Urban Public School Desegregation: The Reproduction of Normative White Domination

Abstract

Although prominent desegregation researchers have not believed that public school desegregation is a cure-all for Black inequality in America, they seem to think something magical occurs when Blacks and Whites are placed. in the same physical plant. The magical folkwisdom of many students of school desegregation is apparent in the large number of now-classic studies which attempted to assess the effects of school desegregation only one or two years after the event.' Inspired by the intergroup contact literature, researchers have come to assume that, under specific conditions, interracial contact leads to racial integration in public schools without regard for what happens outside school walls.2 The magical qualities of the desegregation literature can be attributed to the liberal faith in the American creed which optimistically predicts the eventual assimilation of dissimilar groups. As the research of social scientists has shifted from first generation to second generation desegregated schools, numerous racial resegregation problems have appeared. Recent published and unpublished ethnographic studies have revealed that even in schools where the racial gap in achievement is closing, there are still extensive racial resegregation patterns. Such observations were missed in earlier studies which used survey methods that could not tap deep experiential data or which