How do you relate the readings assigned this week to what we have been learning about New York City schools?
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In class, the majority of our discussion has been focused on the history of the New York City Public schools and the many problems it faces in regards to diversity and integration of students. When reading W.E Burghardt Du Bois’s essay “Does the Negro need Separate Schools” I realized a parallel mentality in his essay and Nicole Hanna Jones’s piece “Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City.
Very briefly to summarize Du Bois’s message in “Does the Negro need Separate Schools”, his essay promotes the idea that a separate Negro school is “infinitely better” than promoting the idea to negro children should strive to attend accredited white institutions. Du Bois acknowledges the fact that integration and equality for negroes are improving, but at slow rate. Although on the surface, this seems to be the direction that many negroes are hoping to move towards, Du Bois brings up a the dilemma negroes as a race have to face. He condemns the idea the idea that many black folk use the attendance of a white or northern institution as an indicator of self value. He states that many negro students often look down upon black institutions and teachers. These students are not focused on improving these schools but rather, moving on to “better” white institutions. The dilemma arises when the negro student strives so hard to attain education from white institutions only to realize they are not receiving the education they had hoped. Instead, they are faced with contempt from their non-black peers and are crucified. The attendance to these institutions are often more detrimental to negro students than it is to attend “black” institutions. Du Bois believes that schools that are intended for the black community are actually more beneficial to negro students because the teachers and faculty have the student’s best interest in mind. Because the teachers and students face the same adversity, teachers are black institutions are able to teach with more passion and more efficiency for black students.
Of course, the ideal goal is to achieve a full integration of all students where all students at a school are treated equal. It is hard to achieve this however because of two main reasons stated in the essay. The first being that white institutions are not accommodating to black students and do not have their best interests in mind. The second, is that black folk simply do not have faith in their own race to achieve greatness that can parallel that of their white counterparts. This mentality allows many negro students to abandon the efforts of the black community to build great institutions. Ultimately, because of the detrimental culture white institutions have towards negro students at the given time period (in which the essay was written), it would be much more beneficial to channel this black excellence back into the black community. It would be a matter of swallowing the pride of trying to achieve greatness at a white institution, in order to better the black community as a whole.
This mentality is very consistent with Hannah-Jones’s when she is deciding a school for her daughter. As a black parent that has witnessed a segregated American schooling system, it is very easy for her to insist on putting her daughter into the best school available. It is only natural for a parent to not want her daughter to face the same adversities many other black students have faced in the past, given the great social status they have achieved. Hannah-Jones’s husband, Faraji strongly insisted for their child to attend the best available school and that mentality is consistent with the majority of black students mentioned in Du Bois’s essay. In a way, Faraji looked down upon the majority black P.S 307 because he believed there were much better options for his daughter. However, Hannah-Jones’s realizes the culture of P.S 307 and how the teachers there have the student’s best interests in mind. This is consistent with Du Bois’s belief that black teachers are more inclined to help their students, and not just white students. She believed that rather than removing her daughter from the problem, she should place her daughter into the problem in hopes of being part of the solution. To clarify, the problem being the continual segregation of schools where black and latino students remain in poorly funded schools while white students make up the majority of better schools. Hannah-Jones envisions that by placing her daughter in P.S 307 she can help promote greatness in a majority black and latino school. When P.S 307 undergoes large integration one year, many fears of black parents are consistent to Du Bois’s fears as well. Parents at P.S 307 are scared that when white students are integrated into the majority black and latino group, these white students will become the primary focus of the school, leaving the black and latino students behind on the curb. Again, the common fear is the crucification of black and underprivileged students as a result of a white majority school.
Thanks for this, Derek. You made some strong connections between DuBois and the Hannah-Jones piece. But they are writing almost a century apart. What is different about their perspectives?
By comparing Du Bois’s essay to Nicole Hanna Jone’s “Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City”, your response dives deep into the logic behind supporting school segregation. School segregation was never that simple. In fact, arguments over school segregation at the time was one indicator of a huge ongoing social conflict.
As you mention in your response, “many negro students often look down upon black institutions and teachers”. I think this is a vital point in analyzing how black parents think about education and segregation. Such phenomenal reveals the major mindset of black parents: they wanted to have more opportunities for their children; and at the time when Du Bois wrote the essay, white institutions seemed to provide the most opportunities. For many black parents, white institutions became a symbol of future success – a higher social status and self-value. As a result, black parents set themselves into a serious dilemma – by trying very hard to get into a white institution and achieve a higher self-value, they unconsciously depreciated the value of the black community at the same time. Reflected on Du Bois’s article, a core within the issue of segregation is, just as what you wrote, ” a matter of swallowing the pride of trying to achieve greatness at a white institution, in order to better the black community as a whole”.
I have had similar observations throughout my experience of education. In my case, instead of race, language was the main factor of “segregation”. Where I grew up, there was a mix of Cantonese and Mandarin speakers. Majority of the Cantonese speakers were born in the city, and majority of the Mandarin speakers were from out of the city. Local zoned schools were only open to city-born students for free; students from out of the city have to pay a certain price, or even take academic exams, to achieve a seat in the local schools. Just like the black parents in Du Bois’s essay and Nicole Hanna Jone’s piece, many parents from out of the city tried very hard to “achieve greatness at” a Cantonese institution. However, the children were not happy because they were living in a self-denial environment.
Once again, arguments on school segregation were part of an ongoing social conflict, or you might say a social revolution. It was a revolution toward equity and social justice.
Thanks for making this excellent connection to your experience in China, Sophie! It is interesting to note that inequalities in educational access exist across the globe. In just about every nation and state those with more power and/or status have access to superior opportunities. But some nations have addressed these inequalities better than others. This is something for us to think about in relation to our class’s study of New York City.
This week we have been learning about the issues of segregation and lack of diversity in New York City Schools. It was shocking for me to find out that New York state has the most segregated schools in the country. Furthermore, it shocks me to learn that the integration of students of all race is still a problem in New York City schools. The two readings, “Does the Negro need Separate Schools?” by W.E.B. Du Bois, and “Why Our Schools Are Segregated” by Richard Rothstein, provide contrasting views on the same argument. Du Bois argues that blacks don’t necessarily need integration with whites; what blacks need is more funding for their schools, so that the blacks and whites could be separate but equal. On the other hand, Rothstein argues that integration is necessary in order for blacks to be given more opportunities. The two contrasting views on segregation and integration provide interesting arguments.
Du Bois makes the appealing argument that school integration is not beneficial for blacks because the people in predominantly white institutions don’t treat blacks right. I believe Du Bois accurately writes that “what [the negro] needs more than separate schools is a firm and unshakable belief that twelve million American Negros have the inborn capacity to accomplish just as much as any nation of twelve million anywhere in the world ever accomplished, and that is not because they are Negroes but because they are human” (p333). This line is important because it emphasizes that blacks are humans just like whites and every other race; however, blacks are not treated fairly and cannot strive towards a higher education when they are in an environment where they are looked down upon. With more funding, schools that are predominantly black will be able to reach their full potential because they will have the support of each other and their peers.
Rothstein believes that integration is the key to increasing opportunities for black students in society. Rothstein highlights that segregation is the result of government action and that we are responsible. With low-income housing in predominantly black areas, it is harder for blacks to be integrated into middle-class neighborhoods that are predominantly white. In addition, the education of the children’s parents plays a huge role as well. Rothstein argues that with less educated and literate parents, children miss out on early exposure to education, thus “classrooms fill with students who come to school less ready to learn, teachers must focus more on discipline and less on learning” (p51). Rothstein believes that integrating theses troubled students with privileged students could help close the learning gap so that the less-privileged could benefit more.
Both readings relate to what we have been discussing in class, specifically, the readings related to the article “Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City,” by Nicole Hannah-Jones, because these are all things to think about when choosing a school for a child. It has been proven that less-priviledged black students have benefited a lot from attending predominantly white, privileged schools; however, it has also been proven that with the right resources, predominantly black schools can thrive as well. At this point, students of every race and background should be able to succeed at any school, and integrating students should not be a problem.
The two works read for class this week both tackle the problem of racial segregation in American schools and the problems associated with it, but through 2 very different perspectives, which is to be expected as there were written at 2 very different periods in American history. “Does the Negro need Separate Schools” by W. E. B. Du Bois is so old even the title is notably outdated to a modern audience as the word ‘negro’ is considered highly inappropriate and has thus become very outdated. The Rothstein article written a little over a decade ago is much more sensitive and takes a firm belief that integration is the key to solving the problems of segregation, which is in sharp contrast to the main idea of the Du Bois article which seems to be confident that the root matter is that black students aren’t getting a good education, and that it doesn’t really matter if the education is integrated or separated as long as they get it. The Rothstein articles blames much of the issue on natural zoning of schools and communities caused by restrictive and racist real-estate practices and laws that result in segregated schools, which the Du Bois article claims it is in the fundamental white sentiment of dislike or hatred towards ‘Negros’ (as his word of choice) and that causes the achievement gap (though the phrase ‘achievement gap is never mentioned since this is a rather new concept, but the idea is addressed). Du Bois seems to believe strongly that integration is not important, especially not compared to the importance of education, which black students seem to be incapable of having an opportunity to gain whether integrated or not, and the principle cause of this is a lack of funding. The Rothstein article claims that exposing less privileged students with their better off counterparts will help lower the achievement gap. Ultimately, it seems that Rothstein is obviously a more modern mentality, but if it has any more merit than the Du Bois article is still highly debatable as it will be difficult to change all the policies in place that he details that keep current schools segregated.
Interesting point, Demian. So one big difference between the two essays is temporal. Another is the authors’ lived experiences. And perhaps a third is the kind of data they access – Rothstein has studies of a type that did not exist in DuBois’ era (in fact neither most of the methods nor the research questions were around). What else do you think might explain their different perspectives?