Blog #20

 Desegregation in Schools

When thinking about school I think about my peers and how many of them are of a different race. This seems so normal to me. It feels like it's always been that way but in reality it hasn't. Up until 1954 schools were separated by race and "dominant race", which was white, received the better education and books. This all changed through the Brown vs. Board of Education trial in supreme court where it was declared that state laws supporting separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The supreme court took a federalist stand and changed the law to desegregate schools and it has been that way since.

I talked to my grandma who told me about her experience with the desegregation in schools. She said that it didn't seem to make a difference in California, at her high school there was one black boy who was encouraged to go there because he was very good at Track and Field. I asked her how she reacted and she said she reacted like everyone else in the school. She said he was excepted because he was athletic and people saw him as one of the "jocks". I then asked her what she knew what federalism and anti federalism was and she told me she had the federalist papers at home but didn't know too much because she hasn't read them. I describe them to her as federalists are for the man while anti federalists are not. She nodded her head in agreement. I then asked her if the desegregation of schools was considered fed or anti fed. She told me it was federalist because the government was in change and changed the law. We then shifte conversation to other topics about the family and never came back to the subject.