Desegregation

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    After listening to the podcast about desegregation issues in the Normandy school district, my views on desegregation changed, and I found myself questioning a lot. 

    Looking back, I realized that what I thought desegregation was, is actually very different from the truth. Like every other innocent child in second grade, I first learned about segregation and desegregation, especially in schools. Now obviously a second grade teacher can't scar their students by telling them about the obscenities, racial slurs, or violence that came along with desegregation. Call it my ignorance, or maybe just my fear of knowing the horrors that came with the truth, I never exposed myself to how desegregation had affected black students. 

    I found it hard to sit through the podcast and listen to what students like Mah'Ria or Rihanna had to go through, especially the racial slurs that Rihanna was subjected to by another white student. I knew that white parents weren't in terms with desegregation, but hearing what some white parents had to say about the black students genuinely enraged me. "I deserve to not have to worry about my children getting stabbed, or taking a drug, or getting robbed. Because that's the issue. I don't care about the taxes."(Beth Cirami) Why?! What makes this parent think that black students who just want a good education would bring drugs or weapons with them?!

    Now, I don't blame the schools that took in black students from worse school districts, these schools probably had to go through a lot to be able to accommodate for additional students, but I was never aware of the lack of knowledge superintendents like Charles Pearson had about their own school districts.

    More knowledge on a topic is important, especially when the knowledge about a topic comes from those who truly suffered to gain something simple like education, but listening to this podcast upset me, and made me question much of my previous knowledge about desegregation. Why must a black student be kept away from a good education because of their race? Why must white parents fear for their children's lives if integration takes place?

Comments

  1. Veeksha SudhirDecember 12, 2021 at 1:44 PM

    Hi, I really like how you talked about how we were first taught about segregation in school. It really made me wonder whether or not we should be taught in school that early about segregation and desegregation, or if we should be taught when we are much older about everything else that comes with it. Because we definitely don't have the ability to process everything else about racism when we are that young, and it is also very important to learn everything about a topic at once especially when affects us everyday.
    I enjoyed reading your post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. EvaDecember 12, 2021 at 7:35 PM

    It's so great that you analyzed your own experience with racism and segregation. Truthfully, discrimination isn't something that we can only look at from an academic standpoint like we're doing now. I'm very glad that you hinted to that, because it's very easy to lose sight of the topic at hand when we're analyzing it at an academic level. This was a great read - good work!

    ReplyDelete

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