{"id":4167,"date":"2003-03-19T15:24:53","date_gmt":"2003-03-19T15:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4167"},"modified":"2003-03-19T15:24:53","modified_gmt":"2003-03-19T15:24:53","slug":"talking-about-desegregation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4167","title":{"rendered":"talking about desegregation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our high school students interviewed<\/p>\n<p>a white graduate of largely African American public schools in Prince<\/p>\n<p>George&#8217;s County (class of &#8217;98). It was interesting to compare her experience<\/p>\n<p>to that of the African Americans who first attended the County&#8217;s all-White<\/p>\n<p>schools in the 50&#8217;s. In short, she fared much, much better. She professed<\/p>\n<p>never to be uncomfortable because of race, although her friends were mostly<\/p>\n<p>among the other white students.<\/p>\n<p>We asked our students to frame possible answers to the question: &quot;What<\/p>\n<p>should have been done with the County&#8217;s segregrated schools in 1954?&quot;<\/p>\n<p>They come up with these options: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&quot;leave it alone&quot; (1 vote)<\/li>\n<li>improve the County&#8217;s two Black schools and let White students in (7\n<p>votes)<\/li>\n<li>build more Black schools (in different parts of the County); also\n<p>let Black students attend White schools (5)<\/li>\n<li>integrate the teaching staffs first (5)<\/li>\n<li>ignore schools and integrate housing patterns by pressuring realtors\n<p>(4)<\/li>\n<li>allow students to transfer on request, and advertise this opportunity\n<p>(6)<\/li>\n<li>send everyone to the nearest school (6)<\/li>\n<li>bus to achieve an equal racial distribution in all schools(4)\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(I list the students&#8217; votes not because they necessarily represent the<\/p>\n<p>views of any larger population, but only to give a sense of the class&#8217;s<\/p>\n<p>opinion.) <\/p>\n<p>There could have been two kinds of &quot;diversity&quot; in the schools<\/p>\n<p>of 1954 when the County was about 11 percent African American. Some schools<\/p>\n<p>could have been predominanly Black and others predominantly white (diversity<\/p>\n<p><i>among<\/i> schools); or all schools could have been 11 percent African<\/p>\n<p>American (diversity <i>within<\/i> schools). Our students, who are all<\/p>\n<p>kids of color, unanimously preferred the latter.<\/p>\n<p>We also asked them about these value priorities:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>choice in what school to attend (2)<\/li>\n<li>having a racial mixture in all schools (3)<\/li>\n<li>having a few excellent, minority-dominated schools (1)<\/li>\n<li>convenience (4)<\/li>\n<li>avoiding disruption and conflict (2)<\/li>\n<li>quality of education*<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>*&quot;quality of education&quot; won hands down on the first ballot,<\/p>\n<p>so everyone had to vote for another choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our high school students interviewed a white graduate of largely African American public schools in Prince George&#8217;s County (class of &#8217;98). It was interesting to compare her experience to that of the African Americans who first attended the County&#8217;s all-White schools in the 50&#8217;s. In short, she fared much, much better. She professed never to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-high-school-civics-class"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}