We 're Still Divided By Race By Carly Morris

In his essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid,” Jonathan Kozol brings our attention to the apparent growing trend of racial segregation within America’s urban and inner-city schools (309-310). Kozol provides several supporting factors to his claim stemming from his research and observations of different school environments, its teachers and students, and personal conversations with those teachers and students.

In his book, Race, Racism, and American Law, Derrick Bell maintains that the American government is only willing to lessen the injustices imposed on African-Americans if it will positively impact the white community--either economically or politically. The chapter, “Neither Separate Schools Nor Mixed Schools: The Chronicle of the Sacrificed Black Schoolchildren,” in Derrick Bell’s book, And We Are Not Saved, demonstrates this point through the fictional disappearance of black schoolchildren while on their way to their school. At first, there was public outrage over such an unexplainable incident occurring, especially in the midst of all the political and cultural progress made by the recent decision to integrate public schools. Then, it is revealed that the main incentives for the school board’s sympathy and distress were because, “state funding of the schools was based on average daily attendance figures, [therefore] the school system faced a serious deficit during the current year,” (And We Are Not Saved, 105).

The diversity between Americans has always been evident, and not just by the skin tone or religion, but also by their backgrounds, as well as how their lives are like today. Especially in African Americans and those who wanted to change the ways of religion, and the prejudice against them continues to stick, even today.

Racial formation is a vast sum of signifying actions and social structures that clash in the creation of complex relationships and identities that is a labeled race. Throughout the history of the United States, a large array of strategies was engaged in regarding education that took advantage of nonwhites. Since policies by those who supposedly “protect our rights” attempted to eradicate social, economic and cultural aspirations, dominated groups were more often than not suspicious of the school 's interests. According to John Ogby, “children from dominated cultures often failed school because they considered the school to be representative of the dominant white culture” (Spring, 101). This portrays racial formation having an effect on equality. “Acting white” meant to attempt to do well in school because

We have all sat through multiple history classes and learned about slavery, segregation, and the Civil War. We have all seen brutal movies and presentations based on racial injustices and the lack of equality. So often, we forget that these issues are still so present in our community. Slavery is illegal in the United States but other forms of racial profiling, insensitivity, and racism continue to be a recurring social barrier. Racism is still very much alive. The United States is “equal” yet somehow segregated. There isn’t quite a quick fix to this problem. Clearly, this has been an ongoing issue and requires major progression in our personal global

In the essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal” by Jonathan Kozol, the situation of racial segregation is refurbished with the author’s beliefs that minorities (i.e. African Americans or Hispanics) are being placed in poor conditions while the Caucasian majority is obtaining mi32 the funding. Given this, the author speaks out on a personal viewpoint, coupled with self-gathered statistics, to present a heartfelt argument that statistics give credibility to. Jonathan Kozol is asking for a change in this harmful isolation of students, which would incorporate more funding towards these underdeveloped schools. This calling is directed towards his audience of individuals who are interested in the topic of public education (seeing that this

During the Civil Rights Era, many black power movements strived to prevent the New Jim Crow from happening. The black man was being oppressed during segregation and treated like animals. The white supremacy, only visualize African Americans as slaves, people who should not be a part of the United States. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X drove men and women to fight for his or her rights. However, that was not enough to stop the white supremacy from oppressing African Americans. The Civil Rights movement did put an end to public segregation. It did not put not put an end to the laws being made by the government, which is dominated by the white race. In the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander discussed how the Civil Rights and black power movements helped African Americans gain their equal rights, but did not help to gain political power. Mass Incarceration is where the African Americans’ lives end because of the social structure created by the government. Blacks are mostly in the lower class because after the Great Depression, Roosevelt only created laws for whites. This allowed the white community to build and move out the cities into better neighborhoods. Leaving the black community behind. The government placed businesses and built big buildings to keep all the blacks in one place. Base on how the black community was viewed as a race and social status, gives this race a higher chance of being behind bars.

Jonathon Kozol’s, “ The Shame of the Nation”, mainly covers the the discoveries of Jonathon Kozol of the discrimination and segregation that is still implemented today throughout schools in the United States, since the Supreme Court had tried to eradicate ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. Kozol travels a wide plethora of schools, where he records his findings, many troubling and of the apparent discrimination still experienced by minority school children in places like the Bronx. Essentially, this book was an eye opener to the average american. One would have never thought that the experiences Kozol was told by some of the children had talked about would ever have happened in an average public school.

As David Blight says in his novel, Race and Reunion, after the Civil War and emancipation, Americans were faced with the overwhelming task of trying to understand the relationship between “two profound ideas—healing and justice.” While he admits that both had to occur on some level, healing from the war was not the same “proposition” for many whites, especially veterans, as doing justice for the millions of emancipated slaves and their descendants (Blight 3). Blight claims that African Americans did not want an apology for slavery, but instead a helping hand. Thus, after the Civil War, two visions of Civil War memory arose and combined: the reconciliationist vison, which focused on the issue of dealing with the dead from the battlefields, hospitals, and prisons, and the emancipationist vision, which focused on African Americans’ remembrance of their own freedom and in conceptions of the war as the “liberation of [African Americans] to citizenship and Constitutional equality” (Blight 2).

Since our nation has such diverse qualities and characteristics, you would think that everyone who lives in such a country, we would all come and stick together. With people who are so different, in so many different types of ways, being a united and unified nation would be knowledgeable. But instead our country consists of "people making strenuous efforts to group themselves with people who are basically like themselves" (Brooks 62). When taking a deeper look, and basically breaking down the nation piece by piece, we see segregation that happens to go unnoticed. There are neighborhoods that have a reputation for being where "African Americans live," “Asians Live," "Caucasians live," "Mexicans live" etc. which is not a good thing. People tend to not go out of their comfort zone and expand on what they are used to, to try new things, which is usually only

It is clearly apparent in society that segregation causes unneeded violence and hatred that can be stopped once everyone learns to respect and notice their differences. Although, this transformation does not seem to be as easy as it sounds. In this case, fear impacts equality and when fear prevents equality, people 's’ opinions are not able to be heard, leading to discrimination and injustice. The fear of differing ideas and opinions makes it hard to reach independence and freedom because a negative mindset is preventing the transformation. Throughout history and into today, the largest injustice in our society deals with racial prejudice, and the fear of emerging cultures often leads to superiority with the majority of the population and inferiority with the minority.

The book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is about the mass incarceration of African Americans in the criminal justice system. It depicts individuals who were arrested on drug crimes. Because these individuals are labeled as criminals, it becomes difficult for them to find work, housing, and public assistance. (Alexander, 2010) The themes in this book include denial and ignorance, racism and violence, and drugs.

Ever feel that weird feeling when some Black and White people congregate? Well that is the endless but more subtle feel of segregation. In this paper we will address how segregation began. The time period in which segregation began in is one of many changes. With these changes came opinions. We will approach both the Whites perspective and the Blacks perspective on segregation.

The rudimentary components of racial isolation are principals that have transcended over time. The guiding principle, mandated through Jim Crow, of “separate but equal” was only personified through the New Deal not abolished. Racial segregation in the U.S. has transcended through the history of a nation that has used race/ color as a means of distinguishing right from wrong, good from bad, holy from evil, and it’s in this association the mammoth race issues we battle today enfolds itself. Most view racial division in the U.S. as a social canon that’s always held a dark presence in U.S. culture from the beginning of American history. Conversely, racial tension in America was introduced then further woven into American fabric through methodical structure as a means of standardization. Racism was institutionalized with systems that were originally perceived as being set in place to leverage African American’s with economic stability, but had an inverse effect that continues to rip through Detroit today.

Many people believe that in the United States we are living in a post-racial society, but the truth is that the “post-racial” is not likely to exist. A post-racial society happens when there is a devoid of racial preference, prejudice and discrimination; in other words, races are something that do not matter in any kind of environment such as work, school or restaurants. However, it seems more like a utopia than a reality. The post-racial society is far to be reached, because even if today there are less prejudice and discrimination, these things still there and we can see them very frequently not only in the United States, but also in others countries such as Brazil. Other thing is that is natural for human beings to separate themselves