Review by Choice Review
According to Caldas and Bankston, efforts to enhance racial mixing in schools have been self-defeating. They contend that the premise of desegregation was that schools could redesign American society; however, they believe this clashed with the goals of parents who were concerned only with benefiting their own children. In their previous book, A Troubled Dream: The Promise and Failure of School Desegregation in Louisiana (CH, Oct'02, 40-1047), the authors found that court-ordered racial desegregation in three school districts resulted in white flight. In their new book, the authors look at a wide range of secondary sources to conclude that school people in the US face a paradox. While minority youth might profit from attending middle-class schools, middle-class parents abandon schools that must desegregate. Since the authors believe that racial desegregation exacerbates the problems schools and communities face, they favor strengthening neighborhood schools. Readers seeking other views on the same issue might consider Charles T. Clotfelter's After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation (2004) or John Charles Boger and Gary Orfield's edited volume, School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back? (CH, Feb'06, 43-3511). ^BSumming Up: Recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduates through faculty. J. Watras University of Dayton
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
