Privatization as Legal Segregation: Examining How Texas Bypassed Federal Integration Mandates to Maintain School Segregation

• In Event: 40821 - Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 19. Urban Education

Abstract

This essay aims to identify how the Texas state legislature responded to the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling outlawing segregation in schools. I apply DuBois’s “looking backward” framework to examine why segregation remained prominent in Texas in the period immediately following the ruling and argue Texas took an approach similar to its tactics during Reconstruction, looking backward to a time of stronger racial exploitation to enshrine policies of discrimination. Through a content analysis of Texas legislative bills that passed committee in the period of 1951 - 1963, I identify the ways in which Texas "exhausted every remedy before complying" with the Supreme Court. This research illustrates the ways in which civil rights legislation, specifically school desegregation legislation, failed to address the alleged aims of educational equality. Most notably, the research highlights how these failures are not accidental and outlines the consequences of policies that sought not to reduce racial disparities, but reduce the blame Whites faced for racialized oppression.

Author

• Anthony Samuel Jackson, Texas A&M University-College Station