Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to racism, racially motivated violence, inequality, and systemic injustice.

Society in the United States has long been separated along racial lines to varying degrees. This segregation has been enforced both legally and socially, depending on the era, and has led to great inequalities between races. Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, many states began to pass laws that ensured Black people would be able to not integrate into white society. In the South, a collection of state and local laws known as Jim Crow laws required “separate but equal” spaces for Black and white people, including schools, neighborhoods, seating on public transportation, and even water fountains. None of these spaces, however, were truly “equal,” and Black people often had to make do with significantly inferior resources.

In the 1950s and 60s, Supreme Court cases like Brown v. Board of Education and Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States helped to bring an end to legal segregation, along with legislation like the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act.

Although segregation is no longer legally enforced and legal protections prohibit discrimination based on race, a number of social practices continue to promote the separation of races, and in The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, Kozol argues that the nation’s public schools are as segregated as ever.