Wade in the Waters of Integration: Deeper Please, If We Dare (Originally version written in 2004; updated 2024)

Introduction:

Today, May 17, 2024, we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. In 2004, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Brown, I set out to write a paper that would revisit this landmark Supreme Court decision that struck down legalized segregation in the U.S. In doing so, I reflected on how far we had come as a nation, and how far we had yet to go to realize the benefits of integration.

The paper entitled, Wade in the Waters of Integration: Deeper Please, If We Dare is reprinted here. At the time of its release, I was in my last year of working in the Office of Multicultural Education, at College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts. I used the opportunity to argue for the development of Multicultural Education in our schools, K-16. That we needed to see our schools become the epicenter for developing a new American citizenry more fully capable of valuing the diversity that defines us, and more focused on working together to realize the benefits of integration.

Today in 2024, without hesitation, even in the face of a national pushback against DEI-focused initiatives, I readily make the same argument for Multicultural Education being a focal point of education in America. The hard facts tell us that there has been a return to hyper-racial segregation in many of America’s schools, and that the stubborn persistence of segregation in many of America’s towns and communities remains. I have updated this version of the paper to include a discussion of these hard facts. I also present strategies for where we need to go to create the change we need.

Here is the updated version of Wade in the Waters of Integration: Deeper Please, If We Dare.

================================

?

“The Brown decision was not about integration, but about ending legal segregation. …Schools are asked to pick up the charge of integration, without the rest of society doing anything at all. I think it’s an undue burden.”

Wendy D. Puriefoy, President, Public Education Network

Education Week, May 12, 2004

The legacy of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that struck down legalized segregation continues to be written about, discussed, and debated. Around us are so many examples of how far we have come concerning issues of diversity and social justice, things that would not have been possible 50 years ago. When Dr. Susan Eaton from the Harvard Civil Rights Project came to the College of the Holy Cross on March 22, 2004, to lecture on the “dismantling” of the Brown decision, she included a simple statement in her opening remarks: “Integration is better for everyone.” Many national surveys, including one commissioned by Education Week in 2004 identify the fact that at least in theory most people today do agree that integration is a good thing. But the continued development of segregated housing patterns and the re-segregation of our public schools since the late 1980’s tell a different story. I opened with the above statement by Wendy D. Puriefoy because it highlights the challenge of reaching the “deeper waters” of integration. It also provides us with an important reality-check, and reveals a sobering underlying truth: this nation has yet to fully embrace not only the values of integration, but also the deeply rich values of diversity itself.?

Do we dare to go deeper? If we do, we may find that many of us continue to be historically unaware. For some of us it is easy to forget, especially those of us whose racial identity is White. Again referencing Dr. Eaton’s address at Holy Cross, she reminded us that, “It took demonstrations and death to get to desegregation.” Frank Wu put it a bit stronger in a piece entitled, Brown at 50: Keeping the Promises (Black Issues in Higher Education, 5/20/04): “We prefer to forget the controversy that ensued then (after the Brown decision). Government officials, from high school principals and local education boards, to governors and United States senators, began an open campaign of ‘mass resistance.’ White leaders called for expelling Blacks in colonization schemes. They warned that integration would mean rape. Ordinary White citizens formed mobs to prevent Black children from attending class. The North was no better than the South.”

As a White male, I and so many like me, were able to keep a safe distance from the “demonstrations and death” of the Civil Rights Movement via evening news clips, and we were certainly never taught about the deep psychological fear, nor the confused social values that moved a populous to warn that, “integration would mean rape.” Today, are we continuing to perpetuate elements of this psychology and recreating a misinformed citizenry? I believe we are. Putting aside for a moment the persistent presence of this kind of dehumanizing misinformation, the truth is that our schools are filled with White teachers, who were born and raised in predominately White neighborhoods and schools. They have been socialized in community culture value systems that ignore the sustained inequity that segregation continues to produce. From this perspective and from this disconnect, they teach a history of America that is riddled with misinformation and missing information.

In a book appropriately titled, We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know: White Teachers, Multiracial Schools (1999), Gary Howard challenges White teachers not to hide, but to openly recognize this disconnect and subsequent lack of awareness. “Honesty begins for Whites when we learn to question our own assumptions and acknowledge the limitations of our culturally conditioned perceptions of truth.”

If we dare to go deeper we may find that many of us continue to be socially unaware. It angered me to see the May 12, 2004, Education Week discussion of national poll results probing views on race subtitled, Integration not viewed as Key to Achievement. We all know that our schools must be accountable, but learning is more than test scores, and so is the breadth of our human needs. The value of diversity is as rich as the value of our roots as human beings. It is literally and fundamentally about who we are. Richly embracing the roots of our human identity both individually and collectively, stands on its own importance to our overall well-being, and does not need to be validated by raised test scores. It is much too significant a concession to the biased cultural norms of achievement-focused learning to belittle the importance of claiming our identity in a rich way, or to minimize the value of embracing a full expression of our identity to building genuine relationships and advancing our overall health, well-being, and vibrancy. This concession is all too painful an example of how much we suffer as we dredge along passively and unconsciously collude with our competitive social system. At the very least, when we couch the value of diversity in language related to raised test scores we distort the message we send our students about the value of the learning that comes from being exposed to difference in others, as well as the learning that comes from genuinely connecting with those that bring different interpretations of the human experience to the classroom. ??

If we dare to go deeper we may also find that many of us continue to be personally unaware. I started my career as an educator in secondary education in 1974. I have now been in higher education for over twenty years. I have been doing diversity work both in education and in the private and business sector since 1992. I have kept a diversity journal since 1998. The journal has become a mechanism for decoding my own socialization around issues of human differences. As I join in the study, celebration, and revisiting of Brown at 50, I have been journaling on what I sense is our continued dealing not only with the real segregation that exists today, but also the lingering “legacy” of segregation. I believe it is this combination that is behind what I hear people of color say constantly: “White people just don’t get it.” This could be subtitled as “race did and still does matter in my life – but not in yours.”??

I include an excerpt here from my diversity journal as a case in point. I had read an article by Beverly Daniel Tatum entitled, Building a Road to a Diverse Society, (4/2/04 Chronicle of Higher Education), in which Tatum - now President of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia - talks about how the Brown decision changed her life as an African-American woman, and then goes on to identify ways to continue the “unfinished business” of Brown.

Reflecting of Tatum’s writing, I wrote the following in my journal:

Some of the same thoughts came to me as I read about Tatum’s personal story in this article for the second time. The first time, it was reading about her father having to go to Pennsylvania to get his advanced degree in Art Education having been refused entry into his home state’s institution of Florida State University. That sparked me to realize that I’m part of what has become generation upon generation of White people who just don’t get it. What this means is that we constantly end up having to say, “Gee, I didn’t know that,” essentially not knowing the completely different life realities of people of color under the destructive umbrella of racialized identity. Because of this legacy I come to the table attempting to develop genuine relationships across lines of racial, cultural, and ethnic differences unaware, disconnected, not equal to the task, and yet in many cases insisting upon moving quickly to a place where my comfort zone (of race not mattering) is the dominant paradigm.

In my second reading of Tatum’s article, it was her referencing HBCU’s (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) that struck the same chord. HBCU’s were not even part of my vocabulary all that long ago. I did know about Morgan State and Grambling for football, and Florida A&M for Marching Band, but as I think about this now, that was all a Disney “Uncle Remus” smiley-face type White-to-Black relationship. I never thought of, or certainly was not aware of the real and true negative human ramifications of segregation. As a matter of fact, segregation was (and is in truth still today for many Whites) just that - a matter of fact, and no more. And today, I continue to hear and see about the legacy of segregation in diversity training programs I facilitate - where many people of White racial identity believe the Civil Rights Movement to be over, and yet remain full of stereotypes about people of color, and insensitive and indifferent to the reality of the negative impact of racialized identity on non-White.

Given this lack of personal and social awareness, given the sobering underlying truth that the values of integration, and for that matter the value of diversity itself having yet to be fully embraced by this nation, how do we respond? How can we develop a culture that seeks to be more aware and ultimately responds differently? Does the answer lie in a need for court action again?

In an editorial on patterns of segregation in Boston public schools entitled, Hub of Hypersegregation (4/23/04 Boston Globe), Derek Z. Jackson states, “Boston is a sordid example of what happens amid a wimpy national commitment to equal education. The state of the schools screams for another Brown decision. Only something that monumental can break the silence of modern segregation.”

Yes, the history of the Civil Rights Movement is built on many important pieces including laws and legislation, and certainly another Brown decision wouldn’t hurt. But I believe the harsh reality of continued segregation forces us to look beyond the courts and legislation to deeper thinking about ourselves as social beings. The roots of the Civil Rights Movement, the heart and foundation of democratic change are thick with the will of the people; grass roots movements where people are empowered by a human instinct, a collective sense of purpose for the common good. But people can not be empowered when a real-life connection to the richness, energy, and value of diversity lies somewhere far behind a vague sense of identity, a pile of divisive misinformation, and for all intents and purposes, many miles away in that “other” neighborhood.?

We might be able to get another quick jolt from the courts, but we need to think longer-term. In the opening installment of Education Week’s examination of Brown at 50 (1/21/04), Judith A. Winston, a Washington lawyer who is a member of the U.S Department of Education’s Brown Anniversary Commission, was quoted as saying she would love to see more communities in which White parents and parents of color banded together to fight for more integrated schools. But she was not optimistic: “We have not gotten beyond deeply ingrained racial stereotypes that have developed in this country over many decades.” The bottom line is that if we want to make Winston’s vision a reality, we cannot skip the step of helping each other realize that true recognition of our human diversity is not just about the presence of others; it is about the richness that comes to our lives as a result of the genuine relationships we can have with each other. The pain is not in the connection; it is in the distance between us! It is in this distance that ignorance brews, stereotypes gain validity, and rigidity, fear, and mistrust festers.

To address and reverse all these issues I believe we need to go “back to the books,” and change them! If we have essentially stuck-it-to our schools asking them to “pick up the charge of integration, without the rest of society doing anything at all,” (Puriefoy, 2004) then let us turn the tables and use this “charge” to develop through our schools, a new generation of citizenry that has the ability to make truly different choices when it comes to diversity. How? Multicultural education should be at the core of our school’s curriculum K-16. Let us provide opportunities for students to dig deep and examine their personal paradigms about diversity (i.e., to deconstruct their socialization), to build an awareness of and capacity to respond effectively to biased cultural norms, and to communicate effectively and develop genuine relationships across lines of human differences – all with an eye towards realizing more inclusive communities.

This type of learning would certainly take on different framings given different grade levels, and ?would go far beyond the “heroes and holidays” version of multicultural learning in order for a new citizenry to then be able to fully embrace the rich values of diversity. Let us provide students from an early age with opportunities to ask questions about their multifaceted identify. Let us provide students with opportunities to talk more openly about racial, ethnic, and cultural differences. Let us provide students with opportunities to talk openly about some of the confusing messages they get regularly from those around them concerning racial, ethnic, and cultural differences.

Multicultural education K-16 is a powerful change strategy, but it cannot stand-alone. It must be accompanied by an effort to put the “guts” back in to the teaching of American history. Time and time again we have heard the mantra of the value of a people knowing the truth about their history, so as not to repeat what has been destructive in the past, and also as a mean by which to find a deeper understanding of current events. For a scary rendition of how woefully bad we have done in this area, read James W. Loewen’s, Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995). He prefaces a chilling discussion of some of the missing information and misinformation inherent in the traditional teaching of American history with the following: “The stories that history textbooks tell are predictable; every problem has already been solved or is about to be solved. Textbooks exclude conflict or real suspense. They leave out everything that might reflect badly on our national character ...Textbooks stifle meaning by suppressing causation.” The outcome? Loewen again, “Students exit history textbooks without having developed the ability to think coherently about social life.”

Think of the negative consequences of students lacking any ability to think coherently and critically about their social life, and about the true functioning of our social economic system. Certainly any effort to develop a new generation of citizenry that has the ability to make different choices regarding the diversity that defines us is being undercut as result. We must do better.

Do we dare go deeper? Do we dare go this deep? Do we dare go to the “deeper waters” beyond theory and rhetoric to a genuine embracing of the values of integration and the rich values of diversity itself? Do we dare to build generations of people who are not stymied by a lack of awareness? Change of this magnitude may seem daunting, but what we have learned from past efforts such as the Civil Rights Movement is that truth and insight can be powerful combatants of fear and uncertainty. So can sharing the true personal stories of our lives be a powerful way of combating fear and uncertainty. Multicultural education breaks down large complicated social issues to a point of contact – us as individuals and social beings – who we are, what we know and don’t know about each other, and what we do, or is some cases, what we don’t do and need to do.

Holy Cross was fortunate to have Dr. Shakti Butler come to campus in 2004 to present and discuss her groundbreaking documentary film entitled, The Way Home. The film does what good multicultural educational material must do: It gives “voice,” to over 60 women from various ethnic backgrounds talking about their experiences with racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia. The audience for the discussion of the film on the day that Dr. Butler come to campus was - as many audiences are when the topic is diversity – very cautious. Many times the accompanying silence can be deafening. Shakti Butler was not stymied by the challenge that the distance of her audience presented, but immediately worked to give them back their voice, give them back their humanity. Before saying anything about the complicated issues raised in the film, she shared with the audience a deeper understanding of her own identity (African-American woman of biracial West Indian and Russian-Jewish heritage), as well as some of the story of her life. She then invited people in the audience to do the same, essentially breaking the silence and changing the relationship between the people in the room. Ultimately those of us present had an opportunity to then be enriched by the diversity among us that day. We need to do more of this – much more.

The events of the Civil Rights Movement continue to teach us and challenge us as our nation seeks to reconcile its history. No sooner had we closed the 2004 recognition of Brown at 50, then 2005 brought us powerful reminders of the struggles of the era in the reopening of the cases of two racially motivated killings – the murder of 14 year old Emmett Till in 1955, and the murder of civil rights activists James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in 1964. Mid-June also saw the U.S. Senate offer a formal apology to the nation's lynching victims and their descendants for having failed to enact anti-lynching legislation. According to the Tuskegee Institute over 4,700 mostly Black males were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968.

Along with working to recognize the attempt at healing that was taking place in these long overdue turn of events, I subsequently read many an editorial such as Laura Wexler’s, A Sorry History: Why an Apology from the Senate Can't Make Amends (6/19/05 Washington Post), that cautioned the nation from stopping at a sense of justice finally being done. Wexler saw the apology as “ultimately unsatisfying,” feeling that the Senate, “cannot apologize for the failure of countless juries to convict those who committed such hideous acts.” She went on to encourage us to think about the deeper problem of racism stating that, “Lynching - unlike simple murder - is a form of collective violence in which individuals act with the explicit or implicit support of the community, or at least without its condemnation. A particularly American brand of domestic terrorism, it thrived and went unpunished from the late-19th through the mid-20th century largely because of the racism of American citizens.”

I believe that today we do not escape this history simply by its passing. I believe we must instead, work to realize the change we need. This work is certainly not done, and this is why Beverly Daniel Tatum and others are right to point us to the “unfinished business” of Brown.?

Reaching the “deeper waters” of integration is certainly part of this unfinished business. The awareness and connections built through multicultural education can play a central role as we continue working on the unfinished business of Brown and the Civil Rights Movement, and as we do a better job of honoring all those who have come before us, who bravely chose to act for the greater social health and well-being of the country.

Today, let’s make different choices – ones that moves us in the direction of the change we need. The awareness and connections that can be built through multicultural education will provide us with generations of citizens who have the ability to make truly different choices when it comes to recognizing and valuing the diversity that defines us. There is no question that we will all benefit. Short of this, what we present as education in our schools is in fact a disservice to our children as we continue to inadequately prepare them to function effectively in the global community and the global economy. And short of this, we are all left with a shallow life experience, filled all too often with the negative consequences of the continued distance between us.

================================

?It’s 2024: 70 Years after Brown - Where Have We Landed?

Where are we today? As we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that struck down legalized segregation in the U.S., how far we had come as a nation, and how far have we yet to go to realize the benefits of integration?

The hard facts tell us that there has been a return to hyper-racial segregation in many of America’s schools, and that the stubborn persistence of segregation in many of America’s towns and communities remains.

According to research from the Economic Policy Institute (February, 2020), “Well over six decades after the Supreme Court declared ‘separate but equal’ schools to be unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, schools remain heavily segregated by race and ethnicity. The data shows that “only about one in eight White students (12.9%) attends a school where a majority of students are Black, Hispanic, Asian, or American Indian. In contrast, nearly seven in 10 Black children (69.2%) attend such schools …Black students are also in economically segregated schools. Less than one in three White students (31.3%) attend a high-poverty school, compared with more than seven in 10 Black students (72.4%).”

The University of Southern California and Stanford University released research just this May (2024) showing that there has been “a pronounced increase in school segregation since 1988, particularly in large school districts with significant numbers of Black students.” The article where I found the new research coming out of USC and Stanford is entitled, The Unexpected Explanation for Why School Segregation Spiked (The Washington Post, 5-6-24). These researchers state that the recent rise in school segregation in America’s schools was “driven by policy choices,” specifically the “federal courts releasing school districts from obligations to desegregate schools beginning in significant numbers in the late 1990s; and school-choice policies that let parents pick what school their children attend.” They further conclude that “these two factors account for all of the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019.”

Changes in policy are ultimately driven by thoughts and ideas that permeate our towns and communities, and then come to define the mindset of many Americans. While the reversal of the gains towards integration made possible by the Brown versus Board of Education Supreme Court Decision have been driven by changes in policy, there is no question in my mind that there has been a persistent belief over generations in a racial hierarchy with Whites at the top of that hierarchy, that continues to divide us. This divide undercut our ability to realize the benefits of integration. This divide continues to harm all of us. Moving forward, our strategies for creating the change we need must include dismantling this misinformed, destructive pattern of thought.?

Our strategies moving forward must also include recognizing, studying, and multiplying the “model” school districts across the country that have done what we all need to do - ?build schools, as Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond puts it, “in which all students thrive regardless of zip code, family income, or race and ethnicity.”

It’s called equity. And we the people, who need to create a new public will for the common good of all Americans can’t exist without it.?

Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, not hesitating to proclaim what we all must work to see not just as aspirational, but realized in every community, in every region of this country states that, “Equal educational opportunity is a civil right.” Dr. Darling-Hammond along with Dr. Kia Darling-Hammond, has a book I know I need to spend some time with entitled, The Civil Rights Road to Deeper Learning: Five Essentials for Equity. Please join me, and let’s apply what we learn to moving us further along the road of embracing the deeply rich values of diversity, and to seeing us realize the benefits of integration as a nation. And let's start this work sooner than later in each of our spheres of influence, in each of our communities, right in our own backyards.