Twenty First Century Segregation In Schools

Twenty First Century Segregation in Schools The heroic Malcolm X once said, “America preaches integration and practices segregation”. The Jim Crow laws of the 1880’s had a detrimental effect on the education for colored students, since the whites were separated out of the colored schools they often received a higher quality education. In the year 1896, the Plessy vs. Ferguson court case overturned the law that separated colored and white people from one another, “separate but equal” was no longer legal in the United States. Although segregation was deemed unconstitutional one hundred and twenty one years ago it is still present in our society we take ten steps forward and seven steps back. Unfortunately there is still an imbalance in the …show more content…
School of choice advocates applaud the policy for integrating schools, they claim that school of choice can give students in highly segregated schools an opportunity to move to a more diverse atmosphere. In addition, supporters hope that freedom of choice will encourage families to do so. Above all, advocates promise a large proportion of underprivileged minority students to move to charter schools with the help of vouchers. Unfortunately, implementing a school of choice program does not do what the advocates hoped for. Granted, some schools stay truthful in their integration policies, but the majority are not. “At the national level, seventy percent of black charter school students attend intensely segregated minority charter schools (which enroll 90-100% of students from underrepresented minority backgrounds), or twice as many as the share of intensely segregated black students in traditional public schools. Some charter schools enrolled populations where 99% of the students were from underrepresented minority backgrounds.”(Mathis 2016). School of choice enables students to pick certain schools that have higher percentages of their race to ensure their students fit in better. This may be a good idea short term, but the long term effects of an integrated school system could be highly beneficial. People are more likely to associate and socialize with others who are of similar o if a …show more content…
The imbalance between colored and white students quality of education is far from balanced. On the other hand complete equality is not likely be experienced, but the we can make strides to close this lopsidedness. Dorothy Day once said “The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.” For the sake of the future of the United States education reformers need to review how the school of choice and charter schools affect students as a whole, rather than excluding minority groups. The U.S. census bureau “estimates for July 1, 2015, released today, say that just over half – 50.2% – of U.S. babies younger than 1 year old were racial or ethnic minorities” (Cohn 2016). Moreover minority groups make up a majority of the children education reformers need to take them into account as well and look out for their best