Critique on School Segregation

My stand on School Segregation in modern day USA. Also my opener for a debate on the same subject.


The 14th amendment states “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” To make sense of what has been said we must first define relevant terms to this debate, and the two key terms that need to be defined are “liberty” and “equal protection of the laws”. Liberty as defined by the 1793 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizens states that “Liberty is the power which man has to do everything which does not harm the rights of others.” “Equal protection of the laws” can also be translated as stated in the same 1793 constitution “Equality consists in the fact that the law is the same for all, whether it protects or punishes”. With that being said, segregations in schools are unconstitutional.

According to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals “Classifications of citizens solely on the basis of race are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality and that the use of race threatens to stigmatize individuals by reason of their membership in a racial group and to incite racial hostility.” Furthermore, according to empirical studies done by the National Education Association stated that “closing the door on racial diversity in the schools, we open the door to further racial prejudice and discrimination by perpetuating the racial isolation that breeds such prejudice and discrimination” and thus racial segregation in schools creates hostile situations between races.

According to social scientists, that has concluded that schools with racial diversity have students with better creative problem solving because of the interactions of all the students. And thus if you segregate schools, you will be taking away important cognitive skills that children learn at a young age.

Another detriment made by segregations in schools is also one of the more profound problems that should be taken a serious look at before considering re-implementing segregation laws. For a democracy to truly work and society to be kept in order; the people in that society have to work together. In Fiji, the island is racially segregated between the local Fijians and the foreign Indians. Because of this, the politics also reflect this segregation, parties in Fiji are based on race, this heavily threatens democracy, because political parties are supposed to represent policies and ideologies, not race, so when one party in Fiji wins, it means that one race has won over the other (Margaret Palmer). With that being said, According to studies done by the NEA “Adults who went to racially diverse schools are more likely to live in desegregated neighborhoods, have children who attend desegregated schools, and have close friends of the other race than do adults who went to segregated schools”. So, according to empirical evidence, segregating schools, will keep races from interacting from each other; thus segregating schools is a threat to democracy.