The Hidden Injuries of School Desegregation (original) (raw)
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The African American Reaction to School Desegregation in Lafayette Parish
In May 2000, the Lafayette Parish School Board, in southwest Louisiana, wasfound in violation of a 1967 federal court order to desegregate, was ordered to close two predominantly African American elementary schools, and bus those children to five predominately White schools on the other side of this city of 100,000. Additionally, the judge ordered the transfer of 12 principals based on race and the construction of a new magnet school. The present study examines questionnaire responses from middle to upper middle-class African Americans at three different times: (a) just after the court decision, (b) 1-2 months after the decision was implemented, and (c) 5 months after the court order. This study also explores the gradual shift in the responses from Lafayette's African American community.
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This paper analyzes 19 studies that were considered by the National Institute of Education's panel on the effects of school desegregation in order to determine desegregation's effect on black achievement, black self-esteem, and racial relations. It is stated that, overall, the results show that reading achievement improves somewhat as a result of desegregation but math achievement does not. The author notes that there is a basic problem in evaluating desegregation programs in that there is great diversity among programs, which accounts for the diverse results obtained in different studies. It is suggested that desegregation has not increased black self-esteem, and in some cases has decreased it; tentative conclusions suggest that racial relations have not been improved by desegregation. According to the author, research, and particularly long-term research, is still needed on the effects of desegregation on students and communities, as well as studies that examine under what...
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This article examines the legacy of segregation and desegregation in the town of Parsons, Kansas. We argue that school desegregation, the goal of which was to increase access and equalize educational opportunities for African Americans, did not have that desired affect. Fifty years after the closing of the all-Black Douglass School, Parsons' citizens had not openly acknowledged the effects this event had on the African American community. Three generations later, African American student achievement still lags behind that of White students. These unresolved issues have contributed to a number of losses in the Black community, including loss of Black teachers and loss of talented Black young people. We use theories of social capital and cultural capital as a framework to illustrate how White, middle class students had greater access to school resources, and to identify the social and cultural resources within the Black community that the school district could build upon, such as strong leadership and a sense of resolve and resiliency.
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This history examines attitudes toward and responses to school desegregation within an established, closely knit network of African-American communities in Prince George's County, Maryland, from 1954, immediately after Brown v. Board of Education, through the first year of the destabilizing busing era. Optimistic about the opportunities and social equality desegregated schooling might afford their children, black residents of this county nonetheless recognized the value of segregated schooling in securing a general sense of well being within both their children and their communities. Thus, for two decades they approached school desegregation with expectation and ambivalence, asserting collective agency to influence the school board's decision making, prevent the closing of black schools, and affirm their racial and cultural identity.
Harming Our Common Future: America's Segregated Schools 65 Years after "Brown
2019
Acknowledgements We are very grateful for the support and assistance of Laurie Russman and Carolyn Peelle in the preparation of this report, which was very complex. This endeavor involved collaboration of scholars from four universities,* was carried out with no grant, and required scores of communications via email and phone, from different parts of the country, at all hours of the day and night. We appreciate the efforts of each of the authors, and of those who work with them on their campuses and support them at home. Each of the authors made substantial contributions and should be equally credited for the final report. It has been a great pleasure to work with a rising group of scholars who are so deeply concerned about overcoming the divisions in our society, and working towards making the dream of the Brown decision and our great civil rights laws a reality in a difficult time. Our country has passively accepted the return and deepening of segregation in unequal schools. It is time for educators of the U.S. to take leadership in assuring that we do not confine our students of color, nor critically limit the education of white students in schools that are obviously inadequate for the preparation of a society in which we all must live and work and govern together.