One of the growing persisting problems but growing
also is the segregation that we have in schooling today.
There are lots of different implications of school and
residential segregation and that has implications for social cohesion in the US.
This is a particularly important era to be discussing this given the nature of
discussions in the past 12 months of social conflict that we've experienced.
So, I thought this opportunity to talk about and to visit on issues of segregation,
both residential and schooling segregation would be a timely kind of thing to talk about.
So, I'm going to examine some of the origins, evolution,
practice of segregation in the US pretty much broadly
conceived in the lens of schooling, but also residentially.
So, will look at it not only in the literal sense of separation,
but I think also in the cultural and evolving understanding
of race and ethnicity in the American consciousness.
I'm particularly concerned at what people learn and shouldn't
learn and what people learn and have a difficult time getting rid of,
unlearning so to speak.
So, I want to discuss the subtle and not so subtle barriers to
that sense of an American dream placed in front of Americans of color and how
the same faith in inequality of opportunity and
sacrosanct devotion to law and the dream attempted to abolish those obstacles.
So, that's the conversation I want to have.
So, why do we care about segregation in education or residential segregation?
I think there are four maybe five points that can be made here.
Six. Segregation is a threat to
the long persisting aspirations regarding equality of educational opportunity.
A continuing concern, a continuing problem.
So, what we have with segregation is a persisting concern that we are going
to be challenged to secure and protect
the constitutional and human rights of all citizens.
That's one. A second is a persisting concern about whether or not we can achieve
the improved learning outcomes and academic achievement that this effort to
desegregate schooling entailed preferably to integrate schooling.
A continuing and persisting concerned to secure
the improve intergroup relations that supposedly come from increased cross-race contact,
and a persisting concern to secure improved long-term benefits and
social mobility and work opportunities and an income.
Finally, a serious concern that we are having a real problem
in securing the social justice and democracy that we privilege in this society.
School segregation at it's core is an effort to
restrict and deny access to high quality educational resources.
Arguably, that means access to
a rich curriculum to teachers and to appropriate facilities.
It has enjoyed both a legal basis in the form of de
jure and as a social basis in the form of de facto segregation.
Despite many years of effort the data suggests we're still far from accomplishing
that goal of getting rid of segregation or limiting it's effects.
Indeed we may be more segregated in more harmful ways today.