Desegregation, Busing, and Schools

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The issue of desegregation has been a very controversial issue since it was first legally introduced by the Supreme Court in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS. Favoring or not favoring desegregation has not been the issue; almost everyone says they are for it on the surface. The controversy arises when it comes to how to implement desegregation. Immediately following the Brown decision, which advocated school assignment regardless of race, many school districts adopted a geographic school assignment policy. This plan, especially in the 1950's, did very little to do away with segregated schools even though it was a race-neutral policy for integration. From that rocky beginning to desegregation, to the current battles over how best to implement desegregation through mandatory (or voluntary) busing of minorities and whites, this issue has been in the forefront of discussions about race and education. This paper will attempt to give a brief history of desegregation in the United States, followed by a discussion of the current events which surround this issue (with balance given to the viewpoints of both sides), and then offer advice on solutions which most benefit everyone involved. Brown v. Board of the Education in 1954 was a landmark decision in the education arena. The decision maintained that schools that separated students by the color of their skin could no longer be maintained. The court saw this as necessary, since in their mind schools for black students would always be inferior. This inferiority would not be caused by lack of resources, although that usually was a contributing factor to the poor quality of the school, physically and performance-wise. As the Supreme Court saw it, s... ... middle of paper ... ...yllis A. and Dalmas A. Taylor, eds. Eliminating Racism. New York: Plenum Press, 1988. Bankston III, Carl and Stephen J. Caldas. "Majority African American schools and social injustice: the influence of de facto segregation on academic achievement." Social Forces, Dec. 1996, v75 n2 pp535-556. Bobo, Lawrence. "Whites' Opposition to Busing: Symbolic Racism or Realistic Group Conflict?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1983, v45 n6 pp. 1196-1210. Hacker, Andrew. Two Nations. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992. Katz, Phyllis A. and Dalmas A. Taylor, eds. Eliminating Racism. New York: Plenum Press, 1988. Massey, Douglas A. and Nancy A. Denton. American Apartheid. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Rivkin, Steven G. "Residential Segregation and School Integration." Sociology of Education, Oct. 1994, v67 pp. 279-292.

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