Brown v. Board of Education, Between Barack and a Hard Place, Separate and Unequal

This week for our blogs we had to read three different things.  We had to explore the website that gave us some background on the Brown v. Board of Education, watch a short video called "Between Barack and a Hard Place" with Tim Wise, and we also had to read a short article called "Separate and Unequal" by Bob Herbert.  All of these three things are all connected to each other in some way, shape, or form.  They all discuss how the Brown v. Board of Education has changed the education world since then and it also talks about how racism and segregation on social class is a huge deal today even though we don't like to admit it.

The historical issues that I see in the Bob Herbert's article is that even though we don't like to admit it but schools are still not legally segregated today.  This is because of residential patterns, economic disparities, and housing discriminations.  In this article it uses a quote by Richard Kahlenberg where he says that "Ninety-five percent of education reform is about trying to make separate schools for rich and poor work, but there is very little evidence that you can have success when you pack all the low-income students into one particular school".  To me this is such a horrible thing to do to separate schools by poor and rich students.  There was a study that was done that showed that low-income students who were placed in an affluent elementary school had much higher grades than similar low-income students who were in higher poverty schools.  Another issue that this article discusses is that where the child lives also plays a huge impact on their education.  If a student lives in a terrible neighborhood then they are more likely to attend the public school in town where there are other misbehaving neighborhood kids.  This also plays a role on teachers too because most of the good teachers try to stay away from those kinds of schools so therefore there will be a lot of bad teachers in those public schools which won't help the kids out because they need all the help that they can get.  Overall this article says that we can't look at the race of the students as being the important key but we must look for an all-around good environment that has good teachers, fewer classroom disruptions, students who are academically motivated, and the parents also have to be more involved with the schools.  


In the video "Between Barack and a Hard Place" with Tim Wise he discusses that desegregation is present in schools but there is still the issue of racism and that we are nowhere near a post racial America.  Wise says that "To pretend or to act as if we're heading towards this post racial place would be no more logical than to say that Pakistan was heading to a post sexist place".  This video also discusses that even though there is a lot of color out there everyone is intelligent, wise, and capable of doing anything and that we shouldn't blame color on someones ability to do something.  Wise also states that "6 out of 10 whites will acknowledge that black people are generally less intelligent, more aggressive and prone to criminality, less patriotic, perceived as less hard working, and that blacks just want to live off of welfare and not work."  This last quote was proven wrong a couple of years ago when we elected Barack Obama as our President because some people see him as intelligent, is obviously patriotic, and is very hard working and Tim Wise also recognizes him as well.  


Overall the videos and websites are related to the Brown v. Board of Education because now that schools are desegregated there are now issues over racism and segregation of social classes.  In other words these three issues are a domino effect on one another.  My question that always pops up in my head in this class is why can't everyone just get along?  


Questions that I would like to ask in class:   Why do people have to judge others based on their race or social class?  Why can't more students learn from one another instead of being segregated by social class and stop making enemies?  Who is to blame for all of this?  Is it the media, parents, teachers, students, government?  Are people spending their money on useless things when they could be spending money to move to a better environment to help with their child's education?  What are your thoughts?