Chapter 1: Rethinking African American Education Post-Brown: An Introduction

The failure of American education to achieve racial diversity has resulted from the inability of educational researchers, policy makers, and judicial officials to disentangle the complex implications of education and schooling that have emerged in a post-segregated society. In The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935, James Anderson (1988) argues that structural components of the American educational system have historically embraced bi-directional procedures for the purpose of schooling. Schooling, as an indoctrination or socialization process, is structured to prepare individuals for either servitude or leadership roles. The formal instruction of education is appropriated and arranged to accommodate the demands of the larger society. The process of schooling inherently seeks to sustain the American society. The system of education is structured to reproduce homogenous ideologies (Grusky, 2000; Karabel & Halsey, 1977; Persell, 1977).