Educational Opportunities For African Americans Research Articles

The Relevance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities: From a Critical Race Theorist Standpoint

ABSTRACT Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were created to provide educational opportunities for African Americans when other educational pathways were closed or restricted. These higher education institutions with the assistance of the American Missionary Association and the Freedmen’s Bureau, churches and philanthropists, continue to educate African American leaders and advance society at large. From a Critical Race Theorists (CRT) perspective, the promotion and sustainability of HBCUs is relevant and much needed in the 21st century particularly with the gradual elimination of affirmative action standards at mainstream institutions. Acknowledging the persistence of racism, which CRT implores us to do, it is clear that HBCUs are critical educational entities as they lessen equity gaps and create opportunities for marginalized and disproportionately recognized students across the globe.

Jim Crow in North Carolina: The Legislative Program from 1865 to 1920 by Richard A. Paschal

Reviewed by: Jim Crow in North Carolina: The Legislative Program from 1865 to 1920 by Richard A. Paschal Abel A. Bartley Jim Crow in North Carolina: The Legislative Program from 1865 to 1920. By Richard A. Paschal. (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2021. Pp. xx, 297. Paper, $29.00, ISBN 978-1-5310-1771-3.) In Jim Crow in North Carolina: The Legislative Program from 1865 to 1920, Richard A. Paschal crafts an interesting narrative about how Jim Crow legislation impacted North Carolina. The book documents the way race-based laws constructed by the North Carolina General Assembly shaped race relations in the state from Reconstruction through 1920. Traditionally, North Carolina was viewed as a moderate southern state with decent race relations and abundant educational opportunities for African Americans. Paschal attacks that narrative, deconstructing North Carolina's exceptionalist claims by showing that North Carolina maintained a virulently racist system throughout the post–Civil War period. North Carolina's Jim Crow laws were not the foundation of the state's discriminatory system; they instead simply confirmed the established customs that buttressed the white power structure in the state. Paschal pulls no punches as he questions the various theories about the origins of segregation. He acknowledges that C. Vann Woodward, Joel Williamson, and Howard Rabinowitz each supply partial answers to the origins of segregation, but none answers all the questions. Paschal questions Woodward's theories espoused in his classic work The Strange Career of Jim Crow (3rd rev. ed.; New York, 1974). Woodward argued that segregation came about as a result of the Democratic redemption of the state and the desire to end the challenge from the Populist movement. Paschal says that segregation and discrimination were prominent features of North Carolina life even during slavery, although he acknowledges the power of the Populist movement in the state. White North Carolinians did not need new legislation to enforce their racist actions. They relied on violence, chicanery, and intimidation to ensure white dominance of the state. The end of slavery created new expectations about race and social etiquette in the South. Woodward suggested that African Americans and whites mingled freely in economic and political matters during Reconstruction. Legalized racial segregation was a relatively new aspect of southern life. White North Carolinians turned to chicanery when they realized they could not win at the ballot box. [End Page 400] Paschal utilizes lists of laws to make his argument that between 1865 and 1920 North Carolinians were busy codifying white supremacy in the state. To make his point, the author explores several areas of social life, from politics and voting to school segregation, asylums, lynching, and juries. Between 1898 and the 1900s, white Democrats used violence, intimidation, and discriminatory laws to finally drive African Americans from the ballot box. They used discriminatory screening to block African Americans from the jury box. The lack of jury representation wreaked havoc on African Americans trying to get justice in the courts or challenge the new legal realities. North Carolinians refused to fund insane asylums, but they monitored private funds to ensure African Americans and whites were housed in separate facilities. Paschal notes that until 1885, when it was outlawed, North Carolina utilized a dual taxing program to ensure that white schools had more funding than African American schools. Paschal has written a wonderful book, which is a must-read for those interested in how Jim Crow developed and spread in North Carolina. North Carolina clearly was no different from other southern states. Paschal's writing is engaging, and the scholarship is impeccable and very thorough. However, the list of laws can be tedious at times, but if the reader takes the time to study them, they add to the arguments. In conclusion, I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in North Carolina's or America's complicated racial past. Abel A. Bartley Clemson University Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

Race, Post-Reconstruction Politics, and the Birth of Federal Support for Black Colleges

AbstractIn 1890, Congress passed the Second Morrill Land-Grant Act, which provided federal resources to support the creation of nineteen Black land-grant colleges. At a historical and political moment when Black Americans faced a violently repressive backlash against what progress they had achieved during Reconstruction, the successful passage and implementation of this legislation was unlikely. How did congressional lawmakers successfully pass the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1890, and was the expansion of educational opportunity for African Americans a clearly expressed objective? Using historical analysis of primary sources, this analysis suggests that the 1890 legislation’s investment in Black colleges reflected a politically expedient compromise between northern Radical Republicans who supported greater educational access for Black citizens and Southern Democrats who wished to expand higher educational opportunity in their region while also maintaining the segregated racial order of southern educational institutions.

Estimating the Effect of School Quality on Mortality in the Presence of Migration: Evidence from the Jim Crow South

We consider the effects of school quality on health using the introduction of the Rosenwald schools which expanded educational opportunities for African Americans living in rural areas of the South during the early part of the 20th century. Prior research has shown that the Great Migration dramatically reduced the life expectancy of blacks who migrated north and prior research has also shown that Rosenwald schooling increased the likelihood of migration out of the South. This clouds measurement of a direct channel between schooling and survival. Because of this, we estimate the effect of the Rosenwald schools on mortality conditional on migration status. We find that addressing the endogenous migration of blacks is empirically important. Even though the advent of Rosenwald schools exogenously increased education, there is no correlation between Rosenwald school exposure and survival. But accounting for the negative impact of migration on survival induced by Rosenwald school exposure, we find that that complete exposure to the Rosenwald schools during childhood increased life expectancy by about two to three months. These findings highlight the importance of interpreting IV results carefully within the instruments historical context when addressing underlying mechanisms.

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A Touch of Greatness: A History of Tennessee State University by Bobby L. Lovett. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2012, 340 pp., $35.00, hardcover.In a historical account entitled A Touch of Greatness: A History of Tennessee State University, Dr. Bobby L. Lovett chronicles the journey of Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial (A & I) State Normal School for Negroes1 through a merger with the University of Tennessee at Nashville (UTN), to current-day Tennessee State University (TSU). Lovett's demonstration of authorship, professional and academic expertise in American history were skillfully and eloquently presented throughout this informative work. His insertion of facts related to the establishment and legacy of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) align with the mission of The Journal of Negro Education (JNE).Since their humble beginnings in the early 1800s, HBCUs provided educational opportunities for African Americans, low-income and academically disadvantaged who may otherwise be denied a higher education. Additionally, Lovett provides a detailed description of the inequitable funding for HBCUs despite the provisions of the second Morrill Act (Redd, 1998).The introductory chapter provides a thorough description of legislations and resulting social, economic, and educational inequities underlying the foundation for upcoming chapters. Whether the reader is a native Tennessean or one who has no familiarity with the state, Lovett's comprehensive coverage of historical facts pave a path on which the reader can visualize the social, political, and economic climate between 1909-1922. In subsequent chapters, the author describes the tenure and legacies of TSU's seven presidents from 1911 to 2010. Under the inaugural leadership of President William Hale, TSU's goal was to impart knowledge, discipline the mind, train the hand, and influence the heart of its students (p. 27). From its inception, the roles of TSU were instrumental in the history and development of TSU. A continuous acknowledgment of student involvement is threaded throughout Lovett's work. For example, he vividly describes how in 1912 carried chairs from class to class and assisted in facility projects (i.e., painting, cleaning, construction), to who embraced activism during the Civil Rights Movement, through participation in demonstrations, sit-ins, and freedom rides.Lovett outlines the impact of Jim Crow and de jure segregation on higher education in a manner laymen can follow. While reading his historical account, I was reminded of the strength and resiliency of an oppressed population. Lovett further explains the contributions of northern philanthropist agencies that began holding joint education reform conferences with southern leaders. The goal was to create ways to move public and private elementary, secondary, and higher education poverty-stricken regions into the twentieth century. Consequently, much of the funding needed to build Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State College was provided by northern philanthropists.A substantial amount of Lovett's work documents an official act of government, the 32-year Geier v. Tennessee case (597 F2d 1056), which conspired to destroy TSU by subverting it either to the control of University of Tennessee (UT) during Jim Crow or losing its status and function. The intent of the original plaintiffs was to address disparities in funding, curricula, facilities, and faculty at still segregated TSU and to eliminate statewide policy and practices that perpetuated a dual system of higher education in Tennessee. …

Rhetorics of Literacy: The Cultivation of American Dialect Poetry by Nadia Nurhussein (review)

Reviewed by: Rhetorics of Literacy: The Cultivation of American Dialect Poetry by Nadia Nurhussein April C. Logan Rhetorics of Literacy: The Cultivation of American Dialect Poetry. By Nadia Nurhussein. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2013. 292 pp. $64.95. Did readers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries read, recite, and hear American dialect poetry the same way we do today? This is the question at the center of Nadia Nurhussein’s impressively-researched Rhetorics of Literacy: The Cultivation of American Dialect Poetry. Nurhussein offers surprisingly novel answers to this question in her formalist study, reconstructing the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through astute textual analyses of the works of the well- and lesser-known dialect poets Bret Harte, James Whitcomb Riley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Maggie Pogue Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay, along with a range of print culture, including but not limited to editorials, book reviews, newspaper advertisements, personal letters, and drawings. She “[explores] the production and reception of dialect in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American poetry, examining the contexts in which dialect poetry was written, read, and performed” (4). Although she offers original perspectives on longstanding debates about the works of Hughes, Harper, Dunbar, and McKay, Nurhussein’s greatest contribution with Rhetorics of Literacy: The Cultivation of American Dialect Poetry is her detailing of dialect poetry’s history in America. Another important insight that Nurhussein develops over the course of six chapters is that dialect poetry is a paradoxical genre in that, as much as people associate it with replicating speech and illiteracy in particular, it is, in reality, a particular poet’s imaginative rendering of the acquisition and possession of the ability to read and write in Standard English. In the Introduction, she explains, “Throughout this book, I use the terms ‘dialect’ and ‘literary dialect’ to describe the limitless ways in which writers evoke so-called nonstandard speech in written English and not speech itself. Written English does not correspond to a particular spoken dialect; thus orthographical alteration wrongly suggests deviation from a correct standard” (6–7). This theory makes it possible for her to reevaluate the bodies of criticism on Dunbar, Riley, and McKay that have focused largely on questions of whether their dialects are realistic representations of their heritages or, at the very least, the personas portrayed in their dialect poetry. Late nineteenth-century America underwent several historic transitions that, according to Nurhussein, shaped the projects of these poets: increases in literacy among African Americans and Euro-Americans, “nostalgia for a primarily oral culture” (9), and the “emergence of the figure of the silent dialect poetry reader” (10). For example, “Strange spellings, in the forms of both dialect writing and orthographies encouraging phonetic spelling reform … [End Page 98] reflected cultural dissatisfaction with the inaccuracy of written English and the desire to have American spelling correspond closely to the way people really spoke,” notes Nurhussein (9). In other words, dialect poets joined advocates of spelling reform, educators, and dictionary publishers, such as Webster, in a national dialogue about the very nature of the English language and how it could be better understood through their bound and performed poetry. Debates about educational opportunities for African Americans, shifting attitudes toward oral culture(s), misconceptions about the relationship between dialects and literacy, and racial prejudice also greatly influenced Harte, Riley, Harper, Pogue, Hughes, and McKay. In Chapter 1, “The Difficulty of Dialect Poetry,” Nurhussein argues that James Whitcomb Riley’s success and artistry embody late nineteenth- and twentieth-century American attitudes towards language, orality, and literacy. In addition, she articulates her criterion for evaluating the level of difficulty involved with reading a particular poem: “Because I argue that the most unintelligible feature of dialect poetry, the feature inhibiting our ability to ‘read it at an optimum speed’ and the feature to which most detractors of dialect poetry objected, is spelling and not, for example, syntax, I use the number of dialect spellings as my measure of readability” (30). The moderate readability of Riley’s poetry and the venues in which it appeared—elocution books rather than school textbooks and “highbrow” magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly—help scholars see that a...

Desegregation, Accountability, and Equality: North Carolina and the Nation, 1971-2002

Using North Carolina as a lens to illuminate broader national developments, this paper examines how and why educational policy in the United States turned away from a civil rights agenda of opportunity and embraced test-based accountability as a way of promoting racial equality. We show that comprehensive desegregation, enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Great Society Programs expanded educational opportunities for African Americans, fueled significant increases in black educational achievement and attainment, and brought African Americans closer to equality with whites by the 1980s. We situate the turn to accountability in a political context shaped by an increasingly conservative political environment, and examine three overlapping waves of test- based accountability that began in North Carolina in the late 1970s and spread throughout the region and the nation in the decades that followed: the minimum competency movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the standards based reforms of the 1980s, and the more comprehensive and coercive forms of high stakes testing in the 1990s. We argue that the southern political leaders who shaped U.S. educational policy turned to test-based accountability as a politically expedient alternative to the task of equalizing educational opportunities for African Americans. Civil rights organizations endorsed test-based accountability, but we find little evidence that test-based approaches improved African American educational outcomes. Opportunity policies, we conclude, did more to promote racial equality in educational achievement and attainment than test-based accountability. 

The Role of Racial Socialization in Promoting the Academic Expectations of African American Adolescents: Realities in a Post-<em>Brown</em> Era

In 1954, the landmark ruling of Brown v. the Board of Education fulfilled the educational wishes of generations of African American parents, the right to an education for their children (Spencer, 2005, 2008). The legal right to equal educational opportunities for their child was the minimum expectation of parents celebrated by parents. The seminal findings from research that served an important role in the decision process of the Supreme Court were the famous 'doll study' by African American psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark (see Clark & Clark, 1950). Their research findings were used as evidence to the Court of the negative psychological impact of segregated school systems.Throughout history on this continent, African American parents consistently held high expectations for the education of their children. As documented in a classic work by Carter G. Woodson (1919), he demonstrated that throughout the period of enslavement, where an enslaved African was legally forbidden to read and being caught reading the basis for vicious physical punishments-African Americans found a way to 'get an education.' The famous former slave Frederick Douglass also wrote in his autobiography that although separated from his mother at a young age, he found creative ways to fulfill his mother's dream-to read (Douglass, 2004).The families and community of freed slaves continued to find ways to achieve an education despite Jim segregation and centuries of terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan. In fact, more recent scholarship emphasizes how the legacies associated with Jim segregation still exist under different mechanisms. For example, Alexander (2012) argued that the last two decades have influenced a New Jim Crow in which legalized segregation has been replaced with a penal system associated with unjust incarceration outcomes, especially for African American males. Heilig and Holme (2013) highlighted how current school segregation in Texas is reminiscent of former Jim laws in that Latino/a and African American students are exposed to the most challenging school contexts and they have the least amount of institutional supports.During the Jim era, African American parents used specific socialization strategies to prepare their children to deal with the realities of discrimination and racism (Spencer, 1982). Moving forward Black parents recognized that despite the legal gains, Black children still required additional protective childrearing techniques that are called, 'racial socialization' (Spencer, 1982, 2006). These racial socialization mechanisms acknowledged that race was and still is a social construct associated with a hierarchy of institutional racism. However, as Spencer highlighted by focusing on normal human development processes (1982, 2006, 2008), socialization is connected to normal child development (i.e., understanding children's cognitive capacities to understand social phenomena) as well as ecological contexts. For example, parents must use protective factors to socialize children until children get old enough to understand concepts such as institutional racism and discriminatory practices.Sixty years post Brown; modem African American parents continue to socialize their children to fight new forms of modem racism and discrimination within the school system and the larger community. The educational achievement gap for African American and Hispanic students, as manifested by their lower high school graduation rates is at alarmingly high rates relative to White students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2009). Additionally, African Americans and Hispanics continue to be less likely to enroll in college immediately after high school than both White and Asian Americans (Hayes, Cunningham, & Coursealt, 2006; Trusty, 2002). Spencer (2005) highlighted:The Supreme Court's Brown ruling, in striking down segregation, was supposed to create educational opportunities for African Americans that might then access given normal human developmental processes, effective competence, motivation (see deCharms, 1968, White, 1959), and achievement orientation. …

White Privilege, Black Burden: Lost Opportunities and Deceptive Narratives in School Desegregation in Claiborne County, Mississippi

: Claiborne County, Mississippi, experienced a now-familiar trajectory in its history of school desegregation: from segregation, through a brief and limited period of integration, to white flight and the resegregation of the public schools. This article examines the history of school desegregation in Claiborne County through the lens of oral history interviews recorded in the 1990s when whites and blacks in this majority-black community were engaging in their first tentative interracial conversations since the civil rights movement. Oral histories conducted in this context document the persistence of white privilege, not only in the way it had limited educational opportunities for African Americans in the past, but also in the way it obscures white culpability for that history in the present and undermines contemporary possibilities for meaningful integration. The interviews also suggest lost opportunities, as they offer a glimpse of what might have been possible had whites stayed in the public schools.

Desegregation and the Struggle for Equal Schooling: Rolling the Rock of Sisyphus

Economic integration and citizen equality have been core ideals of American public schooling since its founding. The egalitarian ideals of free schooling, however, have never matched public school reality. Closing the gap between the idealistic rhetoric and the discriminatory reality of public schooling has been the target of school reform for decades and a major goal of the Civil Rights movement. This chapter recounts the effort to achieve equal educational opportunity for African Americans through school desegregation. Beginning with 19th century cases and continuing through Brown v. Board of Education to Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District, this chapter provides an overview of the litigation and court decisions dealing with school segregation and desegregation, and creates a picture of advancement toward and retrenchment from the goals of equal educational opportunity. It compares school reformers to Sisyphus, struggling mightily to push schools toward the ideals of equal opportunity and equal access, only to see progress roll back, time and again.

"It Takes a Village to Raise a Child": The Role of Social Capital in Promoting Academic Success for African American Men at a Black College

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were created to provide educational opportunities for African Americans when other higher education venues restricted their participation. HBCUs are credited with nurturing and producing leaders who embraced W. E. B. Du Bois's concept of the "Talented Tenth," and exhibiting fortitude in advancing social equality for all. Over the years, as legalized segregation was overturned and efforts were made to expand opportunities for African Americans, some have questioned the continuing need for HBCUs. A study of 11 African American men attending a public, urban HBCU, indicated that the university's rich supply of social capital (a direct consequence of its mission and history) makes it a unique fixture in the landscape of higher education, one whose special features have not been replicated by historically White institutions.

The Consequences of School Desegregation in a Kansas Town 50 Years After Brown

This article examines the legacy of segregation and desegregation in the town of Parsons, Kansas. We argue that school desegregation, the goal of which was to increase access and equalize educational opportunities for African Americans, did not have that desired affect. Fifty years after the closing of the all-Black Douglass School, Parsons’ citizens had not openly acknowledged the effects this event had on the African American community. Three generations later, African American student achievement still lags behind that of White students. These unresolved issues have contributed to a number of losses in the Black community, including loss of Black teachers and loss of talented Black young people. We use theories of social capital and cultural capital as a framework to illustrate how White, middle class students had greater access to school resources, and to identify the social and cultural resources within the Black community that the school district could build upon, such as strong leadership and a sense of resolve and resiliency.

From Desegregation to Resegregation: Public Schools in Norfolk, Virginia 1954-2002

In 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Supreme Court declared separate public schools for African American and white students unconstitutional. This essay examines history and evolution of school desegregation in Norfolk, Virginia from 1954 to 2002. by whites in Virginia to school desegregation began almost immediately following 1954 decision. Meanwhile, African Americans, with assistance of NAACP, fought tirelessly and quietly to end school segregation. Real school desegregation was finally achieved in Norfolk through implementation of an intra-district busing program in 1972. Yet, Norfolk would return to segregation, or experience resegregation, after ending of busing policy at elementary school level in 1986 and at middle school level in 2001. The Brown decision did not solve problem of segregation in Norfolk public schools and failed to bring about equal educational opportunities for African Americans in city. Indeed, progress towards that goal was marred by conflict. Moreover, since 1954 context for school desegregation has changed, as have policies and positions of those in charge of Norfolk public schools. What has remained constant, according to Charles Bryant, former president of Norfolk branch of NAACP, is demand for quality education for African American students. (1) Though segregation diminished and educational opportunities for African Americans improved in 1970s, in 1980s little significant progress was made, and situation began to deteriorate. MASSIVE RESISTANCE TO BROWN: 1954-1959 The court ruling in 1954 calling for desegregation of public schools was not received well in Virginia, state, but also a state of mind--a very special state of mind. (2) Virginians were adamant supporters of states' rights and fought hard to maintain racially discriminatory practices, including separate and unequal public schools. In 1954 Governor Thomas B. Stanley declared he would use every legal means at my command to continue segregated schools in (3) However, it was not governor who had most political influence in state of Virginia, but Senator Harry F. Byrd and his powerful Democratic machine. Byrd's belief that Brown decision was illegal and the most serious blow that has been struck against rights of states reflected sentiment of majority of white Virginians. (4) Massive resistance was necessary, it was thought, since Supreme Court was not only wrong, but was also interfering with rights of people of Virginia. Massive resistance in Virginia began in 1954 and continued to end of decade. In September 1954 Governor Stanley appointed legislative commission to examine possible courses of action in response to Supreme Court's decision. The group, known as Gray Commission, was chaired by Senator Garland Gray, Byrd loyalist. The Gray Plan, released in November 1955, sought to preserve segregation, and yet to avoid conflict with Court. (5) The plan called for tuition grants from public funds to aid white students attending private schools to avoid integration, new pupil assignment plan to minimize race mixing, and an amendment to compulsory attendance law so that child would be required to attend an integrated school. Equal educational opportunities for African American students were not addressed. In state-wide referendum held in January 1956, plan was approved by near two to one margin. White leaders interpreted result as clear sign of public's support for maintenance of segregation. President Dwight D. Eisenhower remained noticeably silent about situation in Virginia, following advice of his press secretary James C. Hagerty who suggested that, no comment be made which would be interpreted as either approving or disapproving vote of people of Virginia. …

Brown Plus 50 Counter-Storytelling: A Critical Race Theory Analysis of the “Majoritarian Achievement Gap” Story

This essay provides a Critical Race Theory (CRT) analysis of current discussions of the “achievement gap” as the latest incarnation of the “white intellectual superiority/African American intellectual inferiority” notion that is a mainstay of “majoritarian storytelling” in U.S. culture. A critical race counter-story chronicles both the historical development and maintenance of the “achievement gap,” along with efforts of African Americans to secure access to education. The process by which the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision was subverted as a historical intervener in systemic access to equity in educational opportunity for African Americans is discussed. This essay concludes with principles to promote successful academic achievement of African American children.

Historically Black College and University Libraries in the 21st Century

Summary Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were established before the Civil War. Their original mission was to provide educational opportunities for African Americans who could not attend traditionally white institutions (TWIs). Today, HBCUs continue to provide a cultural and educational experience for African American students pursuing higher education. Yet what are the present state and future prospects for HBCUs? How have the constant changes within HBCUs affected libraries? Can non-HBCU libraries develop partnerships and collaborations with these very important libraries? This article will take a closer look at some of these questions and offer suggestions on how all librarians can strengthen connections with HBCU libraries.

Transformative Desegregation: Liberating Hearts and Minds

This article is the last in a trilogy discussing the importance of maintaining a distinct, yet integrated, identity for African-Americans in public higher education. The first two articles establish that the Supreme Court mandate of equal educational opportunity for African-Americans, created in Brown v. Board of Education, and reaffirmed in United States v. Fordice, can be achieved in higher education by maintaining historically black colleges and universities as distinct institutions, while continuing the press for integration of predominantly white colleges and universities. This article also focuses on the need to remain race-conscious in remediating the present effects of past discrimination. My hope is to move us away from explaining desegregation solely as the court-ordered process of integrating people physically. The concept of desegregation also has the potential to transform the way we think about race so that our society will be more receptive to creating the racially non-hierarchical pluralistic society that America must become.

Division on the Internet?

In their Policy Forum “Bridging the racial divide on the Internet” (17 Apr., p. 390), Donna L. Hoffman and Thomas P. Novak present data on computer access and use as well as purchase intentions among white and black Americans. They find that overall, blacks are less likely to own computers or to have used them recently for Internet access, and that they are more likely to want to buy one. Hoffman and Novak call for improvements of “educational opportunities for African Americans.” This suggestion is good, but unrelated to the data. As they are presented and analyzed, the data cast more shadow than light on this important topic.

Black America and School Choice: Charting a New Course

The dominant perspective among those who have examined behavioral, academic, psychological, and cultural consequences of Brown and its progeny. Brown reinforced centralization of education establishment and resulted in forced of certain schools and districts. Dr. Doris Wilkinson, Professor of Sociology at University of Kentucky, has compared education of black America during era of Jim Crow with post-Brown developments described above. She concludes: Public school and associated demolition of black school has had a devastating impact on African American children - their self-esteem, motivation to succeed, conceptions of heroes or role models, respect for adults, and academic performance. Racial animosities have also intensified. Unless rational alternatives are devised that take into account uniqueness of African American heritage, busing and compulsory school will become even more destructive to their health and ultimately to nation as a whole. The teachers, administrators, and school boards of both urban and suburban school districts are overwhelmingly white, and relatively few black children attend suburban schools, representing most of integration that exists in public schools. Minority children ride bus to attend schools with strangers - children belonging to another neighborhood, racial group, and social class. With only a handful of black students in each classroom, they experience prolonged isolation in predominantly white settings, where they are often exposed to denigrating racial imagery from teachers, tracking, low expectations, or race hatred. According to one writer, the basic assumption of those endorsing theory that a school district has overcome its history of racial discrimination is that a school district can be expected to treat minority students fairly without court supervision because there are no longer racial barriers. However, this illogical approach to equal educational opportunities has negatively impacted black students from both middle- and low-income families, former often as much as latter. Black America has devoted its energy and resources to fighting a losing battle. The Court's rejection of most viable school desegregation plans, coupled with reality that policies have produced hoped-for improvement of quality of educational opportunities for African Americans requires a reformulation of meaning of Brown rather than more fruitless school desegregation litigation. Accordingly, I would reinterpret constitutional imperative of Brown as requiring equal access to quality educational programs. Thus, a school district that did not purposefully assign students based on their race would fall within zone of defensibility, if not actual compliance, with mandate of Brown if it made concerted efforts to raise substantially quality of educational opportunities afforded to black children in their own neighborhoods. At very least, good faith efforts to convert litigation resources into education resources for those with most pressing needs would help to promote equal protection. The Detroit School Board's efforts to establish all-male academies were persuasive because officials assumed an affirmative obligation to work with parents and to involve community in bringing about desired changes to troubled system. Much of education literature supports Helaine Greenfeld's theory that what equal protection may require, in this situation, is providing African-American and white students with what they both need, respectively, to derive an equal benefit from their schooling.

Goal Discrepancy in African American Male Student-Athletes' Unrealistic Expectations for Careers in Professional Sports

The present study investigated whether African American male college student-athletes unrealistically focus their career goals on professional athletics to the detriment of their academic pursuits. The study considered the professional athleticaspirations of 702 AfricanAmerican male student-athletesfrom42 NCAA Division I universities using the concept of goal discrepancy to identify individuals whose professional athletic aspirations were inconsistent with their current status asfirst team members of theirfootball or basketball programs. The results found only 5% of the sample to be goal discrepant and that among goal discrepant student-athletes, the majority were underclassmen. Institutional characteristics, such as intensity of the athletic program and segregation of athletes from nonathletic students, were stronger predictors of goal discrepancy than personal characteristics, such as socioeconomic status or precollege academic preparation. The results are discussed in relation to social policy that influences access to educational opportunity for African Americans.

Race, class, and educational opportunity: Trends in the sociology of education

This essay examines some of the trends in educational, sociological, and social psychological research on inequality of educational opportunity for African Americans in the United States. A review of theoretical approaches and methodological developments is followed by an overview of research and theory in selected substantive areas; social allocation processes in schools (ability grouping, tracking, etc.), the relationship of poverty to academic achievement, and educational attainment. The article concludes with recommendations for future research.