Empathy and resegregation

A couple of things I was thinking about last week.

First, this video about empathy is really interesting. Especially in light of this article, about how college students are lacking in empathy.

Also, over on United States of Jamerica, Jamelle says that school segregation is making a comeback, referring to this article about segregation in New Orleans public schools. I'm being a little nitpicky, but feel the need to point out that the article doesn't say it's making a comeback. It says it's still there, and getting worse. It's not like New Orleans schools weren't highly segregated BEFORE Katrina. And, in addition to the various things Jamelle points out, it seems relevant that New Orleans is by no means a normal school sampling at this point. Whatever resegregation trends were already afloat were, no doubt, exacerbated by the extreme measures taken in the wake of hurricane Katrina (unified school district, rapid proliferation of charter schools). I'd love to see good data that compares pre-Katrina numbers - taking into account whatever segregation was already there (and also the fact that all of new Orleans, not just its poorest schools, was majority-minority before the storm) - to post Katrina numbers, showing both how New Orleans might fit into larger societal trends of school resegregation, and how New Orleans' particular long-standing racial and economic demographics are or are not reflected in its new incarnation.