Separate and Unequal

"Separate but equal. The Supreme Court understood in 1954 that it would never work. But our perpetual bad faith on matters of race keeps us trying"(Herbert).

 I picked this quote out while reading Separate and Unequal by Bob Herbert. Herbert mentions similar things to the The Problem We All Live With transcript, including the fact that enforcing integration in schools is the only way to help improve the education system for people in the lower class and people of color.

"In other words, on standardized reading tests in 1971, black 13-year-olds tested 39 points worse than white kids. That dropped to just 18 points by 1988 at the height of desegregation. The improvement in math scores was close to that, though not quite as good" (Ira Glass).

These are real numbers that show the effectiveness of integration, but it still isn't being used in schools. This relates back to the whiteness in SCWAAMP. If it were white students testing 39 points worse than black students, immediate actions would be taken to shorten to gap in scores. However, integration would be an inconvenience on white parents who have that deep embedded racism in them. Relating back to the article White Privelage: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack...

"I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me" (McIntosh). 

Because of the white privelage present in society, we aren't making strides to help those who need it the most.

"If you're surrounded by a bunch of kids who are all behind, you stay behind. But if you're in a classroom that has some kids behind and some kids advanced, the kids who are behind tend to catch up. These kids in these classes in schools of concentrated poverty don't have that" (Nikole Hannah-Jones).