Ayumba 1

Emmanuel Ayumba

Bodelson

ENGL 1121-04

4/27/17

Argumentative Research Paper: Draft 3

Equalizing the Great Equalizer

In 1954, during the Brown v. Board of Education case, the Supreme Court ruled that

separate educational facilities were “inherently unequal”. Some believed segregation in the U.S.

public school system had ended. However, according to award winning New York Times

journalist Nikole Hannah Jones, out of about one hundred thousand schools in the United States,

the number of schools with a white population of less than 1%, “mushroomed from 2,762 in

1988 to 6,727 in 2011.” (72). Measures like this indicate that the level of segregation in the U.S.

public school system actually increased after the 1980s. The question then is: is increasing racial

segregation in public schools really a problem? Public education today is undisputedly better

than it was in the mid-19th century, yet sizeable gaps between races in achievement and

attainment later in life (the goal of the education system itself) still exist. Indubitably, the

segregated school system in the U.S. is leading to unequal treatment and negative effects on

socioeconomic minorities and something needs to be done to close the gap.

It may seem infeasible that the U.S. public school system is still segregated today, more

than 60 years after a Supreme Court ruling stating that separate educational facilities are

“inherently unequal,” but school segregation today is nothing like the pre-Brown v. Board years.

This landmark Supreme court case only strictly eliminated officially segregated educational

facilities. While schools segregated by law (mostly in the South) began changing their policies,
 Ayumba 2

nothing was done to change the de facto segregation taking place in other parts of the country.

According to Reed Karaim, a periodical writer for the American Scholar, “most Northern states

did not have laws requiring segregated schools, but the races remained largely segregated by

custom and housing patterns. The Economic Policy Institute's Rothstein says those housing

patterns were in large part created, and continue to be affected, by government policies that

encouraged segregation in housing” (726). For example, the GI Bill of Rights enacted for WWII

vets almost exclusively benefited white veterans, allowing them to buy more expensive homes

away from their black neighbors. Segregation in schools today is not set in law, but based on

where students live, as students are often required to attend within-district schools. In Minnesota,

a state with a 5% black population, there still exists schools such as Lucey Laney Elementary,

which boasts a minority population of 96% (89% black) and Edison Senior High, with a minority

population of 89% (Jones 77). When a majority white state such as Minnesota possesses schools

with such skewed minority racial distributions, it becomes self-evident just how segregated the

U.S. public school system really is.

One could argue that this level of segregation would not be a problem if these racially

segregated schools received the same level of funding as majority white schools, but this is not

the case. Blacks and other minority students routinely attend less well funded/resourced schools

than their white counterparts. According to Teicher Stacy, a Missouri School of Journalism

alumni and writer for the Christian Science Monitor, “Hispanic and black children make up the

majority of students in high-poverty schools - 46 percent and 34 percent, respectively...In 2008,

about 21 percent of teachers in high poverty schools had less than three years of experience,

compared with 15 percent in low-poverty schools” (8). Minority students are placed in

disadvantageous educational situation from the get-go, yet expected to meet national academic
 Ayumba 3

standards. With such a disproportionate distribution of inexperienced teachers to minority

ethnicity schools, these students receive a lower quality of learning and miss numerous

enrichment opportunities that more well qualified teachers can provide. Even the well qualified

teachers in poorer schools struggle to effectively educate children due to the unequal distribution

of school funding in the U.S. Alarming findings by Karaim show that, “ Wealthier districts can

spend three times as much per student as nearby poorer districts” (740). Such unequal funding

further reduces the educational opportunities that minority students can receive. Without enough

money, poorer schools cannot provide adequate resources for their students, such as computers

and field trips. In the days of my youth, I attended a largely minority elementary school close to

Chicago Illinois, where I remember going on very few field trips and very limited access to

computers. Just 3 years later, while attending Hamilton Elementary in Coon Rapids, MN, a

school with a black population under 20%, I remember attending a multitude of field trips and

having computer and a complete library within reach at all times. Going from a majority

minority school to a majority white school had suddenly and wrongly increased the level of

resources available to me, making it crystal clear that segregated schools are causing unequal

treatment of socioeconomic minorities.

The disparities between segregated schools and other schools do not end there. With less

resources comes uneven access to educational opportunities and advanced course material for

students in segregated schools. Data collected by the U.S. Department of Education show that

African American and Latino students have reduced access to advanced curriculum. Only 33%

of high schools with Black and Latino population of over 75% offer calculus, compared to 56%

of high schools with black and Latino populations under 25% (“A First Look”). This is

unsurprising, considering that children in these segregated schools more often have
 Ayumba 4

inexperienced teachers, most likely incapable of providing capable students the advanced

curriculum they deserve. Without access to higher level courses, students in segregated schools

are put in a disadvantageous position once again. With applications to magnet, private schools,

and most importantly college being determined by prior academic achievement, students in

segregated schools drop to the bottom of the list when trying to apply for college or receiving

scholarships. A child should not be forced to work harder than his/her peers to reap the same

reward, simply because the opportunities he/she needed earlier in life were denied. The

segregated U.S. public school system negatively affects minority students by coercing them to

work harder than their white peers, only to reach the same goal.

The consequences of sub-par treatment compared to their peers in non-segregated schools

can also put students in segregated schools on an unequal playing field. Seeing that one’s peers

in another school receive better teachers, class choices, equipment, etc. can create a feeling of

inferiority amongst students in segregated schools. During the Brown v. Board of Education

case, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren stated what he believed to be the most important

negative effect of segregation in schools, saying separating children, “"from others of similar age

and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status

in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone"

(qtd in Jones 74). Imagine how a child would feel, walking into a school with beaten up lockers,

only to sit down with an inexperienced teacher, then looking out the window across the street to

see another school, beautifully decorated and containing the latest computers. What would a

young black boy think when he realizes that the white kids across the street get to go on multiple

field trips, while he struggles to find a good book in a sorely lacking school library? Worse yet,

the feeling of inferiority created by a segregated public school system may even persist
 Ayumba 5

throughout a child’s life. How can a young Latina girl be expected to strive for excellence, or

become an engineer, when deep down she expects to be topped by the children in the

unsegregated school across town. A segregated school system only adds adversity to the lives of

minority ethnicity students.

While a student’s feelings are important, equally important would be a student’s level of

academic achievement, as this is the manifest function of the public education system, yet ethnic

minority students consistently perform worse than their white counterparts. Some would purport

that a segregated school system is not the cause of this evident racial gap in academic

achievement, that the racial makeup of a classroom does not affect how well students perform.

As Robert Clegg, President and General Counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity, puts it,

“Black children do not need a certain number of white children in a classroom in order to learn.”

(qtd in Karaim 742). Clearly there is no evidence that simply being next to a white student

increases the academic performance of black and Latino students, otherwise there would be no

opposition to desegregation efforts. The crux of this stance is that the academic gap between the

races cannot be solved by simply placing black students next to white students. There are

underlying causes of the achievement gap that do not have to do with classroom racial

composition, such as a student’s life at home and environment outside of school, including

friends and the community in which the student lives. The problem is that it is much harder to fix

a student’s life outside of school than their life in school. While it seems easy to dismiss

desegregation if proximity to white students does not increase the performance of minority

students, digging deeper reveals telling evidence. Although it may not be because they are closer

to white students, studies show that students in integrated schools fare better academically than

students in segregated ones. Clint Smith, an editor for The New Yorker, states that, “Researchers
 Ayumba 6

have consistently found that students in integrated schools—irrespective of ethnicity, race, or

social class—are more likely to make academic gains in mathematics, reading, and often science

than they are in segregated ones,... and the most disadvantaged students—most often poor

students of color—receive the most considerable academic benefits from attending diverse

schools” (Smith). If closing the achievement gap is part of the goal of the public school system,

then segregated schools are most definitely not helping that goal. Regardless of the reason, if

attending an integrated school increases a minority student’s performance, then all effort needs to

be made to make sure that minority ethnicity students attend racially diverse schools. As it is,

segregated schools negatively impact minority students by causing them to fall behind their peers

academically, only widening the achievement gap the public school system seeks to close.

Integrated schools can help.

The benefits of integrated schools don’t end at just helping to close the achievement gap

either. Attending integrated schools not only changes the academic lives of minority students, it

also shapes their futures for the better. Rucker Johnson, a professor at the University of

California and peer reviewed contributor to multiple research journals performed a study

spanning 66 years of data, from 1945 to 2011, with the aim of pinpointing the effects of

integrated schooling on African Americans. Johnson’s findings show that, “for blacks, school

desegregation significantly increased educational and occupational attainments, college quality,

and adult earnings; reduced the probability of incarceration; and improved adult health status.”

Integrated schooling has a positive effect on almost every area of a disadvantaged child’s life.

The benefits of integrated school programs are much too far reaching to overlook. Yes, it can be

extremely difficult to change a student’s parents. It can also be difficult to change the student’s

friend group or his/her social interactions outside of school. Community pressures and exposure
 Ayumba 7

to negative phenomena, such as being surrounded by excessive drug users and gang members

may be nigh impossible to quickly fix. However, regardless of all of these pressures and negative

events in the lives of minority ethnicity students, integrated schooling ensures that these kids

have a more equal chance of success, and that their future does not reflect the struggles of their

past.

While integration is obviously the solution, viable methods for desegregation can be hard

to find. One wonderful manifestation of successful school integration programs would be the

Charlotte Mecklenburg School District (CMS) in Charlotte, NC, described by Adam Rhew, a

reporter for Charlotte Magazine. Tasked with integration by a court order, the school board

brought in a special investigator to design a plan to desegregate schools in the district. The result

was the Finger Plan, a complex busing system that bused students to schools outside their

neighborhoods with the goal of creating more racially integrated schools. The plan was a major

success, leading to the integration of more than 150 schools in the district, until everything came

crashing down. A suburban father sued the school district in the 1990s because he believed his

daughter was denied access to a magnet school in the district because she was white. The case

went the father’s way , and the school district was forced to move students back to the school

closest to their home, which led to the rapid resegregation of the district, with more than half of

the schools that were integrated becoming resegregated (Rhew). Although it was torn down, the

idea was ingenious, and CMS can become a model for other districts in the nation to follow.

Simple yet effective, busing students in segregated schools to schools slightly further away from

their neighborhood ones can help solve the many inequalities between white and minority

students that stem from the segregated school system in the U.S. The only problem is convincing

parents to agree with such plans. While the urge to snatch every possible advantage for one’s
 Ayumba 8

children is understandable, such actions can permanently injure the lives of other disadvantaged

children, causing them to stay in a segregated school system that leads to unequal treatment in

school and lifelong negative effects outside of school.

These predominantly minority ethnicity children are increasingly separated from their

white peers, causing inequalities that can harm them for the rest of their lives. Forced to cope

with inexperienced teachers and a lack of resources, children in segregated schools are expected

to make it in a public school system that will not even offer them the advanced course material

necessary for them to achieve at a high level. It is time to stop demoralizing these children and

setting them up for failure for the rest of their lives. Integration is the only answer, and students

should not have an opportunity to better their education and their future denied them because

parents don’t want to bus their children a few extra miles. Reversing years of unequal treatment

of minority ethnicity students caused by segregated schooling will take cooperation from each

and every parent of each and every student, and the time to start is now.

Annotated Bibliography

“A First Look.” U.S. Department of Education, 7 Jun. 2016,

https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/2013-14-first-look.pdf

This source contains concrete statistics concerning the situation of all students, not just

minorities, in the United States. It is highly credible, as the research was conducted by

the U.S. Department of Education. It provides relevant statistics, such as the

involvement of multiple races in gifted learner programs, honors courses, and college

prep courses as well. Such information will help further reinforce the pitfalls of
 Ayumba 9

attending a segregated school. Utilizing statistics from this study, I will also be able to

place white students side by side with minority students attending segregated schools,

strengthening my argument through a pathos approach.

Johnson, Rucker C. “Can Schools Level the Intergenerational Playing Field? Lessons

from Equal Educational Opportunity Policies” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis,

2015, https://www.stlouisfed.org/~/media/Files/PDFs/Community

%20Development/EconMobilityPapers/Section3/EconMobility_3-2Johnson_508.pdf

This source contains valuable information about the importance of integration in the

lives of black students. Using specific measures of upward mobility, such as an

increase in income, author Rucker C. Johnson aimed to pinpoint the effect attending

integrated schools has on the future success of African American children. Johnson is

a professor at the University of California Berkeley, and his study has amasses data

from as early as 1945, pre-integration to 2015. The information contained in this

source will aid in proving a case for integration, part of the solution I will propose to

counteracting the negative effects of school segregation.

Jones, Nikole H. “Segregation Now.” The Atlantic, vol. 313, no. 4, May 2014, pp. 68-

81. Academic Search Premeir,

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.accarcproxy.mnpals.net/ehost/detail/detail?

vid=4&sid=f16ff296-1e86-4df9-8c70-

6b74866f2604%40sessionmgr4006&hid=4206&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ

%3d%3d#AN=95641437&db=aph

This article mainly addresses detailed information concerning the Tuscaloosa school

district (Alabama) and the effects of integration and resegregation. It includes more
 Ayumba 10

supporting evidence on the negative effects segregated schools have on minority

students. This source amplifies its own credibility by drawing information from

another unquestionably credible source, the study conducted by Rucker Johnson. The

true utility of this article, however, stems from the information it offers about hard to

measure effects of segregated schooling on children, such as perspectives on their own

self worth and self esteem.

Karaim, Reed. “Race and Education: Are U.S. Schools Becoming Resegregated?” CQ

Researcher, vol. 24, no. 31, 5 Sep. 2014, pp. 721-744. CQ Researcher,

http://library.cqpress.com.accarcproxy.mnpals.net/cqresearcher/document.php?

id=cqresrre2014090500&type=hitlist&num=0

This source provides extensive information about the history of integration. It explains

past court rulings and policies that have led to highly segregated school districts today,

all of these outlined in an easy to navigate timeline and described in the text. Opposing

viewpoints (against integration) are also addressed, giving me possible arguments to

refute. The credibility of this source is affirmed by its inclusion in the academic

journal, CQ Researcher. Facts contained in this paper will allow me to educate readers

on the history of my topic.

Rhew, Adam. “45 years after the Supreme Court forced its schools to integrate,

Charlotte continues to debate race, poverty, and education.” Scalawag, 20 Apr. 2016,

http://www.scalawagmagazine.org/articles/charlotte-school-integration

This article contains information concerning the condition of the Charlotte-

Mecklenburg School District before and after integration. Statistics illustrate the

effectiveness of integration, highlighting the closing of the achievement gap between

 Ayumba 11

blacks and whites. The article also contains information about court rulings that led to

resegregation in the Charlotte school district and the effects this resegregation had on

student achievement between races. This information will allow me to provide a case

study of the effects of segregation and integration of a public school district,

strengthening my argument for integration.

Stacy, Teicher K. “Economic Segregation Rising in U.S. Public Schools.” The

Christian Science Institute, 27 May, 2010, pp. 8. ProQuest,

http://search.proquest.com.accarcproxy.mnpals.net/

This source contains pertinent information about the rising economic segregation in

the public school system and its effects on students. The article focuses mainly on the

academic effects attending a high-poverty school has on latino/hispanic and black

students, including key statistics concerning graduation rates and levels of

achievement. Statistics provided in this article will help illustrate the negative effects

that attending a minority (segregated) school has on a student.

 Ayumba 12

Additional Works Cited

Smith, Clint. “The Desegregation and Resegregation of Charlotte’s Schools.” The New Yorker, 3

Oct. 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-desegregation-and-

resegregation-of-charlottes-schools