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Race and Ethic Issues WA 1 The Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education has, officially prohibited de jure segregation, or segregation by law, in the United States in 1954. Despite this, still nowadays, even if no laws require social separation, many social facilities, political acts or public policy remains in separate use by people of different race or ethnicity. After the great step made by legislative authorities in consequence of years of fighting against racism and discrimination, why de facto segregation continues to have place in American society? Although over the last 50 years a lot of black people have achieved real success in education, business, work, government, and other important fields, race remains one of the most unruly problems in the United States, substantially because personal prejudice and racial stereotyping concerning all races can not be changed by legislation or lawsuits. This sluggish prejudice creates tension between races and other social problems.
Although de jure segregation was abolished by the end of 60 s, de facto segregation continues to prevail in most Northern and Southern cities. What are the reasons of this resegregation? Black people prefer to live in all-black neighborhoods, often called ghettos. Why are they formed? One of the reasons is that real estate agents, banks, and city authorities establish certain housing patterns not favouring integration. Often real estate agents does not show blacks homes in white neighborhoods while banks often refuse to lend money to blacks moving into white neighborhoods.
City planners in most cases keep neighborhoods segregated through decisions on where to locate streets, roads, access ramps to highways, subway and railway stations. As far as schools are concerned, despite the formal segregation did not exist anymore, public officials often create school districts intended to keep blacks and whites separated. As students traditionally attend schools in the neighborhoods where they live, most schools have remained segregated, not because the law required it, but because of peoples place of living. In the South, for example, segregation was increased when whites withdrawn their children from public schools as soon as they knew about the Courts decision concerning integration. As a result, in Southern communities the public schools were legally integrated, but often only blacks attended them. Meanwhile, whites sent their children to private schools.
Whereas the discrimination in hiring continued to take place, black people earned less than whites, therefore could not afford to buy the houses in the areas where whites lived. Moreover, many blacks simply choose to live in near other blacks, just as whites choose to live with other whites. Blacks who did integrate neighborhoods often faced violence and intimidation. Finally, suburbanization also played its part in increased de facto segregation. Whites increasingly left the cities for suburban areas. In 1968 only two major American cities, Washington and Charleston, were predominantly black.
By 1990 the majority of inhabitants in about 15 cities, among which are Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, Newark, and Richmond was black. Rather than live near blacks, or have their children attend schools with blacks, many whites moved away from the cities. De jure integration has been a great achievement of American society. The idea of keeping the nation united has a prime importance.
It would be a total victory of anti racist movement if de jure integration ended up with de facto integration. But from the other side all people must have choice of where to live, whom to live in neighbourhood with and whom to study with. In fact, legally any person, black or white, do have the possibility of choice, and this is an enormous step towards racism elimination. Unfortunately, the problem is in peoples mentality and firmly fixed stereotypes, which are hard to change. Therefore, the only way to achieve a true public schools integration is to conduct a broad campaign aimed at changing peoples views concerning integration. For example, on January 18, 2008 the University of Louisville Law Review held a symposium on the voluntary school integration cases that were recently decided by the U.
S. Supreme Court. Law Reviews Symposium aimed to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to the continuing national debate on issues of race and inclusion and to contribute to the scholarship on school desegregation and race. The participants submitted articles exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the Supreme Courts decision, the future of voluntary school integration, and other ways for addressing the issue of voluntary school integration. Organizing such symposium and forums can help people to open themselves to voluntary integration. It is a rather realistic, but a very long-term way.
The government can provide a legal background, but as long as there exists the prejudice towards races, the nation will remain racially polarized. Making people have views different from those they inherited from their parents and grandparents is a particularly laborious process, but it is the most important thing to do for achieving the true integration, because only the voluntary integration can be considered a real success. Bibliography /reference list: Integration, (2007) retrieved on September 8, 2008 from The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6 th ed Web site: web Segregation in the United States, (2008) retrieved on September 8, 2008, from Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia Web site: web The Future of School Integration in America: The Supreme Court Decision in Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, (2008) retrieved on September 8, 2008, from University of Louisville Web site: web
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