From “Good Will” to “Anachronism”

Abstract

This article explores the challenges that have made the pursuit of school integration difficult in the contemporary era. Using court records and newspaper archives, we explore how a New York City school desegregation order came to be seen as “unnecessary,” “unfair,” and “anachronistic,” claims that seem to deny the salience of race in one of the most segregated school systems in the nation. In 1974, Mark Twain Junior High School in Coney Island became the first New York City school to desegregate under federal district court order. Three decades later, Mark Twain was a highly desirable magnet school under a court-mandated desegregation plan that left students across the city competing fiercely for admissions. In 2007, an immigrant parent from India successfully sued New York City, claiming his daughter was passed over in favor of white students who scored lower on the city's selective school screening test but were admitted in the name of maintaining the 1974 court-mandated racial balance. We argue that Mark Twain's story vividly illustrates not only the importance of demographic change in school desegregation policy but also the evolution of racial discourse and the conceptions of the public good in the post–civil rights era.