Segregation In Schools Research Paper

📌Category: Education, Race and Ethnicity, Racism, School, Social Issues, Sociology
📌Words: 1029
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 23 June 2021

Race relations rely heavily on social interactions between ingroups and outgroups, according to Gordan Allport's famous theory of intergroup contact or contact hypothesis. He found that the more contact groups have, the less prejudice they have towards one another. Therefore, a critical thinker can come to the logical inference that schools with more diverse racial populations will experience less racial prejudice, more interracial friendships, and cooperativity than schools without a diverse student body (Elder & Paul, 2009). However, even though state mandated segregation is illegal, many schools are still widely segregated due to economical differences which limit intergroup contact and worsens race relations.

According to a 2017 study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, black children in 8th grade were 5x as likely to attend a school highly segregated by ethnicity and race than white students. In this study, the data showed that only 12.9% of white 8th-grade students attended a school with a population of minorities, while 69.2% of black 8th-grade students attended schools with the majority being people of color (NAEP, 2015). In addition to black students attending highly segregated schools, the data shows that they are also much more likely to attend high-poverty schools (schools where 51-100% of students are eligible for free lunch or receive reduced-price lunches). In the aforementioned study, it was discovered that 60% of black students attend high-poverty schools while only 8.4% of white students do (NAEP, 2015). Minority students are not the only ones affected by school segregation. In the majority black schools, both white and black students had lower achievement levels as a result of underfunding, lack of adequate educational resources, putting students who attend them at a disadvantage. (NAEP, 2015). Even though white and black students are affected because black students are more disproportionately impacted and show the most extreme disparities. This is the cause of the achievement gap which is most visible in test scores disparities between black and white students.

Dr. Beverly Tatum, one of the country's leading experts on the psychology of racism attributes much of the negative race relations to the school system and racially segregated neighborhoods. Children are assigned to schools in their neighborhoods, so if a white student lives in a predominately white neighborhood, they will attend a predominately white school (Richardson, 2017). The same goes for black students. In her studies, she found that most parents desire multicultural schools but are not willing to live in a diverse neighborhood to achieve that. One way to overcome this obstacle is to create more effective laws that prevent redlining and housing discrimination based on race. Schools may be the only area of life where people of different races have the opportunity to interact with one another and if they remain segregated, students miss out on that opportunity. Dr. Beverly Tatum says, "when you enter into a space, a classroom or a workplace, where you are now in a racially mixed environment, and there's conversation about issues of race in particular, you may start to have a greater awareness. You start to learn what whiteness means, in some ways, because you start to see what racial-group membership means for other people (Anderson, 2017)." Positive experiences with other racial groups decrease prejudice based on the intergroup contact theory. 

Dr. Tatum also believes that it is the responsibility of school educators to foster an open dialogue about race and discuss racial incidences in the classroom. She says, "Practically speaking, school is the best opportunity for them to learn how to engage across lines of difference (Richardson, 2017)." Teachers need to speak about accomplishments by people of color and not only teach about famous white scientists and authors. It is equally important to speak about the past, greatness achieved by black people, and current social justice issues in the education system for race relations to improve. The more we diversify schools and participate in dialect about race, the more potential there is for race relations to improve. Ultimately, not speaking about and ignoring race in the classroom damages relations among interracial students.

When students feel like outsiders in school, they will seek relationships and people that are familiar and similar to themselves. That is why lunch tables are often divided by race. Dr. Beverly Tatum speaks about the immersion/emersion phase of Cross's Model when discussing race relations. This is a stage of identity development where black adolescents feel ostracized and have been victims of racism, so they begin to group together with other black students who understand each other. This should not be blatantly discouraged as it is a part of the identity-forming process, but this is a crucial time to also have opportunities that bring students of various races together through interracial discussions, classes, and activities in school. 

Teachers, school faculty, and peers tend to make incorrect inferences when black students purposely segregate themselves (such as, "they don't like us," "they don't want to be friends with white people," "they are content by themselves.") So, white peers will often not try to interact with the group of black students and the school will not intentionally try to help bonds from between these groups. Intellectual empathy and intellectual humility are forsaken as white peers do not try to understand how black students are thinking or feeling and believe their assumptions are true when they probably are not (Elder & Paul, 2009). White students should ask black students questions to clarify why they are not interacting with each other to conclude if their inferences are accurate or not. Schools and students should ask willing minorities questions using intellectual standards to understand how they feel and to develop plans and policies to foster a safer environment so students feel comfortable engaging in interracial friendships. Race relations can only be improved if everyone talks about the problems limiting them and considers other points of view.

The statistical data and expert opinions make it clear that school segregation is not much different than it was 15 years ago. While racial and ethnic diversity is drastically increasing in the US, schools remain largely separated by race and are not adjusting to the increased black student influx. Dr. Beverly Tatum says, "When I was born, in 1954, 90% of the people living in the United States were white. Today, the majority of children in public schools are children of color. By 2042, people of color are projected to become the majority in this country (Richardson, 2017)." While naïve thinkers may assume that all schools are fully integrated since the Brown v. Board of Education landmark case, fair-minded thinkers can use empirical evidence to infer that schools are still very much separated by race and poverty and unequal which prevents race relations between students from improving (Elder & Paul, 2009).

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