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Questions answered in this forum: How can positive relations be established? Is school the critical place where ideas about race are formed? Do you think continued efforts to desegregate schools will further better economic success? What role do black institutions have in allowing blacks to flourish? NewsHour Coverage August 18, 1997: Does California's ban on affirmative action hurt diversity? July 3, 1997: Online Forum: Ask the President's advisory panel about the national initiative. February 18, 1997: In 1960, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges Hall became the first African American child to desegregate an elementary school. Browse the Online NewsHour's coverage of race relations. Outside Links Central High School

A question from Brody Mullins of Washington, D.C: What does the increasing segregation of schools mean for future race relations? Christopher Edley, Law Professor at Harvard responds: School resegregation -- or as President Clinton put it, "dis-integration" -- is a threat in two important respects. First, the research data demonstrate that schools with high concentrations of poverty are highly likely to be educational disasters relative to schools with middle class or economically integrated student bodies. The tragedy is that if you consider kids who are in racially identifiable schools (i.e., no integration to speak of), the black and Hispanic kids are sixteen times more likely to be in a high-poverty schools than their white counterparts. That means that, in our society today, racial concentration goes almost hand in hand with poverty concentration, which in turn goes almost hand in hand with dysfunctional schools, overwhelmed by the flood of social issues that flow from concentrated poverty. So resegregation means a reversal in education gains that are possible when integration works well. (And it does, more often than critics claim.) Romanticize all you want about neighborhood schools. Fantasize all you want about separate-but-equal (which never worked, and never will). The reality is that deepening segregation means diminishing opportunity. Second, resegregation means we lose the opportunity to give our children the experiences across lines of color and class that will help them connect with people who are different. We all must break out of the ghettoes of our experiences, prejudices and fears. Children are better equipped to do this, because they have not yet completed America's full curriculum in distrust and prejudice. Of course, we face patterns of residential segregation, and many school districts walled off from neighboring jurisdictions by the lines of local government and the policies of local control. Many poor minority kids are trapped by these forces, and school integration becomes extremely difficult at best. The racial justice goals too often take a back seat to other considerations, like our tradition of property tax school financing, and the autonomy of over 15,000 school districts. This is an untenable situation, too little appreciated by courts, political leaders and the public. This is not to say that school integration has worked wonders. There have been many problems. There are burdens and costs. But when done well, there are important benefits in educational outcomes and in building one America. William Winter, former Governor of Mississippi responds: The growing trend in many communities toward a resegregation of schools is unfortunate, and renewed efforts must be made to find more creative and effective ways to reverse that trend. We must make a better case for the idea that a racially diverse student body can enhance civic values by bringing children together to interact as equals and to learn the values of understanding, tolerance, and respect for others than can make all students better citizens. The evidence indicates that racially diverse schools can structure activities to promote positive interracial interactions and that such interactions can promote racial tolerance and understanding. And these improved race relations in school can continue throughout life, for there is evidence that students who attend desegregated schools are more likely to live in racially diverse neighborhoods and to have friends from other racial backgrounds. Thus racially diverse and integrated schools not only can yield smarter, better adjusted students they can help us become One America. But we must also understand that there are still too many under funded and ill-managed schools especially in the poor areas. There is still too much white flight. There are still too many schools which are not producing satisfactory results. When we permit this to happen, we are killing the dream that so many people have had of a society where nobody gets left out. Children get left out when they are obliged to attend schools that do not provide them with a competitive education. That is why I have been actively involved in the national organization, Parents for Public Schools. Organized some eight years ago by some parents in Jackson, Mississippi, the initiative has chapters now in 23 states. It has proved to be an effective force in discouraging white flight and limiting the resegregation of the schools in the communities where it has been organized. This effort was viewed with considerable skepticism at first, but its effectiveness not only in maintaining a measure of diversity in the schools but also in serving as a strong voice for effective public education has won it a large measure of acceptance. Continue to the next question... Questions answered in this forum: How can positive relations be established? Is school the critical place where ideas about race are formed? Do you think continued efforts to desegregate schools will further better economic success? What role do black institutions have in allowing blacks to flourish?     REGIONS TOPICS RECENT PROGRAMS ABOUT US FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS / FEEDS:             Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved.