Did Intergration Hurt Black Kids?

[malamute]

Integration is good. Not always when it's forced -- but maybe some force was necessary.

A black woman at work who grew up in the south was laughing about how when they were kids growing up in the south, they had to sit in the balcony of the theater and they thought it was great fun to throw spit balls and make the white kids below mad. She laughed how all these heads would turn around and scowl at the kids up in the balcony - but then all that ended and her dad made her start sitting in the main part of the theater and the black kids were mixed in with the white kids and she said it was never quite as fun after that.

[DewDropInn]

Originally Posted by malamute

Integration is good. Not always when it's forced -- but maybe some force was necessary.

A black woman at work who grew up in the south was laughing about how when they were kids growing up in the south, they had to sit in the balcony of the theater and they thought it was great fun to throw spit balls and make the white kids below mad. She laughed how all these heads would turn around and scowl at the kids up in the balcony - but then all that ended and her dad made her start sitting in the main part of the theater and the black kids were mixed in with the white kids and she said it was never quite as fun after that.

Yeah. I don't suppose she mentioned all the not-fun stuff. Like second class citizenship.

Ask her WHY her dad made her sit in the main part of the theater. Ask her what that meant to her dad. (Especially if he was in the service.)

[Motion]

Even though there could be other factors involved I think there is some degree of merit to this theory on acting white. I've heard other sources connect acting white to integration. So the question now is what to do about it? Probably the best thing to do is to expose more black kids at early ages to black professionals especially scientist and inventors. I think too many blacks feel alienated from higher thinking because all they've seen are white faces connected to things like science. Expsosing 6 or 8 year old black kids to black scientist and other black professionals will put into their heads early on that people who look like them can be a part of all that. More of this exposure to black professionals will need to come from black organizations and mentor groups.

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

And over time the pendulum has swung and the schools are segregated again with minorities being in the inner city schools which have a track record of failure.

So what did we really accomplish ?

Here is another question. What did we accomplish by having segregated schools by force?

[ovcatto]

So even according to the article it was integration but the same old same old.

"Desegregation introduced integrated schools where most of the teachers and administrators were white and where, because of generations of educational inequality, most of the best students were white. Black students bused into predominantly white schools faced hostility and contempt from white students. They encountered the soft prejudice of low expectations from racist teachers who assumed blacks weren't capable and from liberals who coddled them. Academic tracking shunted black students into dead-end remedial education."