San Antonio College Library

Commentators from Bill Cosby to Barack Obama have observed the phenomenon of black schoolchildren accusing studious classmates of "acting white." How did this contentious phrase, with roots in Jim Crow era racial discord, become a part of the schoolyard lexicon, and what does it say about the state of racial identity in the American system of education? The answer, writes the author in this frank and thoroughly researched book, lies in the complex...

The United States Supreme Court's 1954 landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education, set into motion a process of desegregation that would eventually transform American public schools. This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of how Brown's most visible effect--contact between students of different racial groups--has changed over the fifty years since the decision. Using both published and unpublished data on school enrollments...

"The United States today is a suburban nation that thinks of race as an urban issue, and often assumes that it has been largely solved," write the editors of this book. They show that the locus of racial and ethnic transformation is now clearly suburban and illustrate patterns of demographic change in the suburbs with a series of case studies. The book concludes by considering what kinds of strategies school officials and community leaders can pursue...