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Questions answered in this forum:
	How can positive relations be established?
	What does the increasing segregation of schools mean for future race relations?
	Is school the critical place where ideas about race are formed?
	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 the Online NewsHour:

Many of the Little Rock Nine wanted desegregation because it offered better avenues for economic success, do you think continued efforts to desegregate schools will further that goal?

Christopher Edley, Law Professor at Harvard responds:

"Separate-but-equal" has never worked in K-12 education as a broad practice. In part, that's because the politics of race and school finance have generally made it difficult for minority communities to command the resources needed to have competitive schools – especially in high-poverty communities where children have a host of social and economic burdens to that schools must help them overcome. Our traditions of local school board control and local property tax finance serve to chop up metropolitan areas so that poor communities are isolated. And the likelihood of that isolation is greater if those poor communities are also African American or Hispanic. Those are just the facts. We must face them. As an African American, I often find myself romanticizing about what we can or should be able to do within "our" community. But all of us need to be clear about the realities, not just about what we might wish for.

Conversely, there are realities about the difficulties with school integration. There are some areas where the demographics make it virtually impossible; so be it. There are places where the school building is integrated, but tracking or social tensions cause a re-segregation within the school walls, as President Clinton described in his Little Rock speech on September 25th; these situations can be improved with the right local policies and leadership.

The best schools at generating economic opportunity will be the schools that have a rich kind of excellence, encompassing both the academic qualities and the social and community qualities that will produce successful citizens in a demanding and diverse 21st century workplace. There aren't magical answers on this. Integrated schools help, but aren't the total answer.

William Winter, former Governor of Mississippi responds:

The Advisory Board on Race recognizes that ultimate solutions to the challenge of creating One America must be built around educational and economic advancement. We must get the message out to every household and especially every poor household that the only road out of poverty runs by the schoolhouse. Discrimination in this country is not confined to the fault lines of race. The line that separates the well educated from the poorly educated is one of the harshest dividers of all.

That is why it is not enough that we have diversity as a single goal. That would be a hollow victory indeed, unless the schools are equipped to produce the kind of academically prepared graduates who can compete in the market place. This is an absolutely critical factor in fashioning educational policy in the future. We owe it to all those who fought so long for access to make certain that we do not forsake quality. Effective education is the key to economic success.

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Questions answered in this forum:

How can positive relations be established?
What does the increasing segregation of schools mean for future race relations?
Is school the critical place where ideas about race are formed?
What role do black institutions have in allowing blacks to flourish?

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