Desegregation as Necessity and Challenge

Abstract

As we in this issue of the Journal of Negro Education explore new transformations of schools to meet the needs of African American students, it is important for us not to lose sight of transformations that have already occurred but that need constant reconsideration. Desegregation is no longer much discussed as an educational policy. While demographic changes have made desegregation practically impossible for many African American children in the nation's largest cities, they have made it a standard experience for those in some suburbs. The latter schools are often not self-conscious about desegregation; they simply serve students of more than one race, though numbers of African Americans and other non-White groups are generally small. Other schools, many in mid-sized and smaller cities, and sometimes their suburbs, operate under longstanding desegregation agreements or court orders where racial mixing, even if it involves long distance busing, has become a more or less routine way of doing business. Some of these communities are now asking courts' permission to withdraw from these agreements.In this article, I will first explain why desegregation is an important practice that must not be allowed to lapse. I will then discuss some of the pressures that have made it a less than satisfactory experience for African American children in many local contexts and in nationally patterned ways. Finally, I will discuss magnet schools as one fragile tool that sometimes helps, but sometimes hurts, the situation of African American children.As a citizen interested in promoting some educational policies, as distinct from a social scientist analyzing events, I am an unapologetic advocate of desegregated, or rather, integrated schools. I believe that in a multiracial society with a history of painful race relations, it is essential that persons of different races have contact while they are small children, before stereotypes and fears take root. They need to be able to tumble over one another in the nursery to become used to their differences and to understand their similarities. They need to grow up friends and allies with members of different races so that they can understand one another and have close ties of emotional identification that cross racial lines.I argue this because I believe that early accommodation to difference, close emotional ties across racial lines, and the capacity to identify with persons of different races are crucial to an ability to overcome the deeply rooted, divisive forces separating the races in our society. Although these experiences and ties may be needed for somewhat different reasons and in somewhat different ways by children of different races, all effective adults in a multiracial society must have cognitive knowledge and emotional empathy that allows them understanding of other individuals and groups across racial lines. All must learn to understand and make themselves understood by members of the other group; to be socially at ease with these others; to trust others in the sometimes delicate cooperative ventures of occupational, civic, and social life; and to treat all persons and groups with fairness and justice. A long tradition of social psychological theory and research suggests that this end will be met only through prolonged social contact where children of all races meet as equals and where they are engaged in cooperative ventures together (Schofield, 1989).Because African Americans can rarely avoid dealing with Whites, they may need these experiences in school less than do Whites, who can, and often do, avoid having much contact with African Americans. Therefore, desegregated schools may be more important for their impact on Whites, though Whites' need for this socialization is less often discussed. While African American parents are understandably reluctant to send their children into difficult school situations primarily to educate White children in racial relations, the impact on African Americans of Whites who have not been so socialized can be very destructive. …