Fighting the Politics of Access to Higher Education

While growing up I heard versions of the adage, “show me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are”. I considered the proverb a warning to cultivate friendships with upstanding and exemplary individuals and that not doing so would reflect negatively on my character. 

However, it was not until my transition from student to education practitioner and then from education practitioner to scholar, that I realised most young people in the United States do not choose their friends because their friends are chosen for them. 

If you are a student in a public school classroom in the United States, your friends and classmates most likely share the same racial and ethnic background and socio-economic status as you. 

In cities like my hometown Detroit and other urban centres like Chicago, Atlanta and Houston, black students attend schools that are extremely segregated. Unlike the codified school segregation before the Brown V Board of Education ruling of 1954 that ruled “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”, United States public schools now suffer from de facto segregation.

More information: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20161205174452812