Separation is keeping us Unequal

562: The Problem We All Live With
Separate and Unequal
Separate is Not Equal

Argument through the use of Quotes

On May 17, 1954 Brown V the Board of Education the U.S Supreme court created a law which dissolved any constitutional sanctions for segregation by race. This means that by law no school could refuse a student based on their race or ethnicity. Now, we know that just because a law is passed it does not mean that people are going change their change their opinion or mindset over night.... but i'd like to think that 64 years would be more than enough time to wrap our fragile brains around the idea of  social inclusion *rolls eyes*

562: The Problem We All Live With
"you gotta figure out, ok. How can I stand up for myself without proving to them(her peers and society) that Normandy is ghetto? That was going to be the hard part."
    I chose this quote out of the hour long interview between Ira Glass and Nikole Hannah-Jones because I believe it is the essence of the interview in it entirety. In this piece we talk about integration in today's school systems and how beneficial it has proven to be for students in low class/ low income demographic areas to matriculate into a richer school system. We are then introduced to two young woman who were given the opportunity to get out of their prominently black school and begin at a school whose occupants were more than 85% white.
   These girls talk about some of the pressure and ridicule they were subject to on a daily basis in order to be apart of a public school system. What I took away from this is something we have discussed in class before. These girls like many many others were forced to begin conforming to the dominant culture, in return they begin loosing a sense of their personal identity. This quote, given by Rianna Curtain said to me that Rianna couldn't even stick up for who she is and what she believes in because if she were to mimic the behaviors of her white peers then she would be viewed as barbaric and savage meaning that her peers had won.

Separate and Unequal 
"Schools are no longer legally segregated, but because of residential patterns , housing discrimination, economic disparities and long held custom, they most emphatically are in reality"

Word Bank:
racial integration
equal
education/educated
poverty

demographic
Black and Hispanic
poor
school
segregation

   For this article I used a skill we have been working on in class, as I read and took notes on the article I noted the words that were used the most to gain a sense of Bob Herbert's point of view on academic racial integration. He speaks about how poor Black and Hispanic school are characterized by their high concentrations of poverty. In return with lower standards these schools get lower educated teachers who do less to meet state academic standards, in return affecting consistency in scores, and this creates a lack of want for academic success. By segregating the rich from poor schools we are clumping similarly characterized individuals together based on demographic. This does nothing to improve standards, and only punishes the lower income group because of their lack of opportunity to improve based on their standards.


Points of Discussion:

• Studies have shown that the race of a person does not determine a person's academic successes. Rather it is dependent on well trained/ motivated teachers(that's us!), lowered class disruptions, academic engagement and the presence of an adult figure.  
• What do we do as future teachers to allow social, personal, and academic success for our students??