Racial Issues in Urban Schools | Leslie Hinkson | TEDxSpringfield
The speaker argues that mandatory legal desegregation has failed because it did not address deep-seated social dynamics, pointing to the Department of Defense (DOA) schools as the current model showing better integration and smaller racial test score gaps. True integration requires not just physical proximity but achieving a genuine sense of shared community where race does not imply hierarchy or value. This necessitates that American communities and local governments commit to enforced residential desegregation and racial work. ## Speakers & Context - Speaker is a sociologist who grew up in a post-Jim Crow, highly segregated, high-poverty neighborhood. - The speaker's work investigates the persistence of racial achievement gaps in American standardized testing. - The presentation introduces the concept of *“The end of school desegregation,”* playing on the word "end" to mean both death and purpose. - The core conflict is between the *legal* end of mandated segregation and the *practical* persistence of segregated educational outcomes. ## Theses & Positions - The initial educational gains from desegregation have not translated into true integration, as racial and socioeconomic isolation continues to increase. - Simply removing the mandate for segregation (as with *Brown v. Board of Education*) was insufficient because it failed to change underlying community practices. - Residential segregation, school choice policies, and academic tracking act as effective, modern mechanisms for maintaining racial separation even in "desegregated" schools. - The Department of Defense (DOA) system serves as a model for effective integration because it achieves a high degree of social and academic mixing, even when mandates are absent. - Achieving true integration requires moving beyond mere physical co-existence to establishing a genuine, shared sense of community where race has no implied hierarchy. ## Concepts & Definitions - **Academic Tracking:** A system wherein students are separated into different classrooms based on perceived differences in academic ability, serving as an insidious mechanism for racial segregation. - **Unitary Status:** A legal status granted to school districts by courts ruling that they have "demonstrably eliminated the effects of past segregation to the extent practicable," which the speaker notes can lead to increased segregation. - **Intensely Segregated Schools:** Schools where a single racial group comprised 90% or more of the student population. ## Mechanisms & Processes - **The Test Gap:** The standardized measure comparing black student scores to white students, which has shown persistence despite legal desegregation. - **DOA Model for Integration:** Schools on base exhibit better performance because they function as "islands unto themselves with a greater sense of community and common identity" (All American). - **Mechanism of Successful Integration:** Integration happens when students are learning, playing, *and living together* without regard to race, leading to "Greater Harmony [and] fewer instances of perceived and overt racism." - **The Middle School Dance Analogy:** Illustrates that society/schools deem success when a "token percentage" of mixing occurs (e.g., a few integrated dance circles), rather than requiring systemic change. ## Timeline & Sequence - **Pre-1970:** Initial decline in the percentage of black students in intensely segregated schools, except in the Northeast. - **c. 1971–1988:** Period when white student test scores remained steady on the NAPE while scores for black 9, 13, and 17 year olds rose significantly. - **1991 onward:** Increase in the percentage of intensely segregated schools since the formal end of court-mandated desegregation. - **1948:** President Truman signed Executive Order 9981, officially desegregating the armed forces. - **1950s–Present:** US Military maintaining base schools, offering desegregated environments for military families. ## Named Entities - **Brown v. Board of Ed:** Supreme Court decision that signaled equal educational opportunities could not exist if schools remained segregated. - **Department of Defense Educational Activity (DOA):** The military system cited as a positive example of racial and academic integration. - **NAPE:** The National Assessment of Educational Progress, described as the largest nationally representative continuing assessment of students in the US. - **Connecticut:** State cited where DOA students outperformed other states in the NAPE reading and math components. - **Guam:** Location cited in relation to overseas DOA schools. ## Numbers & Data - **75%:** Threshold below which the average black student scores relative to white students on standardized assessments. - **9, 13, and 17 year olds:** Age groups tested in NAPE showing score increases between 1971 and 1988. - **90% or more:** Threshold used to define a school as intensely segregated. - **1988:** Year the decline of intensely segregated schools stopped. - **80% Black or Hispanic:** The threshold at which schools are deemed "successfully integrated" based on student body composition. - **1:1:** The ratio of the black-white test score gap found in DOA schools vs. the size of the gap in civilian schools (for 8th-grade reading). - **60%:** The degree to which the black-white gap in DOA overseas schools is smaller compared to stateside DOA schools. ## Examples & Cases - **The Initial Struggle:** Student performance in racially segregated schools when over 75% of students qualified for free lunch. - **The DOA Evidence:** DOA schools significantly outperformed public schools in every US state except Connecticut on NAPE reading and math scores, with smaller racial gaps. - **Overseas vs. Stateside DOA:** DOA schools overseas show a significantly smaller racial gap than those on the US mainland, suggesting the context matters. - **The Community vs. The Structure:** The comparison of DOA schools to civilian schools where integration is achieved through *living* together (neighbors, co-workers) versus merely *attending* the same building. - **Middle School Dance:** The analogy comparing integration efforts to organizing a dance, where managing the perception of closeness (or lack thereof) is deemed success. ## Tools, Tech & Products - **NAPE:** National Assessment of Educational Progress, used for assessing national educational progress. - **Executive Order 9981:** Truman's order officially desegregating the armed forces. ## References Cited - *Brown v. Board of Education*: Legal precedent cited regarding equal educational opportunities. ## Trade-offs & Alternatives - **Residential Segregation vs. Legal Mandates:** The shift from legally mandated segregation to de facto segregation through housing patterns and school choice. - **The DOA Method:** Operating in self-contained environments (bases) versus integration within an existing, mixed-race local community. ## Counterarguments & Caveats - The argument that the *Brown v. Board* decision signaled equal opportunity was misinterpreted by some as eliminating the *need* for structural change. - The reliance on residential segregation to keep students together is contrasted against the need for the state to address underlying racism. ## Conclusions & Recommendations - The primary mechanism for achieving integration must be *living, playing, and educating* together, not just attending the same building. - Schools must shift focus from achieving a numerical threshold (like 80% representation) to building a true sense of shared community. - The ultimate goal is to reach a state where "race doesn't imply hierarchy or value." ## Implications & Consequences - The failure to achieve integration suggests that legal remedies alone are insufficient; social and residential restructuring is necessary. - The lesson from the DOA suggests that the external environment—the ability to live and interact outside the academic setting—is crucial for educational equity. ## Verbatim Moments - *"the question of why me persists right people like us who attended racially segregated schools where more than 75% of students qualified for free lunch who were given a chance to excel beyond the bounds of such schools simply because a teacher took aside our mother or father and said your child does not belong here"* - *"my grownup version of why not them basically"* - *"the decline stops around you guessed it 1988 right"* - *"The end of school desegregation"* - *"any school districts formerly under these court orders have been granted what's called unitary status"* - *"the stated reason for keeping your children away from ours is almost never race regardless"* - *"I do not mean to suggest that this is only a black white issue like far from it"* - *"what is it about our children that makes it so that their M presence in a given School above some token percentage causes adults of all Races to doubt the academic rigor the intellectual uh richness or the safety of that environment"* - *"The black white Gap was only 1/r the size of that found in civilian public schools"* - *"Integration to them meant students learning playing and living together together without regard to race"* - *"we deem our school successfully integrated even when they are set up to physically separate students along racial lines"* - *"it isn't accomplished until we achieve a true sense of community one in which race doesn't imply hierarchy or value"*