Posted on 01/19/2004 6:14:52 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
"Most schools in this country are overwhelmingly black or overwhelmingly white," Elise Boddie, head of the education department of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., told the Washington Post. "We have still not committed ourselves as a country to the mandate of Brown versus Board of Education. If these trends are not reversed, we could easily find ourselves back to 1954." Boddie was reacting to a new study released by the Harvard Civil Rights Project that concludes that 50 years after the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of American education, schools are almost as segregated as they were when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. As reported by the Post, the study indicates that progress toward school desegregation peaked in the late 1980s as courts concluded that the goals of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education had largely been achieved. However, over the past 15 years, the trend has been in the opposite direction – with the report noting that most white students now have "little contact" with minority students in many areas of the country. "We are celebrating a victory over segregation at a time when schools across the nation are becoming increasingly segregated," noted the report, which was issued on the eve of the holiday celebrating King's birthday. The Brown decision had its most dramatic impact in Southern states, where the percentage of blacks attending predominantly white schools increased from zero in 1954 to 43 percent in 1988. However, according to the Harvard data, by 2001 the figure had fallen to 30 percent – about the same level as in 1969, the year after King's assassination. Accentuated in recent years by the exodus of white middle-class families, the District of Columbia has long been one of the most segregated school districts in the nation. The most segregated states for black students are New York and Illinois; the most integrated states are Wyoming and Ohio. According to researchers, the resegregation trend picked up momentum as a result of a 1991 Supreme Court decision that authorized a return to neighborhood schools instead of busing – even if such a step would lead to segregation. "There have been considerable gains in some areas, such as the number of [minority] students attending college," said John Jackson, education director for the NAACP. "But you still find many school districts across the country that are segregated and unequal. The implications are the same as in the fifties: Minority students in high-poverty areas are not getting a quality education."
Where? Certainly not here in So.Cal.
Blue rat party states are intensely segregated. Red Republican states are integrated with opportunity for all.
When will Black America escape their enslavement on the rat party plantation?
Not saying it's good, bad, or in between. Just the way it is, and it won't change unless parents want it to.
Well, go to any major university. Blacks demand black studies, black fraternities, black only resident halls, black scholarships, black job placement programs, black academic societies, etc.
It seems like this is the answer that the author of the article wants. Is this the right answer? On the one hand, it would afford students in poorer neighborhoods access to schools in better ones. On the other hand, what are the effects on kids in the richer neighborhood? I'm inclined to think that they would be bad; the poorer kids could bring gangs/drugs/etc. with them, which are some of the reasons people in richer neighborhoods do not live in poorer neighborhoods (and hence, what separates rich neighborhoods from poor ones). In addition, would some kids from rich neighborhoods be sent to schools in poorer ones? That would not be fair. Sacrificing one group for another is not the answer.
In addition, I'm not sure it is fair to call this segregation. It isn't like the split is institutionalized. Rather it is driven by people tending to live in neighborhoods surrounded by others like them (racially, economically, etc.). Is this bad? I don't think so, but I suppose there are those who would disagree. Furthermore, if it is a problem, what would be the solution? Making a law that you and your neighbor can't be of the same skin color? Give me a break.
About the time conservatives quit voting Republican.
Incorrect. The whole point behind the Brown vs. Board of Education was to destroy the Jim Crow system of Education in the south. To do that, the Supreme court based their decision on dubious research that "proved" that black students could not do well in school unless they were in the classroom with white kids. I'm not joking...you can look it up.
Given this "scientific" underpinning, it was perfectly natural to see bussing presented as a remedial tool.
Naturally, the "findings" of the "studies" that served as the "rational" basis for an emotional decision concerning a bad situation have never been able to be duplicated. As Thomas Sowell noted when discussing this case, it's an old legal maxim that "Hard Cases Make Bad Law".
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