The Pros And Cons Of School Segregation

The segregation of schools based on a students skin color was in place until 1954. On May 17th of that year, during the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, it was declared that separate public schools for black and white students was unconstitutional. However, before this, the segregation of schools was a common practice throughout the country. In the 1950s there were many differences in the way that black public schools and white public schools were treated with very few similarities. The differences between the black and white schools encouraged racism which made the amount of discrimination against blacks even greater.

Susan Eaton’s work, The Children in Room E4, shows the racial and economic segregation that is very prominent in Hartford, Connecticut. Stemming from the availability of jobs and the housing market, Hartford has turned into the segregated city it currently is today. Especially in Hartford’s urban schools, economic and racial segregation is the constant truth that lurks in every corner, over every teacher’s shoulder, in every student’s face. This ugly truth has resulted in an unequal educational system between schools that are only miles away. Though the state has been made aware of the unequal opportunities between urban and suburban schools, little change has been seen to benefit the children of Hartford.

Brown v. Board of Education is a major turning point in America's history. It opened many doors for many individuals who had colored skin. Although racism still exist in this United States today, Brown v. Board of Education made people aware of the situation involving racism and changed many people's perceptions on the issue. The background leading up to the case, the societal and political atmosphere, the ideology of the Supreme Court, and the decision/legal reasoning are all major factors to how the Brown v. Board case became one of the biggest life changing events in American history. Racism has not completely vanished in the United States, but we are where were at today because of this case.

In the article, The Resegregation of Jefferson County, a wide variety of different sociological aspects are portrayed under the fight to separate the school, Gardendale, from the rest of the Jefferson County school system. Multiple different inequalities are discussed in different forms throughout this article specifically including income, institutional racism, and neo-racism. All of these forms of social stratification are still alive today.

Throughout Jonathan Kozol’s essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid” (347) and “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” (374) by Beverly Tatum, both Kozol and Tatum discuss racial issues in the educational system. Kozol and Tatum explain racial issues by presenting two different instances that racial issues have played a roles. These two instances being visiting different public schools by Kozol and noticing the cafeteria segregation by Tatum. Using their own personal experiences, their arguments essentially come to similar conclusions, so by comparing their essays, the most significant problems are brought to the table.

Wait you're saying there are still is racial inequality in schools! ( according to the article Worsening unchecked segregation in k-12 schools)Yes it's true there still is and it's not just happening in 1 school but many. And it's not fair they don't get the same amount of materials and resources as the white kids do.Racial inequality is still a problem in our schools but there are ways to fight and act against it.

Society is a whole lot different than it was sixty years ago, but there are still things that haven’t been fixed in today’s lifestyle. De facto segregation is still at large today De facto segregation is when a person or family chooses to move to a segregated area. They are practically forced out of their former town because they usually can’t afford bills and taxes and move to a town with lower bills. De jure segregation is the type of segregation that happened sixty years ago when blacks had to use different facilities and were limited to different jobs. African Americans are the number one race that is usually featured in the lower income class, segregated education and poor housing. Poverty is the new segregation because of poor housing, jobs and segregated

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)

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. In his book, Jonathan Kozol visits a multitude of schools across the country, from poverty-stricken schools to affluent schools.

Society has a set of actions as what they see as “normal” and socially acceptable. They define this set of unspoken rules as social norms. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a reader will often find many characters breaking the social norms of Maycomb County, Alabama. The defiance of these social norms help the young protagonist, Scout, learn valuable life lessons of equality. When Atticus chose to defend Tom Robinson in court, he violated the social norm of colored people being inferior to whites and became a maverick in Maycomb community. Social norms are again broken when Calpernia decided to take both Jem and Scout to the First Purchase, an African American church.

The video “Tale of Two Schools: Race and Education on Long Island” presents David and Owen, two African-American students with similar backgrounds and grades who attend two different high schools in separate districts that have drastically different access to resources, community support, income, etc. Wyandanch Memorial High School is located in a poor district, while South Side High School is located in Rockville Center which is a more affluent and diverse district. The effects of the districts having varying levels of access to quality resources and diversity is exemplified throughout the video with regards to the way the students interact with each other, their grades, and their careers after high school.

“I might sign to be killed. I believe the white people is trying to fool us (Source 1).” The Reconstruction was an era after the civil war for rebuilding the United States. Colored people were telling the whites that they were free and could go where they pleased and work for whoever they wanted (Source 1). A few years after the Civil War, there were Black Codes passed restricting the rights of African American men and women (Source 2). In the twenty-first century the Blacks education is more segregated than it was during the Reconstruction (Source 3). I argue that the Reconstruction did not successfully solve problems of segregation, Ku Klux Klan, and freedom caused by slavery and the Civil War.

On May 17, 1954 the case of Brown v. Board of Education, “declared that segregation in schools of black and white students would no longer be constitutional.” After this law was passed, in 1957 nine African American students enrolled in a predominantly white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. When word got out that, nine students, Melba Pattillo, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Minnijean Brown, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray, and Thelma Mothershed were attending Little Rock Central High School, the governor of Arkansas sent the Arkansas National Guard to the school. Many of the students that already attended the school also barricaded the doors so they would not enter the school. The students started “throwing stones, spat on them, shouted and yelled death threats.” The situation was soon brought to the public’s

The Prom Night in Mississippi was an extraordinary documentary, which encompassed the racial and discriminative views and actions from a small community and school district from the early 2000s. While watching the video multiple emotions and thoughts rushed through my head, however what stuck out to me the most was how recent this document took place, and how severe certain individuals where to possessing certain racial qualities.

Decades ago, children of various races could not go to school together in many locations of the United States. School districts could segregate students, legally, into different schools according to the color of their skin. The law said these separate schools had to be equal. Many schools for children that possessed color were of lesser quality than the schools for white students. To have separate schools for the black and white children became a basic rule in southern society. After the Brown vs. Board of Education case, this all changed.