Democracy and Inequality: Challenges and Possible Solutions

Introduction

White parents had concerns about black students attending their predominantly white elementary school. They feared they would not be able to walk their students to school anymore. The streets would become too dangerous. Property values would go down, and their houses would sell for less.¹² Racial prejudices such as these parallel something from sixty years ago, but shockingly, these ‘fears’ from white parents were from 2019 when the superintendent of Richmond City Schools, Jason Kamras, proposed a plan to integrate two elementary schools in Richmond Virginia.

Students in my classroom will have the background knowledge of Plessy V Ferguson and the Brown V Board case before diving into this curriculum unit, as it will come right after. However, we will review the Supreme Court cases and build upon the inequality in education. If given the time going over the five cases that comprised Brown V Board would be very enlightening for students. It shows the lack of equality in schools across the country and the need to fight for it. The states involved were Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Since I do not have enough time due to content constraints, I will do an overview with the main focus on Brown V Board. From there, we'll look at what has happened since Brown using images, vocabulary, scholarly sources, and graphs to see if Brown did what it set out to do. We'll ask questions, such as, was it successful? What could we do to make it more successful? This cross-curricular unit applies to social studies/ history and math as well as language arts. With the final project being a trifold, it could also involve art.

"The difference between de jure and de facto segregation is the difference between open, forthright bigotry and the shamefaced kind that works through unwritten agreements between real estate dealers, school officials, and local politicians." This quote by schoolteacher turned politician then author Shirley Chisholm highlighted what was wrong and continues to be with our education system. Like many teachers, she wanted to improve her surroundings and the future of the children. The story of Chisholm often resonated with students as they are in a classroom working with a teacher who is working towards the same goals several decades later. Highlighting a teacher who can make a difference makes students realize that teachers can instigate change and fight for equality on all sides. Chisholm was a teacher's aide in Harlem while getting her master's in education in 1952. Chisholm later went on to become the first black woman to be elected to Congress. Shortly before the Brown decision, she was in public school trenches and remained in the public eye until 1991, even returning to teaching after retiring from Congress.¹

Had Chisholm been alive today, she would see that the social studies curriculum has recently come under the scrutiny of educators, parents, and society as a whole. Sections are biased, as whites are projected as the hero or savior coming in and saving everyone who isn't white from themselves. Would Chisholm be surprised? Was her fight for equality almost seven decades ago for nothing? One textbook my students analyze was used throughout the south was used as recently as 2018 refers to Africans brought over during slave trading as 'workers.'² My students are often shocked and saddened by this blatant lie in a textbook distributed throughout a state.

The Southern Poverty Law Center conducted a study in 2017 using 12 U.S. history books and 1,700 social studies teachers; they found that 60% of teachers felt the curriculum did not cover slavery sufficiently.³ This brings up the question: If we cannot accurately cover slavery, what else is left out or behind? This data points out that Virginia Studies starts in 1607 and doesn't highlight Native Americans' lives before the English landed. Instead, the textbook talks about the trading between Native Americans and the English and what was learned from them. These books also don't mention Africans' lives before being stolen from their homes, traded and sold, and sent to Virginia. To combat the issue, Nikole Hannah-Jones created the 1619 project to fix this, but further inequities should have driven change. Stories weren't written down the way we write them down today, but they were spoken. Educating our students is so important. They need to know about what life was like for people in Africa before being ripped from their families and friends, stuffed on a ship, not understanding anything and being traded, and sold, brought to a strange, new land and forced to work day in and day out for nothing in return. This further drives the wedge of inequality as certain groups are left out of textbooks or are not appropriately covered. However, the students likely don't know what stories they are missing, what narratives perhaps are deliberately excluded.

Growing up, did you think about the school you attended? Did you think about the privilege or lack thereof that you or the classmates who attended school with you had? If you attended a public school, someone or a group of people drew the map for your attendance zone for your school in your district, and the school board approved it. Thinking about how we got to where we are today, we have to often reflect on where we started. Brown V Board of Education was a culmination of 5 cases that made it to the Supreme Court, pushing the idea that separate but equal was not just. This landmark decision was made in a courtroom, believing that it would progress to all states and schools across the country. The question is, has it successfully translated to the classroom? Have states, districts, and ultimately schools desegregated their classrooms according to the ruling from Brown? The National Center for Education Statistics data found the year with the highest integration rate was 1989. This was 35 years after the verdict. This might seem like progress took a long time, but it generally does. In 2011 23% of black students attended schools where at least 50% of the student body was white. The last time the number was that low was around 1968.⁴ There are, of course, ways to fix the lack of integration. The most glaringly obvious solution involves school districts redrawing district lines to reduce or eliminate segregation. This has not happened. Instead, these district lines have been redrawn, perpetuating segregation in the classroom through segregation in the residential neighborhood. To keep the home value up, communities stay white while other areas remain predominantly black.