Desegregation Research Articles

East Austin Oaks: The Limits of Participatory Planning in the Space Age

In the fall of 1968, just after the passage of the Fair Housing Act and before astronauts would first orbit the moon, President Johnson launched a housing design competition meant to apply space-age technology to solve the housing crisis. The competition was judged not only by the performance of ten model homes in which a racially integrated community of first-time homebuyers would live but also via a larger participatory design study to identify cultural obstacles to racial integration. East Austin Oaks did not solve the housing crisis, but it did produce a humble cul-de-sac where several original homeowners still live.

Stasis and Change in Public School District Racial/Ethnic Segregation, 1993–2015

Scholars have often suggested that racial integration is inherently unstable—a transition point in the racial transformation of neighborhoods and schools. While much empirical attention has been paid to documenting changes in segregation in public school districts, in this study we provide initial evidence focusing on the stability of segregation patterns. We calculate annual measures of district racial/ethnic segregation from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data from 1993 to 2015. Our findings suggest that despite relatively high and stable levels of segregation nationally, stability is the rule, rather than the exception, for the majority of public school districts. Using a taxonomy of severity and stability derived from previous scholarship, we find that most districts are “stably integrated,” with a minority “stably segregated” or exhibiting meaningful change. Our findings suggest that further attention to the characteristics and practices of “stably integrated” districts may be warranted.

Becoming Wards of the State: Race, Crime, and Childhood in the Struggle for Foster Care Integration, 1920s to 1960s

Using archival materials from the Domestic Relations Court of New York City, this article traces the conflict between private institutions and the state over responsibility for neglected African American children in the early twentieth century. After a long history of exclusion by private child welfare, the court assumed public responsibility for the protection of children of all races. Yet, in an arrangement of delegated governance, judges found themselves unable to place non-white children because of the enduring exclusionary policies of private agencies. When the situation became critical, the City sought to wrest control from private agencies by developing a supplemental public foster care system. This compromise over responsibility racialized the developing public foster care system of New York City, and it transformed frameworks of child protection as a social problem. The findings highlight the political salience surrounding issues of racial access in the delegated welfare state. Tracing how the conflict over access unfolded in New York City child protection provides an empirical case for understanding how the delegation of social welfare to private agencies can actually weaken racial integration efforts, generate distinct modes of social welfare inclusion, and racialize perceptions of social problems.

Vanessa Siddle Walker: Honoring Keepers of Knowledge by Using Their Stories to Improve Education

Dr. Vanessa Siddle Walker, a renowned historical researcher in the field of education, is a leading voice in the history of school desegregation in the United States. In this interview, she discusses positioning black educators as significant agents of change in the collective narrative of schools and highlights how their organized action and strategic advocacy has led to social justice and equity for black students. Her research informs how our schools have worked in the past, and how lessons from our past can serve to mobilize resources for the equitable education of all children today.

School as a “stage of life”: approaches to diversity among teachers in racially-integrated schools

ABSTRACT This study explored approaches to diversity among teachers in racially-integrated school environments in the unique South African climate of transformation. Twelve teachers from urban, public, racially-integrated high schools participated part in two focus group discussions which were thematically analysed. Teachers articulated their understanding of diversity as the interplay between difference and sameness, but were inclined to prioritise sameness. Most teachers valued the established ethos and identity of the school, but reiterated the value and importance of embracing diversity in an integrated environment. A high priority was placed on the role that a multicultural school environment play in preparing learners to become valuable members of a global and multicultural society. To bring the commitment towards racial integration to fruition and to truly utilise diversity as an asset, teachers should be supported and equipped with the competence to manage the nuances, complexities, and contradictions in approaching and valuing the notion of diversity.

It’s All in the Definition: Color‐Blind Interpretations of School Diversity

Color‐blind theory posits that ignoring race is a purposeful tool for protecting white privilege. Implicit in this theory is the idea that color blindness arises in times of racial threat because color‐blind attitudes provide individuals with a tool for justifying racialized practices. Schools provide an ideal context for testing these implicit assumptions of color‐blind theory. Public schools have shifted from using race conscious practices, such as forced busing, to racially ambiguous ones, such as touting diversity to address racial integration. Diversity is racially ambiguous because it can be interpreted as the inclusion of racial minorities but can also have a broader, color‐blind meaning. In this study, I use a survey experiment to test whether experiencing racial threat leads white participants to have a color‐blind interpretation of school diversity and whether racialized practices (in this case, picking a whiter school) mediates that relationship. I find evidence corroborating color‐blind theory. Experiencing racial threat increases the probability that participants have a color‐blind understanding of school diversity. Further, I find evidence that the mechanism explaining this relationship is participants picking whiter schools, highlighting that color blindness can be used as a tool to justify racialized practices.

American Social Liberalism and the Challenge of Ethnic Diversity: The Rise and Decline of Affirmative Action

In this article, it is argued that the progressive reform agenda of the mid-twentieth century liberal elite might have more effectively served the economic interests of non-white minorities had this generation of well-intentioned policy-makers been more attentive to the conservative criticism of the limits and pitfalls of their policies. As they turned preferential treatment into one of the mainstays of the national government’s anti-poverty strategies, and by supporting a new “welfare philosophy” that was essentially based on service provision, the social liberals in power during the sixties and seventies transformed government assistance into an even less popular approach to socioeconomic disparities. While they focused their vision of social progress on group advancement, they ended up further compromising their egalitarian agenda as their political choices and decisions gradually lost much of their early popular appeal. This liberal elite, it is argued, laid the foundation for a new egalitarian paradigm which presents racial integration through preferential treatment - or race-based affirmative action - as an ideal solution to the socioeconomic underperformance of disadvantaged non-white minorities, causing the former to definitively fall into disfavor.Keywords: Affirmative action, Laissez-faire, Public policy, US ethnic minorities, welfare

Oatmeal is better than no meal: the career pathways of African American male professional athletes from underserved communities in the United States

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to explore career pathways to athletic success in American professional athletes with low socioeconomic background. Ten African American professional male athletes, who met the criteria of playing at least one year in a professional league and spending their formative years in an American underserved community, participated in the study. Interviews inspired by the cultural praxis of athletes’ careers, lasted 68–137 minutes, and the transcripts were thematically analysed. Four career stages (childhood years, middle/high school years, college years, professional years) and three themes (context, challenges, coping) were visible in the career pathways of the participants. During the first stage, the athletes’ athletic foundation was developed by participating in inexpensive, easy to access sports in unstructured sporting environments, while simultaneously relying upon the strength of a mother to keep them safe. An increased susceptibility to the dangers of environmental factors (e.g., drugs, gangs) during the middle/high school years made this period of time the most precarious for the athletes, but was also the most crucial for their athletic development. The college years were a time of “catching up,” whereby the athletes entered a whole new environment for which they were physically (e.g., underweight) and psycho-socially (e.g., racial integration) unprepared, but their hard work and the help of peers and coaches propelled them to success (i.e., professional contract). Finally, the results indicate that coping resources the athletes developed dealing with hardship were perceived as key factors enabling them to endure the difficulties of a professional career.

THE AMERICAN DREAM, MELTING POT AND REGIONAL KNOWLEDGE STOCK AS DRIVERS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY

We explore whether the generally construed positive effects of intergenerational upward mobility and racial desegregation, under increasing local knowledge stocks, are positively associated with regional entrepreneurial activity. We find the opposite association in a sample of 2,717 US counties. Our results imply that, when county-level knowledge stocks are high, the American Dream (of greater intergenerational upward mobility) and the American Melting Pot (of lower racial segregation) appear, at a minimum, to be not associated with greater entrepreneurial activity. The results are robust to a variety of alternate specifications. For example, when Metropolitan Statistical Area data are used in lieu of county-level data, the results are broadly consistent with those in the main results.

Loving Gorillas: Segregation Literature, Animality, and Black Liberation

AbstractDeeply rooted racial logics of Western culture have long used animal metaphors and affiliations as a method for negatively coding the species permeability between black people and nonhuman animals. Responsively, many black cultural producers have sought to acquire access to the category of the human by crafting narratives that shuttle black being away from the animal. Rejecting both negative affiliations and shifting away from the animal, this article explores the movement toward the animal in black segregation-era literature. I argue that animals and animal care in Richard Wright’s Black Boy and primate liberation in Gwendolyn Brooks’s Maud Martha provide new modes of imagining black humanism on the cusp of US racial desegregation.

Just Trying to Have School: The Struggle for Desegregation in Mississippi by Natalie G. Adams, James H. Adams

Just Trying to Have School: The Struggle for Desegregation in Mississippi by Natalie G. Adams, James H. Adams

The Diocese of Savannah and Desegregation, 1935–73

The Diocese of Savannah and Desegregation, 1935–73

Racial Integration or Segregation? An Ethnographic Study Exploring College Students’ Interracial Interactions in Recreational Sport

Racial Integration or Segregation? An Ethnographic Study Exploring College Students’ Interracial Interactions in Recreational Sport

Churches of Christ in Oklahoma: A History by W. David Baird

Reviewed by: Churches of Christ in Oklahoma: A History by W. David Baird Joseph Locke Churches of Christ in Oklahoma: A History. By W. David Baird. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020. Pp. 288. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) In Churches of Christ in Oklahoma: A History, W. David Baird offers a comprehensive historical outline of the titular denomination in the Sooner State, where nearly one-fifth of American Church of Christ members reside today. Although a throwback to an older genre of church history, Baird's account swiftly and efficiently chronicles the denomination's institutional history in Oklahoma. Baird begins with a helpful introduction to the Churches of Christ, an anti-sectarian form of Protestant Christianity that, modeling itself after the "primitive" Christian church of the New Testament, upholds absolute congregational autonomy. Baird's Oklahoma narrative begins with late nineteenth century mission work in Indian Territory. Held back by meager funding and the church's self-imposed organizational limits, the so-called "Indian Mission" proceeded haltingly. Nevertheless, missionaries such as R. W. Officer and Meta Chestnutt established the congregations, churches, and schools in present-day Oklahoma. Baird recounts the establishment of a firmer denominational footprint following statehood. Rejecting as unbiblical such innovations as missionary societies, Sunday schools, and organ playing, the Churches of Christ formally broke from the Disciples of Christ by 1906 and, rooted especially among poor, White, southern migrants, formed congregations across the state. The denomination's eccentric theology led early members down controversial paths, from pacifism in the wake of World War I to socialist politics amid entrenched poverty. But as the denomination achieved institutional maturity by the middle of the twentieth century and was swayed especially by the reactionary preacher Foy Wallace, the Oklahoma Churches of Christ conformed itself increasingly to broader currents of American evangelicalism. Purged of radical social criticism, the state denomination redoubled its commitment to a hardline theology, opposed civil rights, worked against gender equality, and sought to inject itself into public schools and universities before suffering decline as a denomination at the turn of the twenty-first century. Readers may be struck by the perennial omnipresence of transplanted Texans among the Oklahoma Churches of Christ. According to Baird's many biographical summaries, multitudes of notable Oklahoma church leaders came from Texas. Baird largely defers to geographical proximity as an explanation—he cites the prevalence of the Churches of Christ in southern Oklahoma along the Texas border—but leaves largely unexplored the inevitable impact that ideas and practices developed in Texas and the broader American South would have on the life of the church in Oklahoma. [End Page 220] Baird's history is, in many ways, an old-fashioned denominational chronicle that charts the rise and fall of congregations, constructs biographical summaries of leading church figures, and records the establishment and organization of various denominational schools and colleges. Rarely invoking larger demographic trends, cultural currents, or political developments, Baird—a self-professed native Oklahoman and fifth-generation Church of Christ member—typically assigns historical primacy to the denomination's theological commitments. At times, Baird's denomination can seem to operate outside of history itself. While a theology-grounded history certainly clarifies battles over the use of musical instruments during church services, for instance, it fails to offer a compelling historical explanation for the denomination's opposition to racial integration or gender equality, and Baird subsequently fails to explain the denomination's many worldly commitments and entanglements. Despite such shortcomings, Churches of Christ in Oklahoma is a helpful introduction to the denomination's historical development in Oklahoma and a worthy resource for those seeking a one-volume outline of the state denomination's formation, evolution, and future prospects. Joseph Locke University of Houston-Victoria Copyright © 2020 The Texas State Historical Association

Detroit's Birwood Wall: Hatred and Healing in the West Eight Mile Community by Gerald Van Dusen

188 The Michigan Historical Review Stryker briefly profiles thirty musicians and several cooperative groups from the 1940s to the present. A pattern emerges in the presentation of information where personal stories about the musicians and their music, often based on interviews and conversations the author had with each of them, give way to some biographical information, and conclude with his reflections on important recordings or performances. His writing is captivating and weaves easily between anecdotes, quotes from the artists, and personal stories. Flowing with adjectives, his descriptions of the musical style of each musician bring life to the music in a fresh and unique manner. The chapters on saxophonist Joe Henderson and drummer Elvin Jones are highlights for this reader, as I found myself being drawn to the unique approaches of these two giants of the music through Stryker’s beautifully crafted use of language. Each chapter tells a story and connects the artist to the city in a meaningful way. A recurring theme of mentorship and civic pride runs its course throughout the book. Many of the musicians received formal training in schools, including Cass Tech High School and Wayne State University, but the perpetuation of the music was, and continues to be, the result of musicians encouraging one another, sharing ideas, and modeling the passion and vitality of Detroit jazz for each succeeding generation. Whether the reader is a devoted or novice fan of jazz, Mark Stryker knows Detroit—its music, musicians, and people—and with Jazz from Detroit, he introduces a wider audience to one of the city’s greatest treasures. Bill Sears Interlochen Center for the Arts Gerald Van Dusen. Detroit’s Birwood Wall: Hatred and Healing in the West Eight Mile Community. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2019. Pp.192. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Paper: $21.99. When a book evokes memories as Gerald Van Dusen’s Detroit’s Birwood Wall does for me, they are mixed. In one sense, I am transported back to 1950 when we were the second black family to move on the other side of the wall built in the early forties as a barrier separating the races. We were glad to have our own home and looked forward to a better life. On the other hand, there was the racism, the slights and insults that visited us daily, and then came the “For Sale” signs that popped up overnight like mushrooms, signaling white flight. Book Reviews 189 At the beginning of his book, Van Dusen recalls walking the long, six-foot high narrow wall and once tumbling from it. We walked it too, but the other wall we had to negotiate was less tangible, more metaphorical. Besides Van Dusen’s good job of explaining the history and purposes of the wall, he places it within a city’s evolution and history of often insurmountable barriers. “When the Birwood Wall was constructed in 1941, Detroit’s housing crisis had already reached the city’s outskirts,” Van Dusen writes. The wall, he continues, “. . . made clear that the FHA (Federal Housing Authority) was not interested in making any significant breakthroughs with respect to racial integration.” (48) Even so, black families migrated to the area from other parts of the city where restrictive covenants were still in place. Van Dusen tackles this problem by following the ambitions of several families, none more illustrative than Alfonso Wells, who arrived in the neighborhood prior to World War II and became a formidable community activist. A nearby playground is named in his honor and his image is depicted on the wall, now colorfully decorated with civil rights icons and historic moments. The wall stretches about a half mile from Eight Mile Road, or three blocks south into the community, but in Van Dusen’s capable hands it extends well beyond, even ramifying to Ferndale and Royal Oak on the other side of the road. His recollection of the Duke Theater that stood at the intersection of Eight Mile Road and Wyoming brought back memories of a number of joyful Saturday afternoons. For Van Dusen the wall is not a barrier that confines his research or his determination to sketch a larger picture of Detroit’s housing patterns...

School Choice, Neighborhood Change, and Racial Imbalance Between Public Elementary Schools and Surrounding Neighborhoods

The expansion of school choice in recent years has potentially generated demographic imbalances between traditional public schools and their residential attendance zones. Demographic imbalances emerge from selective opting out, when families of certain racial and/or ethnic backgrounds disproportionately choose not to enroll in their neighborhood-based public schools. In this article, we use a unique data set of school attendance zones in 21 large U.S. school districts to show how changes in neighborhood conditions and school choice options influence race-specific enrollments in locally zoned public elementary schools from 2000 to 2010. We find that the presence of more school-choice options generates racial imbalances between public elementary schools and their surrounding neighborhoods, but this association differs by type of choice-based alternative. Private schools, on average, reduce the presence of non-Hispanic white students in locally zoned schools, whereas charter schools may reduce the presence of nonwhite students in locally zoned schools. Increases in neighborhood-school racial imbalances from 2000 to 2010 were concentrated in neighborhoods undergoing increases in socioeconomic status, suggesting that parents' residential and school decisions are dynamic and sensitive to changing neighborhood conditions. Selective opting out has implications for racial integration in schools and the distribution of familial resources across educational contexts.

Racial Selection in Deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan

ABSTRACT The US Armed Forces officially desegregated in 1948. Over the following 70 years, the military has made great strides in promoting racial integration. We find evidence, however, that Black soldiers’ experience of military service still differs significantly from that of other racial and ethnic groups. Exploiting a database of administrative records for 100,000 Army personnel serving during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, we find that Blacks were less likely than other service members to have deployed, or to face intense combat if deployed, during the early phases of the campaigns.

Lockheed Georgia and the Struggle for Racial Integration in the Workplace

Lockheed Georgia and the Struggle for Racial Integration in the Workplace

Diversity to Deradicalize

For four decades, diversity has functioned as the dominant rationale for affirmative action. During this time, scholars have debated whether diversity should have this hegemonic hold on the policy. Central to the debate is Justice Lewis Powell’s opinion in Bakke, an opinion that no other justice joined. What motivated him to turn to the diversity rationale to begin with, and what conception of diversity did he have in mind? The conventional answer is that Justice Powell articulated the “robust exchange of ideas” formulation of diversity as a compromise that would keep affirmative action alive on a Supreme Court increasingly divided over civil rights. Powell deployed diversity as a lifeline and in the process ostensibly signaled his own commitment to a more racially inclusive society. This Article challenges that conventional story by offering a new interpretation of the Bakke decision. Drawing on a variety of archival materials, the Article contends that Powell’s opinion was motivated, at least in part, by a desire to deradicalize college campuses. Beginning in the mid-1960s, in the midst of the Cold War, and against the backdrop of a spate of intense campus protests erupting throughout the nation, Powell became consumed by a suspicion that white and black leftist radicals had banded together to plot a communist revolution that would overthrow representative democracy and the capitalist system. Importantly, he believed that radicals aimed to establish college campuses as “their principal base of revolution.” From his perspective, institutions of higher learning were increasingly becoming sites of political corruption, radicalizing impressionable college students “from our finest homes.” More precisely, Powell worried that if the future leaders of America — specifically, white male college students — internalized the leftist political line circulating on college campuses that the United States was irredeemably racist, repressive, and imperialistic, communists would more easily be able to “undermine or destroy our democracy and replace it with the tyranny of a Castro or a Mao Tse- tung.” Increased exposure to “a robust exchange of ideas,” Powell believed, would weaken the influence radicals had on forming students’ worldviews. Yet, to demonstrate that Powell was influenced by his concerns about left-oriented radicalism does not necessarily disrupt the widespread belief that his Bakke opinion was primarily motivated by a desire to promote racial equality. Thus, in addition to highlighting Powell’s views on campus radicalism, the Article contests what I call The Tale of Two Powells. Underwriting this tale are the figures of the pre-Court Lewis Powell, who was effectively a racial segregationist, and the Supreme Court Justice Powell, who is often heralded as an integrationist. The Article challenges this dichotomy, revealing profound continuities between Powell’s normative commitments before and after his appointment to the Court as well as the strategies he employed to advance those commitments. Powell’s sole-authored opinion was hugely influential not only vis-a-vis affirmative action in American universities, but it also helped to remake the goal of racial integration more generally. The diversity rationale has become the primary justification for efforts to create more inclusive organizations — from classrooms to corporations. As it turns out, the turn to diversity likely stemmed more from a deradicalizing than a racial justice imperative.

The Race to Forget? Bi-racial Descendants of the First Rhineland Occupation in 1950s West German Debates about the Children of African American GIs*

Abstract After the First World War, the German children of colonial French soldiers stationed in the Rhineland became a focal point of nationalist anxieties over ‘racial pollution’. In 1937, the Nazis subjected hundreds of biracial Rhenish children to compulsory sterilization. After 1945, colonial French soldiers and African American GIs participating in the occupation of West Germany left behind thousands of out-of-wedlock children. In striking contrast to the open vilification of the first (1920s) generation of biracial occupation children, post-1945 commentators emphasized the need for the racial integration of the children of black GIs. Government agencies implemented new programmes protecting the post-1945 cohort against racial discrimination, yet refused restitution to biracial Rhenish Germans sterilized by the Nazis. The contrasts between the experiences of the two generations of German descendants of occupation soldiers of colour underline the complicated ways in which postwar ruptures in racial discourse coexisted with certain long-term continuities in antiblack racism, complicating historians’ claims of ‘Americanization’ of post-1945 German racial attitudes.