Chapter 7: Race Matters: Devaluation and the Achievement Gap Between African American and White Students

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize winner, statesman, and civil rights leader, once declaimed that he envisioned a day when people would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” (March on Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963). However, as Cornel West (1993), professor of theology and student of race relations in the United States, asserts, “race matters.” This is an apt corollary to the gap between the ideal and the real in the American educational system. A new understanding is needed regarding how and why the color of a child will determine the quality of education he or she will receive.