8.+Savage+Inequalities



LOOKING BACKWARDS: 1964 -- 1991

A main theme of this book, and Kozol's writing in general, is the persistence of racial and economic inequalities in the American education system despite the promise of //Brown v. Board of Education//. Kozol argues that not only has the situation not improved since the time of the Civil Rights Movement, it has become worse. And, despite a deteriorating situation, the concern about segregation in the school system does not seem to provoke anger or outrage; it is accepted as a fact of life.
 * pg. 2-3. "What startled me most -- although it puzzles me that I was not prepared for this -- was the remarkable degree of racial segregation that persisted almost everywhere. Like most Americans, I knew that segregation was still common in the public schools, but I did not know how much it had intensified. The Supreme Court decision in //Brown v. Board of Education// 37 years ago, in which the court had found that segregated education was unconstitutional because it was 'inherently, unequal.' did not seem to have changed very much for children in the schools I saw, not, at least, outside of the Deep South. Most of the urban schools I visited were 95 to 99 percent nonwhite. In no school that I saw anywhere in the United States were nonwhite children in large numbers truly intermingled with white children. Moreover, in most cities, influential people that I met showed little inclination to address this matter and were sometimes even puzzled when I brought it up. Many people seemed to view the segregation issue as 'a past injustice' that had been sufficiently addressed. Others took it as an unresolved injustice that no logger held sufficient national attention to be worth contesting. In all cases, I was given the distinct impression that my inquiries about this matter were not welcome."