Stepping Over the Color Line: African-American Students in White Suburban Schools

By Robert L. Crain, Amy Stuart Wells, Mr. Robert L. Crain

Book Overview

This important book takes the discussion of racial inequality in America beyond simplistic arguments of white racism and black victimization to a more complex conversation about the separate but unequal situation in many schools today. Amy Stuart Wells and Robert Crain investigate the St. Louis, Missouri, school desegregation plan, a unique agreement that since 1983 has given black inner-city students the right to choose to attend predominantly white suburban schools. After five years of research and hundreds of interviews with policymakers, administrators, teachers, students, and parents, Wells and Crain conclude that when school desegregation is examined from these many perspectives, more strengths than weaknesses emerge. They call for a reexamination of now-popular school choice policies across the country so that these policies may help to bring about more racial and social-class integration.

Stepping over the Color Line intertwines data on student achievement and racial isolation with stories of the people who participated in the St. Louis program. The authors set these individuals within a broad historical and social context and demonstrate how important linkages between the past and present help explain why efforts to overcome racial inequality--in St. Louis and in the larger society--are so difficult.

"The authors do a superb job of explaining how this innovative program came about, placing it in a broad context that takes it beyond its immediate and local implications. The book is at times heartbreaking and at times uplifting."--Richard Zweigenhaft, co-author of Blacks in the White Establishment? A Study of Race and Class in America

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300081332
• ISBN13: 9780300081336
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Timely and Informative

I first read this book for a graduate class in education, and I am now purchasing it for the second time. St. Louis is in the process of dismantling its voluntary desegregation program, and leaders are finding themselves asking the same questions they were at the program's inception. They are finding there are no clear solutions to the problem of race and equality in American society and schools, as evidenced in this excellently researched book. TS Eliot said it better than I ever could: "And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Through this book Wells and Crain provide us with maps for our journey of understanding the dynamics of race in the U.S. Our paths, their work illustrates time and again, are left up to us.