After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation

by Charles T. Clotfelter

The United States Supreme Court's 1954 landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education , set into motion a process of desegregation that would eventually transform American public schools. This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of how Brown 's most visible effect--contact between students of different racial groups--has changed over the fifty years since the decision.


Using both published and unpublished data on school enrollments from across the country, Charles Clotfelter uses measures of interracial contact, racial isolation, and segregation to chronicle the changes. He goes beyond previous studies by drawing on heretofore unanalyzed enrollment data covering the first decade after Brown , calculating segregation for metropolitan areas rather than just school districts, accounting for private schools, presenting recent information on segregation within schools, and measuring segregation in college enrollment.


Two main conclusions emerge. First, interracial contact in American schools and colleges increased markedly over the period, with the most dramatic changes occurring in the previously segregated South. Second, despite this change, four main factors prevented even larger white reluctance to accept racially mixed schools, the multiplicity of options for avoiding such schools, the willingness of local officials to accommodate the wishes of reluctant whites, and the eventual loss of will on the part of those who had been the strongest protagonists in the push for desegregation. Thus decreases in segregation within districts were partially offset by growing disparities between districts and by selected increases in private school enrollment.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Sara Dietsch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I lowkey didn’t actually read the whole book but we read like 75% of it in class and I feel like I discussed it enough that it kind of counts. To be fair before yall come for me this is basically a textbook. The claims of this book were really interesting and thought provoking but it was so statistics based it was a tough read.

[Patrick Reyna · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s well written and has a lot of valuable insights about the state of segregation in US educational institutions. Downside is that it does this through a series of qualitative analysis, which while compelling and very important, are really dense and difficult to read.
Would recommend some background in statistics/economics before reading.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was so interesting, but I wish the author could have made this topic more accessible to the general public. I am in grad school and have to read sociological studies fairly frequently, but I still had trouble keeping up with him. The writing was over the head of the general public, and it bothered me that he used graphs to make points rather than to complement what he had already said.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great read for educators, policy makers, and parents alike. All can glean something from this study of how desegregation has progressed (or regressed) since the Brown decision in 1954. As it's said, "You can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been." I felt the most interesting part for me was the discussion of inter-racial relationships and how beneficial they can be for all involved.