Historic Reversals, Accelerating Resegregation, and the Need for New Integration Strategies

Since the about the 1950's, many people in the United States fought hard to try and make the country accept people of other races, the blacks in particular. The Brown vs Board of Education case was one of the most famous cases that fought against the segregation that was going on in the United States. The south in particular was very segregated and made up a very large part of the Civil Rights Era. Since then, the United States slowly began to integrate schools and end segregation, trying to make everyone accepting of everyone despite their race or gender. They wanted to integrate after being segregated for a long time and being treated unfairly. Many accomplishments were made through the Civil Rights Movement, but Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee write about the decline in the effects and policies that the era of the Civil Rights Movement made.

Desegragation of schools was an effort that was fought hard for and it was accomplished slowly. The South, "which was still 98 percent segregated in 1964" became the "most desegregated part of the nation" (402). All these accomplishments of desegregating schools is decreasing and failing now because of a decision that was made by the Supreme Court in 2007. Orfield and Lee write that, "In 2007, the Supreme Court handed down its first major decision on school desegregation in 12 years in the Louisville and Seattle cases" (399). This decision has made all the efforts that many people made years ago, such as Martin Luther King who died while fighting for an equal opportunity for African Americans, come crumbling down and diminish. It takes away all the hard work activists did and it once again segregates people of different races and it also segregates them by class.

Schools that still had plans to be a desegregated school have to change the way they are doing things because of the decision of the federal court. This is placing children such as the blacks and Latinos at a disadvantage because it is often the case that the schools that they are being segregated from the whites from are not at the same level as the schools that have a white majority. The blacks and the Latinos already have an academic gap and the Latinos have a much higher rate of not being successful in attaining higher education. This places these two groups at even more of a disadvantage because they already have a hard time succeeding in school, and placing them in a school where the level of education is not at the same level as the schools where it is majority white makes it even harder to graduate and to want to go on and have a higher level of education. This does not help them succeed so that they can create a better future for themselves and help their group attain better statistics when it comes to education and the job they have as adults because of their education.

Latinos have become the largest minority group in the U.S. They are also "the least successful in higher education attainment" (400). This can cause a problem for the future generations and the country in the future as a whole because Orfield and Lee write that we will no longer have "a white majority in American public schools" after this decade (400). This can cause the economy and the education levels of the country to have a great impact especially if Latinos are being placed into segregated minority schools which are not providing them with an education that will better prepare them for their future. The rate that this is happening has increased since the 90's and many schools have become largely segregated. If the minority groups are are no longer going to be minority groups in the future, the level of education that the have access to should be equal to the level of education that the white majority have access to. This is because they are going to be the future of the country and these groups have to be educated for their future. They have to be able to provide the country, themselves, and their family with great things because of their education they attained in the U.S.

I believe it is wrong and upsetting that this is occurring again in this country. Kids are being placed in segregated minority schools, which are located most of the time in neighborhoods that are of low income and minority groups. They attend those schools and they don't recieve a very high or equal level of education like a white child would because of the teachers and the administration of those schools.It is also upsetting e cause the efforts that so many people made and fought hard for during a long period if time, are no longer recognized or cared about and thing are slowly returning to the way they were. This should be the opposite and people should realize that they have to work together with other groups to make a diverse environment that can work with each other. That brings me to ask, do you think that desegregation should be taken away and have segregation of minority groups come back? What do you feel about the federal court making such a big decision about something that many people suffered from and fought hard to overcome? Are we moving backwards rather than movin toward and improving our way of thinking towards others? I certainly do think we are moving backwards rather than moving foward.