Discrimination and Disparities

by Thomas Sowell

In any event, the crusade to racially integrate public schools, during the decades following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, generated much social turmoil, racial polarization and bitter backlashes, but no general educational improvement from seating black school children next to white school children. One of the painful ironies of the racial integration crusade was that Dunbar High School’s 85 years of academic achievement came to an abrupt end, in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. To comply with that decision, Washington schools were all made neighborhood schools, so that Dunbar could no longer admit black students from anywhere in the city, as it had before, but only students from the particular ghetto neighborhood where it was located. Dunbar quickly became a typical failing ghetto school, with both academic and behavioral problems.