At many U.S. universities, the tendency to self-segregate has become a familiar and accepted occurrence, evident in a wide array of college settings including housing and social gatherings, classes and training events, protests, and grievance sessions, and even separate commencement events. In many ways, this trend represents a return to the…

Brown v. Board (1954) catalyzed a nationwide effort by the federal judiciary to desegregate public schools by court order, representing a major achievement for the U.S. civil rights movement. Four decades later, courts began dismissing schools from desegregation decrees in a staggered fashion, causing their racial homogeneity to rise. I leverage…

In the 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education" case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional, and the process of school desegregation fell mostly to Black children. For over 35 years, Black families in St. Louis City have been using school transfers to cross boundaries in order to send their children to higher…

The Orlando Sentinel published a 1955 letter to the editor from Zora Neale Hurston. In it, she condemns the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and the leadership of the Black intelligentsia in the decision. Using Timothy Parsons' myth of a progressive empire, this article emphasizes Hurston's central thesis: that forced…

Race has been a central thread in the American fabric since the country's inception, and relationships among racial groups, particularly between Whites and African Americans, have been strained due to the nation's historic founding. Larger, societal tensions around race likely manifest in schools and threaten to impede the premise and promise of…

Racial/ethnic stereotypes are deep rooted in our history; among these, the dangerous Black male stereotype is especially relevant to issues of differential school discipline today. Although integration in the wake of "Brown v. Board of Education" was intended to counteract stereotype and bias, resegregation has allowed little true…

Public schools have always been meant to provide all children with the skills and knowledge to become successful participants in the economy. But currently, a second important purpose of public education has become more salient: to promote social cohesion in a diverse and fractured democracy. As ugly and naked racism in America is further…

Over the years, many scholarly publications have extensively discussed disability 'diagnoses' and placement practices in special education programs in the United States and the United Kingdom. These publications argue that racism and classism rather than clinically predetermined factors appear to influence the disability diagnosis and placement…

While some state and local education agencies may raise concerns over shifting legal principles and political apprehension in pursuing strategies that integrate students across race, socioeconomic status, and other factors, the changing demographics warrant serious inquiry into integration opportunities. This paper surveys the landscape of K-12…

In this article, Raygine DiAquoi explores the temporality of "the talk" Black parents have with their sons, analyzing the way the messages they share with their sons about racism reflect sociohistorical changes around issues of race. Over the course of a year, DiAquoi conducted a qualitative investigation of the content of the messages…

In light of contemporary school choice proposals and the 60th anniversary of the Southern Manifesto, the Prince Edward County, Virginia public schools crisis provides interesting historical discussion. Prince Edward County (PEC), a rural community in central Virginia, was one of five school districts represented in the 1954 "Brown v. Board of…

At the 60th anniversary of "Brown," the authors analyze survey data from a national sample of 1,227 Black and White college students to examine the frequency and nature of cross-racial interactions and their influence on students' sense of belonging in college. Results suggest the cross-racial interactions vary by race and frequent,…

Purpose: In this article, I explore White racial purity desire as an underexamined ideology that might help us understand the compulsion of disciplinary violence against Black boys in U.S. public schools. By pointing to the dearth of research on sexual desire as a site of racial conflict and through revisiting Civil Rights-era fears about…

Derrick Bell's pronouncement and challenge that racism is likely permanent has captured the imagination of Critical Race Theorists in education. Equally important are his ideas about living with the concrete conditions of racism. This article focuses on a tension within Bell's work. On the one hand, his writings are characterized by a certain…

Recent research suggests that high-stakes standardized testing has played a negative role in the segregation of children by race and class in schools. In this article we review research on the overall effects of segregation, the positive and negative aspects of how desegregation plans were carried out following the 1954 Supreme Court decision…