"Can We At Least Have Plessy?" Student Perspectives on Resegregation in North Carolina Public Schools

• In Event: 61.063 - Critical Educators and the Fight for Social Justice 60 Years Later

Abstract

Despite evidence to the contrary, this study seeks to reconcile whether students in the modern segregation era perceive their schools as segregated. For millennials the daily experience of attending a stereotypical hyper-segregated school may be nothing more than ordinary. This study aims to address this possible discrepancy by using students as the unit of analysis. With participants who attended high school in Charlotte Mecklenburg and Wake County, North Carolina after each district disbanded its bussing plan, the researcher seeks to understand if the segregated schooling experience has value unbeknownst to those who determine the “goodness” of schools by test-scores and graduation rates. Employing Critical Race Theory’s tenet, counterstorytelling, this paper will recount oral histories of modern segregated schools.

Author

• Shelby Eden Dawkins-Law, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill