Still Separate, Still Unequal by Jonathan Kozol I found this article to be very interesting and extremely heartbreaking. Jonathan Kozol paints a vivid and grim picture of predominantly black or Hispanic schools in and around some the largest cities in America. Even in areas where the distribution of races is somewhat equal, Kozol tells us that most white families would rather send their kids by bus to a school where more than half of the students are white. Some schools, like Martin Luther King Jr. high school in New York City, are located purposefully in upper middle class white neighborhoods in hopes to draw in a more diverse selection of children, i.e. more white kids. It seems however, according to Kozol, that this plan not only did not work, but has made it a prime and obvious example of modern segregation in our schools. One teacher Kozol interviewed at a school where 95 percent of the students were either black, asian, hispanic or native american, told him “not with bitterness but wistfully--of seeing clusters of white parents and their children each morning on the corner of a street close to the school, waiting for a bus that took the children to a predominately white school”. (p.203) …show more content…
But we don’t have that. I wish that this school was the most beautiful school in the whole why world.” (p.206) I can’t help but want these things for these children too. I want those kids to have the most beautiful school in the whole why world and I find it perplexing, but I suppose not uncommon, that they do not. We spend so much time trying to circumvent these problems without really acknowledging them, without getting to the heart of it. But then again, what is the heart of it? Is it willful ignorance? Is it some unconscious bias? I certainly can’t begin to guess at what it is that has made such a large gap in the way one color of person may be
Michie’s “Holler If You Hear Me” and Kozol’s “Still Separate Still Unequal” are quite alike, considering they both discuss south side Chicago schools. However, the differences between the two texts far outweigh the similarities. Although there are a few similarities, such as both authors discussing and calling out the issues of segregation in their texts, there are many differences, such as Michie’s work being a narrative while Kozol’s is not and only contains anecdotes. In addition, Michie focuses on the experiences and opinions of students, instead of also discussing the physical state of inner-city schools or the strategies of teachers.
During week 12 of class, we were assigned to read three sections of Matthew Delmont's Why Busing Filed. This reading focuses on "busing," which meant that students would be transported to other schools and school districts in order to desegregate schools. This book discusses how "busing" failed due to many white parents opposing it; their values were seen as more important than the rights of black students (Delmont 25). Despite Brown v. Board of Education deeming school segregation unconstitutional in 1954, many schools remained segregated for years. The attention on segregation normally focused on the South.
Matthew Delmont’s book challenges us to rethink the history of “busing,” Delmont intentionally places in quotation marks to show its importance . Before Brown v. Board of Ed in 1954, riding the bus was only for white children. School integration movement headed up North during the 60’s, and white people did not like this so they made the issue about busing. This allowed white people to stop school integration and use different terms to not sound racist or bigoted. Delmont examines how the media went along with this new racist idea.
In this excerpt from the 2005 nonfiction work, Shame of the Nation, Jonathan Kozol calls out the extreme disparity in regards to standardized testing between white and minority children(which in turn affects dropout rates and affirmative action effectiveness), and elucidates how government-issued standards are not effectively combating the educational conditions in minority-heavy public schools. By utilizing his considerable experience in educational fields, Kozol’s writing appeals dominantly to ethos, in which he carries out by judging educational conditions according to his own life experience and standards. Kozol also subordinately appeals to pathos, through personal anecdotal evidence. To solidify his claims, Kozol also uses extensive data
Though Kozol’s article is not based solely on numbers and data as much as it is on his emotional experiences, he still includes the percentages of public school enrollment in specific areas. He introduces his article by listing all those numbers “to convey how deeply isolated children in the poorest and most segregated sections of [those] cities have become” even with those types of statistics listed (Kozol 348). In Chicago, with “87 percent of public school enrollment [being] black or Hispanic” students of these minorities are still isolated and segregated. (Kozol 348). White families send their children to distant schools over schools where the majority are of blacks and Hispanics, which leaves all the blacks and Hispanics crowded at one school with a poor schooling
HFD 110 November 18th, 2015 60 schools, 30 districts, and 11 states that’s how many Jonathan Kozol visited after several years of watching and experiencing inner city children school districts. Back in the 1960s Jonathan Kozol was working with segregation schools in New York where Kozel was able to observe the students and the programs and was able to soon enough find out the problems that these schools were having. Kozel gives a lot of statistic through out to help the readers see how bad inner city schools have been over the years and still to this day the issues that they are having. One being while walking through the halls of one inner city school out of 2,000 children he did not see one white child. Usually these schools are made up of Blacks, Hispanics and even sometimes Asians barely ever you will see a white child.
“Separate but equal” is what education was said to be in Topeka, Kansas in 1954. It was separate, but was it really equal? In Topeka, black children were forced to walk twenty-one blocks to school when there was one right around the corner, but it was a school for white children only. This caused many issues among the community of Topeka and even caused a Supreme Court case between Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. Oliver Brown was the parent of a child at a black only school.
The book, Savage Inequalities, written by Jonathan Kozol in 1991, provides an inside look in to the public school system and the disparities that exist. The time sequence for the book is roughly 1988 through 1990 and although the current year is 2016, the same challenges and deficits the public school systems faced then are still present in our school systems today. Examples of segregation, lack of funding, teachers, and overall injustice being dished out to these lower income schools are all the basis of Kozol’s writing. He feels, “…that the nation, for all practice and intent, has turned its back upon the moral implications, if not yet the legal ramifications, of the Brown decision” (4). The Brown decision was the drive behind the reform
Racial segregation is apart of our educational history. The article The Return of School Segregation in Eight Charts, explains 8 headings that entail segregations of race and poverty, integrations and trend over the years. I did not realize that Latino students are the leading segregated schools by 57% of their schools population is Latino. There is a “dissimilarity index” that shows the balance of integration.
Intro: The United States of America, despite her citizens heralding her as a country of freedom and equality, contains a history antithesis to their claims. Since settlers from Europe first discovered the "New World," racial inequality presided in her borders and refused to relinquish control despite America 's foundation of justice, liberty, and equality. Despite efforts from numerous groups throughout American history to liberate the country from the inequalities plaguing it, progress seemed gradual at best and stagnant at worst. However, in 1954 the movement finally appeared to escalate with the Supreme Court ruling in the Brown vs. The Board of Education case, which deemed the segregation of public schools immoral and unconstitutional.
In the article “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Education Apartheid” author Jonathan Kozol argues that segregation is still a major issue in our education system. Kozol talks about schools where minorities make up the major student body. He states that schools with namesakes tied to the civil rights movement are some of the most isolated schools for minorities where white students make up less than a third of the student body. Kozol proceeds to talk about these schools where minorities make up the student population, he says that these are some of the poorest schools they are old and in need of repairs and new technology and supplies. He says that the education of these students has been deemed less important and that they are not
Savage Inequalities Book Review Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol is an in-depth analysis of America’s public school system and the problems that encompass it. Kozol’s book examines some of the poorest public schools in the United States and attempts to explain how the school or school district plummeted so far into the depths of poverty. Kozol believes that the biggest problem public school faces is segregation, which is still very real in many parts of the United States. Racism and a lackadaisical attitude toward the education of minority groups in America are the roots of the problems that public schools face.
Blacks and Whites had to attend different schools, because of segregation the systems therefore was not equal. Schools for white children received more public money, because “to allow local school districts the power to levy taxes for school funding were defeated at every turn and efforts to assess higher property values for taxation met a similar fate.” [ Harvey].
Brittney Foster SOCY 423 UMUC 03/01/2018 Racial integration of schools Racial integration is a situation whereby people of all races come together to achieve a common goal and hence making a unified system. Racial integration of schools is well elaborated in the two articles by Pettigrew and Kirp. These two articles say that combination in the American schools since 1954 has unceremoniously ushered out the Brown versus Board of Education which was a decision made by the Supreme Court. The topic of discussion of these two articles hence is relevant to our course since it gives us the light of how racial desegregation and racial integration shaped America’s history.
Kozol spoke of the reasons why schools are still legally segregated in the form of fundings, and quality of education given to minorities versus white students that is partly due to the society as a whole being unaware of this. In the article Kozol talks about how the students' that he met in different states in these minorities filled schools were well aware they was being treated unfairly by their school system. These students were also aware of the fact that there are other schools where their students the opposite. Overcrowded schools, poor school meals, and lack of clean and working restrooms was part of the complaints he heard from students in urban schools.