[Hot Air] I was born in 1964, a decade after Brown v Board of Education started the process of desegregating public schools. When I was in graduate school in North Carolina I regularly met people who had attended segregated schools, and they weren’t much older than I.
It was sobering. Having attended public schools in Tucson, AZ, segregation seemed like a historical phenomenon from a distant past. Sure, there was racial tension, but nobody I met ever had any direct experience with segregated schools.
Now, nearly 70 years after the Brown decision, segregation is becoming a reality once again, if with very different excuses. I am not sure if the reasons themselves are different—I actually think that many of the new proponents of segregation have the same fundamental belief that Blacks are intellectually inferior to Whites.
But they now couch their excuse for separating Black and White students as an act of compassion and solidarity with our Black and Brown brothers, rather than as protecting White students from Blacks. Now we are supposedly protecting minorities from the evils of White Supremacy.
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