The School that was Never Desegregated

While most Americans are under the impression that schools across the United States have been desegregated for a long period of time, the town of Cleveland Mississippi has remained segregated decades after Brown vs the Board of education.  According to Sharon Lerners article, she states that, “for the past half-century Cleveland has carried on with two sets of schools with wildly different demographics. While East Side and D.M. Smith are almost uniformly black, Cleveland High and Margaret Green Junior High, the historically white high school and middle school, have nearly even black-white splits. As a result, Cleveland has some of the most integrated —and some of the most segregated—public schools in the region.”  When looking to reintegrate the school the problem that arises is that “combining both high schools would result in a student body that’s about 30 percent white, which would push the racial balance past a tipping point of comfort for many white families who "don’t want to be in a small minority," What is interesting about this statement is the hypocrisy that white students don’t want to be a minority at a high school.  In reality, of many African Americans during the early stages of desegregation were forced into being a minority at many schools across the United States.  Thus, it is seemingly ridiculous that in 2017 that a total of “197 school districts across the country that remain involved in active desegregation cases”.  According to Wendy Scott a dean of Mississippi College School of Law and an expert in school desegregation, “in Cleveland, full desegregation never happened in the first place. You’re starting from scratch, there are only a handful of cases like that."  This kind of speaks to the fact there is still a racial tension present within in our own country.  But even more importantly this on going desegregation case demonstrates a continuous pushback from tradition and the way things are done. 

Source:https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/02/a-school-district-that-was-never-desegregated/385184/