Today is the 64th anniversary of the Brown v. Board decision of 1954. In many ways, that decision had a profound impact on American life. As an American who grew up in a rigidly segregated era and graduated from public high school in 1956, before the Brown decision was enforced in most of the South, I know how huge a change has occurred in American society. And yet we remain in many respects far too segregated, far too separate and unequal. The promise of Brown has not been realized.
I urge you to read this conversation between John Rogers, professor of education at UCLA, and Sandra Graham, who holds the UCLA chair in Education and Diversity. They remind us of why our society needs to reclaim the value of diversity. We must learn together, work together, and build a better society together.
At the last annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Oakland, esteemed journalist Nicole Hannah-Jones spoke eloquently about the power of integrated education. That is an ideal we must strive for and never abandon.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Indications are that publicly-operated schools are becoming more segregated. see
https://thinkprogress.org/american-schools-are-more-segregated-now-than-they-were-in-1968-and-the-supreme-court-doesnt-care-cc7abbf6651c/
Like most government programs, forced integration did not work.
Integration did work. It improved the scores and graduation rates of black students. It improved their college-going rate. Its effects improved their income, and the lives of their families.
It wasn’t abandoned because it didn’t work. It was abandoned because Republican presidents appointed conservative judges to the Supreme Court.
I was a wee lad at the time, but I recall there also being a pretty substantial and ugly public backlash to some of the measures taken to achieve integrated schools in the Midwest and Northeast. I imagine you were a close observer of that phenomenon in the 1970s.
If schools are to truly “integrate” (and I put that in quotes because it’s not self-evident to me what that means exactly), I suspect we will see similar backlash today. One need only look at the toxic debate that’s sprung up on the Upper West Side in response to one recent proposal regarding middle school admissions. There will be a lot more of that to come.
FLERP!
Why don’t you look up these middle schools:
Boerum Hill School for International Studies (22% white, 65% economically disadvantaged)
Park Slope Collegiate (16% white, 69% economically disadvantaged)
MS 442 (23% white, 67% economically disadvantaged)
MS 839 (41% white, 39% economically disadvantaged)
JHS 88 (11% white, 70% economically disadvantaged)
Compare that with a charter school network that has 3 schools in District 3:
Success Academy Harlem 1 — (1% white, 65% economically disadvantaged)
Success Academy Harlem 4 — (2% white, 74% economically disadvantaged)
Success Academy Upper West — (33% white, 28% economically disadvantaged)
It’s interesting that you have given up on public schools being integrated when there are plenty of integrated public schools in NYC even if there are also schools — both charter and public — that serve disproportionately low numbers of at-risk students.
The irony is that there are many public schools that now have disproportionate numbers of white and affluent students but were once a schools with mostly poor and non-white students.
There was obviously a time in the middle when they were the perfect integrated mix.
I find it refreshing how open you are about your racism, Charles.
I have many faults, but racism is not one of them. I just feel that school integration has not produced the results, that many people thought it would. 60 years after the Brown decision, schools are getting more segregated, not less.
see this report:
https://www.vox.com/2018/3/5/17080218/school-segregation-getting-worse-data
Do a google search for yourself, and see if you do not agree. Gentrification, and housing inequality, and the lower income of minority families, all contribute to the situation.
Sad.
Integration produced great results. If you read my book “Reign of Error,” you would have learned about the research of Rucker Johnson at Berkeley, who showed the dramatic results of integration. You read too much racist garbage from rightwing websites and magazines. Integration didn’t fail. The reason for growing segregation is rightwing judges appointed by Republican presidents. If you cared about kids, you would inform yourself and stop spouting what you picked from the Heritage Foundation.
Integration does work. I had a front row seat to the benefits during my career. Many of my minority ELLs attended college. Some have become social workers, teachers, doctors, nurses, business employees in marketing and tech, and small business owners. Others have become skilled workers that work with their hands.
I enjoyed reading this discussion since as a culture we continue to have issues related to race, class and gender. Diversity helps develop a more inclusive mentality, I believe. I grew up in integrated Philadelphia. I am white. When I started teaching mostly minority ESL students, I knew I was meant to do this job. What was strange to me is that sometimes I would get strange comments from other people’s substitute teachers. The regular staff understood my work. I would get stopped in the hall with comments like the following: You’re so good with THEM. How do you do it? or an occasional, Bless you! What I concluded was it seemed odd that a white teacher would feel at home with minority students. The fact is I was at home doing a rewarding job with great students that benefited from my efforts. I needed my students in order to have a job. I thank them every day for giving me a great career with lots of fond memories. Diversity is essential to building bridges and creating an inclusive country that provides opportunities for all.
retired teacher,
You are right.
Here’s what Nikole Hannah Jones tweeted this morning about Brown vs. Board of Ed:
“Today, the 64th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling might be a good time to actually read it. You’ll note it doesn’t talk about test scores or achievement gaps. It does talk about citizenship, democracy and caste. (https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483)
“As long as we can pretend that the SCOTUS’s ruling in Brown was about resources, then we can justify the neo-Plessyism of the modern educational landscape, where we once again pretend we will make separate schools equal so we don’t have to do the real work.
“1) We’ve never made separate schools for blk/brwn children equal for a single day in this country. 2) SCOTUS understood that in nation built on racial caste, that separation produced a stigma, was designed to demean & separate black children from their citizenship. It still does.
“And, just as segregation stigmatizes black children, it gives white children a false sense of their superiority, it raises them to believe that they deserve an inordinate amount of resources, that the best will be reserved for them.
“We forget that sociologists also presented the harms of segregation on white children to the SCOTUS because the SCOTUS did not cite this evidence in this ruling. But every day, we see the consequences of this segregation on white children as well.”
Jones captured the essence of Trump’s cabinet including Ben Carson, an anomaly that lives in his own private Idaho. It should be noted that not one member of the Congressional Black Caucus had ever met Ben Carson.
Oh please, I grew up in the public schools of New York City and I have seen the schools go from being integrated with AP classes to what they are now. Whites only need to apply. Exam schools who had brilliant minority students attending in the past now with the help of policy intervention has led to what we have now. Anything to keep the entitled in charge and making sure only there children are in the programs. Please stop with the phony words, this is all orchestrated the hand wringing is insulting to minorities. contrary to popular belief we are not stupid, we see what America has done to us
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Look at the leaders in education who write the policies. I was at a conference once when one of the speakers stated the only good thing that has happened to black boys is that white people have made a lot of money off of there research of them. I respected him because he spoke the truth. So true. nothing changes for minorities and white people are in charge.