My mother predicted this many years ago…
and you know… she was right. She said in the 1970’s after the court ordered
the integration of the school system in
our county and small town in Tennessee, that within 40-50 years we would be
back to the same old system…again. My mother when on to say, that it may not
reappear the same way as it had before, but in the end, we will see the same
results. And my mother was right… right
on the merits, right on the design and right on the issues… and right on with
the timeframe.
Just Sixty years ago, on May 17, 1954,
the U.S. Supreme Court issued the most important decision of the 20th
Century. It was the Brown v. Board of
Education unanimous decision that set things into motion, upholding equal
opportunity and outlawing segregation policies in education. This struck down the creation of the “separate but equal” doctrine and mindset
that so dominated the discussion and debate about public education. This was also a big part of the “Jim Crow” legislation that also
included segregation in all aspects of life, employment, transportation,
housing, drinking fountains and playgrounds.
This also impacted the same mindset in higher education in the
development of 20 Black Land Grant Colleges and Universities (1890), especially
in the south.
Of course that court decision set off a
lot of people throughout America who did not like it at all. Soon, they began creating and expanding
private schools and systems alike. In
some communities, people began peeling away at the layers of reforms, shifting
policies, creating new educational standards, new schools models, and reducing
funding for existing schools. To go along
with this, many chose to move away from urban America to the suburbs and in the
process created new communities with new schools, local funding and most of
all…maintaining control. With
these actions and more, the court order policy of integrated schools would have
far less of an impact in these new communities due to the fact that there would
be fewer people of color living in those suburban communities.
Well… just like my mother predicted…
those good old days of “Jim Crow” and
mindsets are back again… and the outcomes are not pretty… African-American
children have the worst well-being of any state, achievement gap is growing,
most segregated among major metropolitan areas in the U.S., high incarcerates
rates for Black Men, and the largest private school voucher program of any U.S.
city. The real shocker to this whole
thing is that this is not happening in the “Grand
old South,” and the vestiges of the confederacy… but this “new” stuff is happening in Wisconsin.
