Suburban Dynasty — Urban Deprivation: Income Inequality and Schooling in Des Moines
The intersection of class and athletics has historically offered an alternative, yet essential, examination of American wealth distribution. Typically, much of this study is focused on more lucrative college programs and professional leagues. In Iowa, however, a state that lacks a pro team and whose largest city doesn’t feature any nationally recognized collegiate powerhouses, high school athletics provide a jumping off point for discussing economic inequality in the state and a substantiation of divergent wealth flows.
I was speaking with my parents a few weeks ago, and they informed me that my former high school, Dowling Catholic, had won its fifth state championship in a row. They were mildly impressed, as was I, but not especially astounded. A private, catholic school receiving athletic accolades is not a very surprising phenomenon within the American zeitgeist. But, in retrospect, even being impressed seems like an overreaction to what is actually the most obvious outcome.
Beyond Dowling’s domination on the football field, nearly every sports program across Des Moines’s suburban school districts have been overwhelmingly outperforming all other 4A schools in Iowa, most noticeably in the last 20+ years. Aside from a few outlier basketball seasons, Des Moines’s city teams have been handedly bested. This trend has aligned with a growing crisis of income inequality, a correlation that would be dubious to claim is unrelated. Despite Iowa’s purported “Fields of Opportunity,” the Hawkeye state is not immune to the increasing socioeconomic woes of American class hierarchy.
Income inequality in Iowa is steadily rising. According to the Economic Policy Institute, “The richest 5 percent of households have average incomes 8.7 times as large as the bottom 20 percent of households and 3.5 times as large as the middle 20 percent of households.” These differences become even more stark when one considers the racial split in Iowa. Take a look at this graphic designed by The Directors Council and the State Public Policy Group:
It is undeniable that economic conditions in Iowa are significantly unequal. Unfortunately, these realities do not only manifest in the familial and professional domains. The depriving effects of disparately concentrated wealth can be witnessed in the workings of the Des Moines metro’s school districts. Mirroring class divides found in cities and states not popularly advertised as having exceptional standards of living, Des Moines’s city schools teach markedly more disenfranchised student bodies than its bordering suburban communities. The below census data conveys just how arrant the difference in number of impoverished students are in Des Moines when compared to nearby suburban schools:
Economic disaffection is largely the quo for Des Moines’s black families and this is unfortunately compounded by obstacles in their children’s academic development. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, black Iowa 4th graders have been gauged at a 49% reading proficiency. When juxtaposed to 58% and 80% proficiency in Hispanics and Whites respectively, the structural disadvantages of Iowa’s school system glare.
Performance in the classroom, the football field, these are all interconnected aspects of scholastics that can act as a litmus for the socioeconomic well-beings of both the school districts and their student’s families. Dowling Catholic’s 5 consecutive championships are as much a testament to the monetarily supported program as it is to the skill of the players, a grouping of fortunate teens who have access to recruited coaches, better facilities, and beyond the walls of their high school, more financially secure homes.
The grievous reality of these findings is that they are culturally accepted around Des Moines to be absolute. Of course Waukee plays better on the baseball diamond than say, Hoover, they have more money. The problem with this acknowledgement lies in the grander implications of capitalist realism. These disparities are assumed to be organic, fixed facts of life that cannot be affected by people, not material conditions that result directly from exploitative political objectives like austere city budgets, unaffordable housing, and a criminal justice system founded on white supremacy. Consequently, this order becomes socially ingrained, and then, unquestionably natural.
Having gone through suburban, and especially reactionary, Catholic high school, I can attest to the utter lack of any sort of reckoning with class privilege in Des Moines’s suburbs. Rather than grappling with the moral quandary of benefiting from socioeconomic inequality, Dowling’s administrators, teachers, and coaches, were much more willing to attribute the school’s successes to the grace of God. I can’t speak for the public schools, but I imagine divinity is easily replaced, if replaced at all, with a “we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps” American idealism. Surely some internal justification is needed to reconcile suburban abundance with the proximate poverty of Des Moines.
Des Moines’s veneer of utmost pleasantry and prosperity veils the disheartening reality of rising wealth inequality. However, this cover can be pulled aside by inquiring into realms of public life that seem otherwise innocuous. Certain happenings may seem to be removed from political consequence, but in order to apprehend all expressions of immiseration in Iowa, even the implications of high school sports stats should be scrutinized.
Sources:
https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/saipe/datasets/2015/2015-school-districts/sd15-ia.txt
https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/Iowa.pdf
http://www.aalfdsm.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/One-Economy-Final-Report-Small-2017-05-15-hng.pdf
