Minorities in White Schools

Minorities in White Schools

Introduction

Segregation in America's schools existed up until 1954. Separate but equal laws allowed states to segregate schools and other public facilities based on race, in which in most cases facilities were unequal. Inequality affected the way black and white students learned during the times of segregation. The issue of whether public facilities may be segregated based on race first arose in the context of transportation, not education(Spring 2002).

Depending on where you stand, the drift back to segregation may be obvious, or it may be entirely invisible. Many white students attend schools that are overwhelmingly white, and those schools are actually seeing an increase in diversity, Orfield said. We have the irony that white students can feel that their educational experience is more integrated, when in fact the level of segregation nationwide has increased.

Discussion

One of the biggest issues that urban and suburban school systems face today is the slow reappearance of segregated schools. The main problem with segregated schools is that, as a trend, urban schools tend to be on a substandard level as compared to most suburban schools. This may be due to their lack of money and how the money each school has is used. Urban schools do not have as many opportunities as suburban schools, like the use of new technologies, or going outside to play, or going on fieldtrips, due to the lack of money/resources and safety issues. Students that attend and graduate from suburban schools have more options than those attending and hoping to graduate from an inner city school. Dropping out of school is a greater issue in an inner city school than it is in a suburban school. Some urban students are able to be bused to suburban public schools, or leave the public school system to attend an independent or parochial school. However, for the majority of students, the option of being bused to a better school does not exist, nor do the resources to attend suburban public, independent, or parochial schools. It seems that the public school system is having the same problems that manifested themselves decades ago(Frankenberg Lee Orfield 2003). We are slowly, but surely, returning to segregated schools where the better schools and the better educational opportunities are in suburbia, and the better schools are being attended by mainly white students while urban schools are being attended by minority students. But what can the school system as a whole do to prevent complete re-segregation?

Fifty years ago, Supreme Court Chief Justice, Earl Warren read the decision of the unanimous court:

We come then to the questions presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal education opportunities? We believe that it does... We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently ...