It is a commonplace by now to say that the urban school systems of America contain a higher percentage of Negro children each year.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
At present, black children are more segregated in their public schools than at any time since 1968. In the inner-city schools I visit, minority children typically represent 95 percent to 99 percent of class enrollment.
In some states, not even 50 percent of black boys finish high school.
We are now operating a school system in America that's more segregated than at any time since the death of Martin Luther King.
In fact, the Harvard study data indicates that 70 percent of African American children attend schools that are predominately African American, about the same level as in 1968 when Dr. King died.
We cannot ignore the disparity in resources that continue to plague many of our school systems, especially those serving predominantly inner-city minority and impoverished children.
Now we maintain that we cannot be afford to be concerned about 6 percent of the children in this country, black children, who you allow to come into white schools. We have 94 percent who still live in shacks. We are going to be concerned about those 94 percent.
Since the day Martin Luther King was killed, the black middle classes have almost quadrupled, but the percentage of black children living on or below the poverty line is almost the same.
Even schools for Negroes, then, are places where they must be convinced of their inferiority.
Progress for black Americans depends on good schools because education is the last great equalizer.
Hypersegregated inner-city schools - in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as many as 3,000 - are the norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today.
No opposing quotes found.