The Black Table Is Still There Essay

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It has become exceedingly apparent that public schools have drastically failed in implementing complete integration of all ethnicities, and racial determinants in sociological circumstances continue to be significant. The outcasting of African-American children, especially at schools, is still a continual battle that has lasting effects on the innocent youth of yesterday and today, and few people know this all-too-familiar feeling better than Lawrence Otis Graham. Born in 1962, in an upper-middle-class neighborhood near New York City, Lawrence Otis Graham works as an attorney in Manhattan. Albeit a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, he is also an author who has penned several dozen books, and writes for the New York Times. In 1991, the magazine published an essay written by him titled “The “Black Table” Is Still There.” In this revealing essay, Graham revisits the junior …show more content…

Although the government, since the 1950’s, has strongly supported and encouraged racial integration within schools and communities, it seems that different races still tend to separate themselves somehow. A main source of school segregation is the continuance of racial separation in American communities, where most children must attend the public school that is zoned within a certain district, contingent upon their residency (“School Segregation in the United States”). Generally, lower-class neighborhoods are all zoned to attend school together with no integration of different races and cultures. However, advancements in legislation are now allowing parents to request school transfers in different districts that could possibly increase integration by attracting students from broader and more geographically diverse zones (“School Segregation in the United

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