Many African Americans today do not even see segregation as a big deal, despite the fact that schools in many places are more segregated today than they were five decades ago. Integration went from being a pillar of the civil rights movement to a hotly debated topic, with objections no longer only lodged discreetly in private conversations. In the decades that followed, a skepticism regarding integration has crept deeper and deeper into the Black consciousness, surfacing in community meetings, school boards, and college classrooms, and forcing African Americans to wrestle with questions fundamental to the American experience-questions about opportunity, access, belonging, and success. Perhaps most strikingly, Black Americans’ reservations about the potential adverse effects of integration were quite muted: only 5 percent of respondents said they thought Black students would do worse if they attended school with white children. Furthermore, 83 percent preferred to work in mixed settings at their job, 75 percent preferred to live in mixed neighborhoods, and 78 percent believed Black people would be better off through integration rather than community control. In a polarized society like ours, it can be hard to imagine a majority of people agreeing on almost anything, let alone on a major social issue.īut in 1969, Black America was all-in on integration.Īt the time, 80 percent of Black Americans surveyed said they wanted their children to attend school with white children. So at least, it seems, judging by virtually every indicator of American public education, from test scores to social outcomes.”-Rucker Johnson, 2019 “Quietly and subtly, the opponents of integration have won. There is a future for education policy relative to school integration that fiercely and urgently prioritizes desegregation and centers and values the experiences of Black students.Recent research suggests that contemporary racial segregation is incredibly damaging to Black students, mostly because it serves to concentrate Black students in high-poverty schools, thereby cutting them off from resources, opportunity, and quality, relative to their peers in low-poverty schools.Historically, the purpose and importance of these spaces have been misunderstood by many white Americans. Research demonstrates the power and the importance of positive, nurturing all-Black spaces in the identity formation of Black children. ![]() ![]() Data suggest that the era of desegregation greatly benefited Black students along a whole host of dimensions yet, many Black students in desegregated schools also experienced adverse effects relating to the conditions in the predominantly white schools they newly attended, complicating the desegregation narrative for many African-Americans. ![]()
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