School Desegregation: Successes and Failures

Abstract

It is too early to determine if current efforts at racial integration of the public schools have yielded results sufficiently positive to justify the hope that the process can lead to racial tolerance, the elimination of discrimination, and better academic achievement for some children. Yet the frequently vengeful, and sometimes plaintive, cries that school desegregation has been a bust, necessitates an evaluation. Thus, this paper will seek to investigate the merits of integrated school systems in terms of achieving a number of goals and will evaluate the veracity of some recent attacks on school desegregation. The prevailing tendency is to view school integration as a device for improving the academic achievement of black students. The thrust of this view is that if school desegregation does not result in higher academic achievement for Blacks, it is a failure and should be abandoned. This reasoning is faulty on several counts. First, the Supreme Court's decisions on school desegregation were based on the finding that Black Americans were segregated because they were considered inferior by white society. To allow such discriminatory treatment, the Court said, denied Black Americans the equal protection of the law. The obligation to desegregate the public schools, then, was based on a legal principle guaranteed to all Americans by the Constitution, not on a pedagogic speculation. Second, it would be extremely peculiar if school desegregation had to prove its value as an academic device to justify its continuation. After all, segregated schools existed for decades without