The Importance Of Segregation In Education

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Segregation within our education is nothing new and is still prevalent today. Segregation was supposedly abolished but to end something like segregation, something that has been practiced in the educational system for as long as there have been different races, will take time. Legally, segregation has ended but the impact is still being felt today. But to understand the damage that has been done today, the history needs to be understood. Ever since African Americans have been in America they have been denied an education in manner or another. White masters did not teach their slaves to read or write, due to their fear of an uprising of educated slaves, in fact slave masters would be punished by law for teaching slaves to read or write, a South …show more content…

In Charlotte, North Carolina the first year of desegregation via busing was rough. There were parents pulling their children from school, boycotts of the school and the students were assaulting each other. But after a couple of years later things changed, Tina Gouge, a white student in Charlotte, said “We learned to adjust to each other and we get along a whole lot better” (NYT). Busing worked but it did take time to see the benefits, students of color and white students stopped fighting and got along and white students were able to experience other cultural practices. There are also more academic benefits to school integration, for each year that a black student attended an integrated school their chances of graduating increased by 2%, this is due to the fact that schools that were being court supervised to not be segregated put more money into individual students than other schools. Black students that attend court ordered desegregated schools also have a 15% increase in their wages; these effects of integration had no negative impact on white students. It is important to understand the difference between desegregation and integration “Integration is creative, and is therefore more profound and far-reaching than desegregation. Integration is the positive acceptance of desegregation and the welcomed participation of Negroes in the total range of human activities. Integration is genuine intergroup, interpersonal doing.” (Lewis, Diamond, Forman). Desegregation was placed on the students of Charlotte, North Carolina but after the first few, and somewhat rocky, years the students achieved integration. It is integration that can help students not just desegregation because desegregation is something, flat, less personal, while integration is an active attempt by individuals to come

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