Have We Found Better Things to Do With Our Time?
by Lauren Strupp
The twentieth century saw the genesis and growth of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The sentiments that upheld it continue to be pertinent as society advances in the new millennium. Martin Luther King, Jr. helped to set in motion an idea of equality that will forever remain relevant. The United States celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. this year on January 16th, remembering for at least a day what people went through and fought for in hopes of achieving desegregation and equality in the United States. Important legislation emanated from the 1954 Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education in order to establish the desegregation of schools in the southern United States – only a step in a long process to attain racial equality in schools throughout the U.S. Despite such groundbreaking legislation, schools today still appear to be socially segregated, exemplified with the prevalence of school cliques. Therefore, is legislation alone enough to accomplish the goals we set out to achieve? We ought to take more steps to ensure such inequality is eliminated.
Socioeconomic circumstances have aggravated the difficulty in achieving desegregation in big cities like Detroit and New York. History speaks for itself in regard to the 1974 Supreme Court decision against desegregation in suburban Detroit. As a result, desegregation continued to be restricted in cities, and unequal, segregated schools remained in these cities due to the declining tax bases within them.1 The racial demographics within these cities make it significantly more difficult for desegregation to succeed. This is clearly seen in 1970 when Mississippi Senator John Stennis and other southern senators proposed that new federal desegregation guidelines be implemented consistently across the country. The Stennis amendment was adopted by the Senate, and resulted in residential segregation in the school system. The migration of a large number of African Americans to northern cities in the 1960s sustained the existence of segregation.2 Desegregation needs more effort if we truly want it to succeed.
The year 1974 saw the beginning of the downfall of integration policies. Supreme Court case Milliken vs. Bradley grappled with the question of whether or not the Court can use suburban students to desegregate inner city schools. The Court decided against it, therefore ruling in favor of educational democracy over school integration. This decision enabled the predominantly white middle and upper classes to flee the inner city to the suburbs and to educate their children in suburban schools. As the first major defeat of the pro-integrationist forces in the Supreme Court, this triggered a continuing trend in the Supreme Court.3
Based on the events of the last half century, there does not appear to be anything we can do to create true widespread desegregation. Transforming U.S. cities and suburbs in order to achieve a more even racial distribution would require uprooting people from their current homes, and would most likely garner more repercussions than positive results. However, the United States has come too far to quit now. The 1990s saw decreased Supreme Court support for the desegregation of schools. In many ways we have re-segregated schools in the United States. For instance, in 1984 the Oklahoma school board ruled for a “return to neighborhood schools for grades 1-4 and to establish racially balanced fifth grade centers. The new plan meant that 11 of the 64 schools in the city would become more than 90 percent African American. Twenty-two of the schools would have a student population 90 percent or more European American. This new plan met with protest among the various stakeholders; however, the plan became effective in 1985.”4 Many other public school districts abandoned desegregation efforts and returned to neighborhood schools during this period.
What steps can we take? Every person is entitled to an education free from inequality. Desegregation was deemed a necessity when it was first introduced in the 1950s. Today many hope and try to believe that the people’s ignorance and racist tendencies have dramatically decreased over a half century allowing for equality and justice in schools for all races. The socioeconomic segregation in the school system calls into question whether the racial demographics of a school impacts the quality of one’s education. The concept of creating perfectly desegregated communities seems far too ideal, because people are going to live and go to school either where they choose, or where their socioeconomic status dictates. While total desegregation is an idea that a country as diverse as the United States should strive for, the extent to which it can be established is dependent upon how accepting our society is of each culture that lives here.
-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/18_03/stra183.shtml
- http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1988/1/88.01.03.x.html
- http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1988/1/88.01.03.x.html
- http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCG/is_4_30/ai_112686164
