Desegregation as a Controversial Education Issue

Desegregation in education has several advantages, both tangible and intangible. One of the tangible benefits is that it increases interracial exposure between blacks and whites. For example, after a decade of the implementation of a desegregation plan in Milwaukee, the white enrollment in minority schools increased from 21 percent to 31 percent. In a society where African-Americans and whites appear to have grown increasingly racially polarized, racial mixing of this magnitude is an outstanding achievement.

Another tangible benefit of desegregation is the impact on academic achievement for African-American students who attend racially integrated schools. A recent study in St. Louis found that black children who were transferred to predominantly white high schools outperformed black students who remained in inner city districts, even schools that had adequate levels of funding. Higher rates of college attendance have also been associated with school integration.

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utility. A disadvantage of desegregation is that it often appears to represent a misallocation of financial resources. In the NAACP, the organization responsible for bringing the Brown v. Board of Education case to the Supreme Court, certain factions now question school integration as a goal: "The issue with the NAACP is that some of the membership is saying we can't just keep emphasizing integration. We have to put some emphasis on improving schools and the economic life of the black community." This reaction is partly prompted by the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent on legal fees to uphold school integration, including federal court-ordered busing, since the Supreme Court's decision on Brown. If even a fraction of this money were spent on building and improving inner city school facilities, educational outcomes for African-American students as a whole might improve relative to their white counterparts. A prominent critic of school desegregation is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who attacks the practice based on its assault to black pride. In supporting the Court's majority opinion in Missouri v. Jenkins, Thomas noted that predominantly black institutions are not necessarily inferior. Many o
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