"Acting White": How the Past Implementation of School Desegregation Helped Create Today's Attainment and Achievement Gaps. Issue 4 (1st October 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Buck, Stuart
• Is Part Of: Journal of school choice. Volume 10:Issue 4(2016)
• Page Start: 436
• Page End: 445
• Publication Date: 2016-10-01
• Subjects: education -- desegregation -- school choice; School choice -- United States -- Periodicals; School choice; United States; Periodicals; 370
• DOI: 10.1080/15582159.2016.1238734
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1558-2159

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Summarizing my prior work, the only book length treatment of the "acting White" phenomenon (Buck, 2010), I argue that while desegregation was both a moral necessity and a social good, the manner in which desegregation was implemented by White authorities led indirectly to today's achievement gaps. In the course of desegregation previously all-African-American schools were closed, with their faculty and administrators typically demoted or terminated, and their students sent to previously all-White schools, where they were not always welcomed. This massive social change established scholarly achievement as part of a White identity, not a Black identity. Unfortunately, this diagnoses may not lend itself to easy solutions.