high school graduates and have the wherewithall to navigate the public education system. However, as many other cities before us that have experienced growth, leaving the disadvantaged behind results in ghettos and crime.

Utah is at an advantageous situation because we don't have whole lot of rich people and not a whole lot of poor folks, either. We're decidedly middle-class. That's why we have low crime rates, that's why our State government is more competent than other states (because the salaries in the public sector are somewhat competitive to those in the private), and that's why we basically avoid many of the social ills that other states have. Unfortunately, an emerging underclass has been showing up on the radar lately and we can't just keep relying on the family, young men's/young women's, and a familiarity with Utah society to keep filling the void. Surely someone will come up with the rhetoric of how it doesn't matter if you're black, white, brown, green, we're all the same, blah, blah, blah, but we've seen what a do-nothing approach does. The French for a generation have relied on fraternitè to bring the non-white underclasses into mainstream French society and we know what the results have been. The longer we wait, the bigger the problem gets, then the more difficult - and draconian - the solution will be.