Did We Ever Really Desegregate?
By: Brianna Mack November 1, 2018
Nikole Hannah-Jones is a journalist known for her reports on civil rights in the United States. Growing up in Waterloo, Iowa, she and her sisters went to all-white schools. She is widely known for writing about resegregation of schools and exposing institutionalized racism. On September 29th, she came to Philadelphia to enlighten her audience about the embedded racism in our culture.
“the south is the most de-segregated part of the country.”
-Nikole Hannah-Jones
As northerners, we are stuck on the mentality that the south is the racist part of the United States. The New York Times writer revealed otherwise. When schools were forced to desegregate, there was much pressure put on the south. There was not much pressure put onto the North to desegregate because they had outlawed slavery first. Although the North outlawed slavery first, they were also the first to legalize it. Racism in the North did not vanish because slavery was outlawed.
“The black school will always have less.”
“Segregated schools maintain racial caste.”
-Nikole Hannah-Jones
Educating Blacks was illegal during slavery, and there was still resistance to the concept after slavery was abolished. We (Black people) are the only people who have been denied the right to an education in the United States. We see the after-effects of this in the way that education systems work in the US. White people seem to do anything they can to isolate themselves in their white schools. From opening private and charter schools to moving out of the district, white people have maintained their sense of superiority over minority groups. Most public schools with a high Black population have much less than those funded by tax dollars in wealthy, white communities. While a suburban school may have a air conditioning, a city public school has a few fans bought by the teachers.
“Separate but equal is no more true today than it was in 1954.”
-Nikole Hannah-Jones
“Separate but equal” was the justification for the segregation of schools in the fifties. There was not an immediate change after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Brown v Board case.
In Philadelphia, the way that segregation operates is visible. Different sections of the city house different racial groups. The north segregates via housing. This is very apparent in Philadelphia. Walking through the different neighborhoods, anyone can notice that different groups of people live in different areas. It is illegal to bus kids outside of district line. The white people who left to the suburbs can continue to have their own schools and the minorities have their's. If the white people stay in the city, then they send their children to private or charter school with a majority white population. Children maintain being in different schools with very different conditions despite the promise “separate but equal.”
On November 14, 1960, Ruby Bridges made history by being that first black child to attend a white school in the South when she was six years old. Today, she is alive and well at the age of 64. Segregation in America is not something from the distant past. There are many people alive today who can share stories of their experience.
Do you have stories of attending segregated schools in Philadelphia? Share them with me: 7001728@philasd.org