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Still Separate, Still Unequal

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Still Separate, Still Unequal by Jonathan Kozol I found this article to be very interesting and extremely heartbreaking. Jonathan Kozol paints a vivid and grim picture of predominantly black or Hispanic schools in and around some the largest cities in America. Even in areas where the distribution of races is somewhat equal, Kozol tells us that most white families would rather send their kids by bus to a school where more than half of the students are white. Some schools, like Martin Luther King Jr. high school in New York City, are located purposefully in upper middle class white neighborhoods in hopes to draw in a more diverse selection of children, i.e. more white kids. It seems however, according to Kozol, that this plan not only did not work, but has made it a prime and obvious example of modern segregation in our schools. One teacher Kozol interviewed at a school where 95 percent of the students were either black, asian, hispanic or native american, told him “not with bitterness but wistfully--of seeing clusters of white parents and their children each morning on the corner of a street close to the school, waiting for a bus that took the children to a predominately white school”. (p.203) …show more content…

But we don’t have that. I wish that this school was the most beautiful school in the whole why world.” (p.206) I can’t help but want these things for these children too. I want those kids to have the most beautiful school in the whole why world and I find it perplexing, but I suppose not uncommon, that they do not. We spend so much time trying to circumvent these problems without really acknowledging them, without getting to the heart of it. But then again, what is the heart of it? Is it willful ignorance? Is it some unconscious bias? I certainly can’t begin to guess at what it is that has made such a large gap in the way one color of person may be

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