> “Terrible schools” is at least partly a upper-middle-class-white code for “schools full of poor minority kids”. A significant proportion of white kids living in the city go to private schools
Right. Talking to a wealthy, pretty liberal, upper class white person who sent their kid to a private school. Whatever the "code" they spoke I don't know. They were pretty blunt and factual. They did the research and it turned out that poor minority kids in schools did correlate strongly with disciplinary issues, high teacher to students ratios, overall bad scores for the school.
Their kid was in a public school for a few years, then they switched to a private school.
Knowing them for 5+ years, nothing indicated they were racist or had some kind of agenda against the poor. In this case they simply wanted a better school experience for their kid.
While I don't doubt there are plenty of racist upper middle class white people who deliberately make that the central point of choosing schools, many also just look at the facts and draw conclusions.
I don't have the resources to afford that for my family, so my kid is going to a public school, and that's fine. But those who are wealthy simply have more choices it seems.