Session Overview
Failures of School Desegregation
February 23, 2022 | 5:00pm - 6:30pm
Unequal education is a hallmark of racism in the United States. This session considers the contours of school segregation and some of its consequences.
Facilitated by: Dr. Kyla Walters Doughty (Sociology)
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Selected Readings
Please follow the link(s) below to access the text(s) selected for this session. We look forward to hearing your thoughts during the facilitated conversation.
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Segrenomics: The Long History of Cashing In on Unequal Education (Episode 33)
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Education reform is often referred to as the "civil rights issue of our time." But what would have happened if "edupreneurs" (like Mark Zuckerberg, Wendy Kopp or Dave Levin) had used their money, influence, connections and access to solve the riddle of why we can't integrate schools? Have You Heard talks "segrenomics" with Noliwe Rooks, author of Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education. -
Forgotten Voices of Black Educators: Critical Race Perspectives on the Implementation of a Desegregation Plan byPublication Date: 2001Through rich and detailed accounts, these educators illustrate how the desegregation plan ultimately protected the overall interests of Whites. Their analyses of the plan-seemingly pessimistic-were realistic. The ending of the plan in 1999 continued to place the onus on Black people to rectify the inequitable education in the city. Suggested is the need for courts and policy makers to begin listening to the voices of African American educators when framing educational policies' intent on improving the education of African American students.
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Miss Buchanan's Period of Adjustment by
Publication Date: 2017-06-28A landmark Supreme Court case. A civil rights revolution. Why has everyone forgotten what happened next? Brown v Board of Education might be the most well-known Supreme Court decision, a major victory in the fight for civil rights. But in Topeka, the city where the case began, the ruling has left a bittersweet legacy. RH hears from the Browns, the family behind the story.
Supplementary Readings
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The Road to Resegregation
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ISBN: 9780520961678Publication Date: 2018-10-09This is the story of the suburbanization of poverty, the failures of regional planning, urban sprawl, NIMBYism, and political fragmentation between middle-class white environmentalists and communities of color. As Alex Schafran shows, the responsibility for this newly segregated geography lies in institutions from across the region, state, and political spectrum, even as the Bay Area has never managed to build common purpose around the making and remaking of its communities, cities, and towns. -
Confronting Suburban School Resegregation in California
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ISBN: 9780812290103Publication Date: 2014-09-05In this ethnographic study of the school district struggles in Central California, Clayton A. Hurd explores the core issues at stake in campaigns to reorganize districts into ethnically separated schools as well as the resistance against them mobilized by the working-class Latino community.
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"the surprising thing" byA Black teacher in a white system. Not everyone makes it out alive.
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"when asked what i learned in elementary school being bussed from Mattapan to Wellesley" byOffers fascinating snapshots of teacher-student predicaments that can occur for an African American in a white system
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Nice White Parents
If you want to understand what’s wrong with our public schools, you have to look at what is arguably the most powerful force in shaping them: white parents. A five-part series from the makers of Serial and The New York Times. Hosted by Chana Joffe-Walt. -
School Segregation in 2018 with Nikole Hannah-Jones
Why are American schools resegregating? Over 60 years since the Brown v. Board of Education ruling forced schools to integrate, the nation is witnessing schools become increasingly segregated. So how did we get to this point? Nikole Hannah-Jones has firsthand knowledge of the system. Beginning in second grade, she was bussed to a wealthy, majority white school as part of a desegregation initiative in her home town. Now, she’s an award-winning investigative reporter writing for The New York Times magazine, doing extensive work on school segregation. In this episode Nikole Hannah-Jones explains why we continue to see segregation in the classroom and how, if at all, the education system can truly desegregate. -
Two Schools in Marin County
Last year, the California Attorney General held a tense press conference at a tiny elementary school in the one working class, black neighborhood of the mostly wealthy and white Marin County. His office had concluded that the local district "knowingly and intentionally" maintained a segregated school, violating the 14th amendment. He ordered them to fix it, but for local officials and families, the path forward remains unclear, as is the question: what does "equal protection" mean?
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Where Did All the Black Teachers Go? byPublication Date: 2017-04-20On the first day of fifth grade, I was dispatched from my all-black school and sent to the far end of town.
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How Higher Ed Can Fix K-12
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Publication Date: 2020-11-09Clear messages to high school students and clarity in college admissions go a long way, writes Thurston Domina.
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Can School Integration Make a Comeback?In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education declared that separate schools for black students and white students should be dismantled with “all deliberate speed.” However, in recent decades, schools have re-segregated to the levels they were just after Brown. In this video, Atlantic education editor Alia Wong speaks to the U.S. Secretary of Education John King, Jr. about his new plan to integrate schools. King’s policy changes will expand a system known as “school choice” that permits students to go to schools outside their neighborhoods and theoretically allows parents to voluntarily integrate schools. But, D.C. parent Natalie Hopkinson argues that schools will continue to re-segregate if the federal government does not intervene more forcefully. “As long as we rely on [parental] choice, we will continue to have the same result,” she says. “White parents will not send their kids to schools unless they are already white.”
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Majority Minority: The resegregation of public schools.
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A documentary focused on the various factors that have led to resegregation within public schools in Florida.
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They Wanted Desegregation. They Settled for Money, and It’s About to Run Out.
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Publication Date: 2018-03-26Historically black colleges continue to play an outsized role in the education of black students despite only composing three-percent of four-year, non-profit colleges, and they have been underfunded since the beginning. -
The Journey of an African American Teacher Before and After Brown v. Board of Education byPublication Date: 2014The percentage of African American educators in the U.S. has declined over the past 65 years while the public school populations have become more diverse. Reasons for this decline are posited from a review of the literature, including Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas, and the expanded opportunities for African Americans during this time period. To better understand and gain insights into possible reasons for the decline in African American educators, an oral history was completed of Miss Eileen Miller (1921-2010). Miss Miller, an African American teacher from Wheeling, West Virginia, taught in that city before, during, and after school desegregation. A discussion of her remembrances is situated in the literature and illuminates her life and career.