Racial segregation is worse than it was fifty years ago. At least, that is the educated the opinion of Jonathan Kozol in his essay "Still Separate, Still Unequal" Kozol directs us attention to the growing problem of racial segregation in today's inner city and urban schools. Kozol offers several supporting ideas to support his claim that come from his research and observations in many different schools, it's teachers, and it's students.
The statistics that Kozol provides make the problem of segregation seem much more real. As you can see from his statistics, the majority of students that are enrolled in urban areas are black or Hispanic: 79% in Chicago, 94% in Washington D.C., 82% in Saint Louis and 84% in Los Angeles for a few examples. Not only that, but Kozol research also shows that Caucasian children living in public school districts that enroll blacks and Hispanics as a majority usually won't attend that particular school and enroll in more predominantly white schools instead.
Kozol backs his claim by describing the differences in this inner city and urban school conditions, which range from overcrowding in the schools and clean restrooms to differences in the actual education that is provided to these students. Libraries and art programs are almost nonexistents in inner city schools. Each example that Kozol brings up helps back his claim that racial segregation is still very present. There is a very large difference in the salaries of the teachers that teach in the white schools and the teachers that teach in the inner city schools. Kozol also points out that that more government funding goes to these other schools.
Kozol has many in depth conversations with not only the teachers and staff but also with the students themselves to see what their views are on the dire conditions of the schools and their programs. One teacher explains to Kozol "This he told me, pointing to the garbage bag, then gesturing around him at the other indications of decay and disrepair one sees in ghetto schools much like it elsewhere would not happen to white children" (410) Many students wrote him in hopes of getting much need help with new programs, equipment, and repairs.
