Racial inequality has plagued the American school system for centuries. Since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, integration has been seen as the path to rectifying this inequality. Blum, a philosopher, and Burkholder, an historian, look at the history of the denial of equality to African Americans, Native Americans, Latinxs, and Asian Americans, and their struggles for educational justice. The four different groups have had differing histories and different complex relationships to the goal of integration, sometimes embracing it, sometimes rejecting it, yet always seeking equality ... More

Racial inequality has plagued the American school system for centuries. Since the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, integration has been seen as the path to rectifying this inequality. Blum, a philosopher, and Burkholder, an historian, look at the history of the denial of equality to African Americans, Native Americans, Latinxs, and Asian Americans, and their struggles for educational justice. The four different groups have had differing histories and different complex relationships to the goal of integration, sometimes embracing it, sometimes rejecting it, yet always seeking equality and recognition of their distinctive heritages, cultures, and group identities within schools and curricula. Blum and Burkholder argue that equality is best understood as educational goods—curricular mastery, personal growth, moral capabilities and civic commitments—rather than the opportunity to compete for occupations and rewards on a “level playing field.” But injustices of both a racial and class nature outside the school, in housing, income, wealth, and health, inevitably constrain schools’ ability to create racial equality. Teachers confront student poverty and its challenges to learning, while advantaged families often attempt to “opportunity hoard” as a way to benefit their own children and (intentionally or not) further disadvantage the already disadvantaged. Without ultimately dismantling white supremacy and extreme class inequality, educational equality remains an unattainable dream, and cannot be produced through integration. However, integration is a civic imperative, preparing an increasingly ethnically and racially diverse population with the civic knowledge, commitments, and attachments across racial lines for life in a multicultural democracy.