Let's Talk Privilege
ACCESS TO EDUCATION
A brief history of THE FIGHT FOR EQUAL EDUCATION:
Jim Crow
1954
Post-Brown Ruling
1964
Late 1980's -Now
"In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.
The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites—known as “Jim Crow” laws—and established the “separate but equal” doctrine that would stand for the next six decades." (1)
The
Brown V. the Board
of Edu. decision was used throughout the civil rights movement to dismantle Jim Crow laws that segregated
other public
facilities.
The supreme court reversed the Plessy v. Ferguson case with Brown vs Board of Education. "In the decision... Warren wrote that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” as segregated schools are “inherently unequal.” As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being “deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.” (1)
There was considerable white backlash from the ruling and resistance to desegregation. A major example of this is when "Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students—known as the “Little Rock Nine”—were able to enter Central High School under armed guard." (1)
SOURCES
"Ninety-eight percent of Southern black children were still in totally segregated schools in 1964. The great progress in desegregation came from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, after the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and following a series of Supreme Court decisions tightening requirements, ending delay, and authorizing busing. Slow progress continued through much of the 1960s. By 1970, the enforcement of the 1964 civil rights act by the Johnson Administration and the courts had made the South the nation’s most integrated region for both blacks and whites" (2)
Resegregation trends begin.
"The percent of black students in majority white schools in the South fell from a peak of 43.5% down to 34.7% in 1996, a clear and consistent eight year decline (table 8), with integration falling below the level achieved 24 years earlier, in 1972." (2)
"The national trends have parallels with the Southern trends. American schools continue the pattern of increasing racial segregation for black and Latino students" (2)
A table from the Civil Rights Project: (3)
"...more than 40% of Black and Latino students attend intensely segregated schools, where at least 9 in 10 students are people of color. Most of these schools have a majority of low-income students, which a 2016 government report concluded harmed students’ educational opportunities." (4)
"The success for black students growing up in integrated schools was substantial as recounted in Prof. Rucker Johnson’s 2019 book, Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works, based on sophisticated long term studies of large numbers of African American students who were either segregated or desegregated. He found higher achievement, college success at more selective colleges, higher income, better jobs, less incarceration, and better long-term health for students in interracial schools. Another major study of huge datasets by researchers at Stanford, Harvard, and the Census Bureau reported especially strong effects for African American boys. These findings build on a half-century of research showing the benefits of desegregation." (3)
A comedic
summary that's an
easy-to-understand beginning resource on
re-segregation:
THE RESEGREGATION OF AMERICAN SCHOOLS/ EDUCATION SUMMIT
Nikole Hannah-Jones, Staff Writer, New York Times Magazine With Alex Wagner, The Atlantic
The SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE:
According to the ACLU:
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“Zero-tolerance” policies criminalize minor infractions of school rules, while cops in schools lead to students being criminalized for behavior that should be handled inside the school. Students of color are especially vulnerable to push-out trends and the discriminatory application of discipline.
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"Many under-resourced schools become pipeline gateways by placing increased reliance on police rather than teachers and administrators to maintain discipline. Growing numbers of districts employ school resource officers to patrol school hallways, often with little or no training in working with youth. As a result, children are far more likely to be subject to school-based arrests—the majority of which are for non-violent offenses, such as disruptive behavior—than they were a generation ago. The rise in school-based arrests, the quick¬est route from the classroom to the jailhouse, most directly exemplifies the criminalization of school children."
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For the 2015-16 year, ... black students comprised 15% of the student population, but 27% of the students restrained and 23% of the students secluded and 31% of the students referred to law enforcement. Black males made up 8% of the student enrollment but accounted for 25% of the male students who received one or more out of school suspension and 23% of the male students who were expelled.
POSSIBLE Talking points And Responses:
Before looking at these specific points,
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for the tips and techniques for how to talk to others about privilege.
"Police should be in schools to protect kids from school shootings and enforce rules."
Black and brown kids have been proven to be disproportionately adversely affected by having police in schools (see above). A school should be a safe environment where all children can feel comfortable so they can learn and grow. Using law enforcement to maintain order in a school, often for minor problems that could be safely handled in house, pushes children of color into the criminal justice system and creates an environment not conducive for learning.
police presence
in schools doesn't usually
stop or
deter a
school shooting.
According to ALERRT’s 2013 analysis of 160 incidents, lethal force from police or bystanders has brought an end to a little less than a third of active shooter rampages, but not usually in schools.
In the 25 shootings in the ALERRT study that targeted schools, none were brought to an end by armed staff, guards or police officers returning fire. These shootings most commonly ended when the shooters were restrained by unarmed staff.
active shooters do not favor “gun-free zones.” Louis Klarevas, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, analyzed 111 shooting attacks between 1966 and 2015 for his book Rampage Nation, and found that only 18 took place in areas where firearms were banned.
"It's not that I don't want to integrate schools but I don't want to have to send my child to an underfunded school with bad test scores"
This actually points out a major issue we face to build equal education: integration has become incredibly difficult because majority white affluent schools and majority minority schools are so vastly different when is comes to funding, teachers, facilities, and more. Since affluent parents want the best for their child, they think individually without understanding how they feed into the overall system that actually ends up harming hundreds of thousands of kids of color. Governmental leadership for desegregation policies and funds for schools is what we need to remedy this issue.
PODCASTS TO TRY FOR FURTHER UNDERSTANDING:
Check out The Problem We All Live With part 1 and 2 with Nikole Hannah-Jones
"Right now, all sorts of people are trying to rethink and reinvent education, to get poor minority kids performing as well as white kids. But there's one thing nobody tries anymore, despite lots of evidence that it works: desegregation."
Check out the Justice in America Podcast, specifically: Episode titled: School to Prison Pipelin‪e‬
"What is the school to prison pipeline, and how is it affecting children across America? ... They’ll discuss the forms that the school to prison pipeline takes, and the effects it has on poor, black, and brown kids in particular.