Dr. Alwin Spence.
Since I am now retired, I have more time to just sit back recollecting some of my past old experiences. As you know new experiences do not get stored easily, so there is not much new material to recall. Speaking to myself I asked, can you imagine that this year, 2024 will be fifty years since I defended my Doctoral Thesis at Rutgers Graduate School. Woops! How time flies! Quite recently I got a call, one that I expected. At the other end there was a soft voice which said, ‘ Hi Dad, this is Dr. Sandra. It was a playful moment. It was a joyful moment of laughter and pride celebrated by a father and his daughter at that special moment. Sandra had successfully defended her dissertation.
It was time to say congratulations. Sandra has been a faculty member at Emory University for over twenty years. I say all this because I am very proud of her. Hard work and stick-to-itiveness paid off. But during all this, I lost my very dear cousin, followed closely by my eldest sister. But God is still good all the time. As I think back, I was at Rutgers for two years and those years were very important in my career because of the great changes in the Education system in the United States, and as we say when the U.S. catches a cold Canada sneeze. In other words what happens in the U.S. affects Canada.
The Education system in the U.S. supported and practiced Segregation. White students were sent to better schools, better and new buildings. better equipped, better qualified teachers and of course better results. Schools for Blacks were inferior and as such produced.
very poor students. The segregated system was a direct result of prejudice and discrimination. The conscience of some white people and some Blacks started to label segregation as some form of discrimination which is wrong and unchristian, and it should be abolished. In place desegregation should be introduced. Many felt good about this change as both groups were together in the same schools. The hope of this was to bring about Integration. Many refused to comply, they only did by the threat and the withholding of funds. What many had hoped for was that desegregation would lead to integration. It did not. Desegregation brought with it a new concept, a new label called Resegregation, which is also a discriminative tool different from the ones used in the case of segregation.
Desegregation to many meant at least one Black child is registered in an all-white school and at least one white student is registered in an all-Black school. Prior to going to Rutgers, I counselled at Northmont High, in Montreal. Northmont in 1971 was designated one of the few Inner-City schools in Canada. To put it bluntly, there were many Inner-City schools in the U.S. Desegregation had failed the expectation of many, particularly Blacks, who expected desegregation to be more like Integration. This was far from the truth and reality. With desegregation there were no all-white or all-Black schools. They were now described as predominantly white or predominantly Black.
These new labels came with extra problems and baggage. These new issues together were named Resegregation. a direct result of desegregation. As we all know, discrimination is only cosmetic, you can bring people together, but you cannot change their minds on the basis of togetherness. So physically both groups may be in the same school, but has Integre stution taken place? No.! What took place was Resegregation, and discrimination. But who suffered more from desegregation? Black students, Black teachers and administrators and the Black population at large.
INTEGRATION.
Let me begin with what may very well be a utopia situation that brings together mind, body and soul into a cohesive whole, which would be better and stronger than the sum of its parts. Blacks, because of their own History were against it, while mentally some white people never gave up on segregation.
RESEGREGATION
As the name suggests, Resegregation is to discriminate in a multiple of different ways. One writer refers to Resegregation as the dysfunctional consequences of desegregation. Many may blame Immigration at large and also outmigration in urban communities. Moving away from the cities to the rural areas created strong and effective education, while the urban places became increasingly Black and poor. Urban school districts achieved a Black majority. In Atlanta, Georgia, in 1958 it operated a segregated school system of which 70% were white and 30% were black. In 1978 Atlanta had 74,300 school children, 89% of whom were Blacks and only 10% were Whiles. Where did the white children go? This pattern of movement was happening in many states. I was in New Jersey at that time and had first-hand experience of this Education shift. The suburban school were overwhelmingly White, while the Urban schools were predominantly Blacks, Part of Resegregation was ability grouping of students, so obviously the two groups remained apart. The Black students were far behind academically. The most qualified teachers, Black and white were sent to the predominantly white schools while the Black teachers were farmed out to the majority Black student school. Better equipped classrooms, furnished labs and better playing fields were given to the white schools. so, it should not be a surprise that white students would be far ahead. So, discrimination was not killed by desegregation, it appeared in other forms. Blacks were heavily disadvantaged under Resegregation. Many of them were fired, had to take on more responsibility. As schools merged Black teachers and administrators were demoted and forced to accept positions far away from their homes. As a bribe many white and Blacks were offered extra pay (Combat Pay) Many white teachers and even some Black ones in the Inner schools had no interest or appreciation of the type of problem encountered by students whose major preoccupations were with day-to-day survival. Many were insensitive to cultural differences in their students, based on social class structure and different opportunity patterns. This insensitivity was usually reflected in their belief system concerning the educability of the Black students. Many white teachers communicate these negative perceptions of the students’ ability to learn, and these students in turn, sensing this expectation, responded by not demonstrating evidence of having learned. This type of attitude toward Blacks was often exhibited by some policemen and policewomen, social workers, and other white authority figures. Resegregation brought with it, more suspension of Black students, teachers and more Black administrators A Black administrator was even demoted to become a janitor. It is also accepted that Black children enter school with very high self-worth, but after a few years of the negative school, their self-esteem would have dropped sharply. So, trying to correct one negative, many more were created. No win for Blacks. You be the judge!
