Cornel West Quotes

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

The public school system is not about educating black children. Never has been. Inner-city schools are about social control. Period. They’re operated as holding pens—miniature jails, really. It’s only when black children start breaking out of their pens and bothering white people that society even pays any attention to the issue of whether these children are being educated.

I wrote the first book, and I thought people would say: 'Separate and unequal schools in the City of Boston? I didn't know that. Let's go out and fix it.'

Many well-meaning intelligent people have argued since the May 17, 1954, decision of the United States Supreme Court outlawing segregation in the public schools that communication between the races has broken down.

I favor school integration. I do not favor mandatory busing. The only kids who were bused are the poor children. The rich parents either move or put the kid in private schools.

We still have two separate public school systems in this country. It’s not [any longer] based on race; it’s based on economics, but that’s related to race.

The segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of law: for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group.

Schools are no longer legally segregated, but because of residential patterns, housing discrimination, economic disparities and long-held custom, they most emphatically are in reality.

It shall be unlawful for any person, corporation, or association of persons to maintain or operate any college, school, or institution where persons of the white and negro races are both received as pupils for instruction.

My neighborhood is fairly white, yet the local middle school is all black. It is bad. It is very bad.

Sure, integrating schools may sound benign. But whats the use of living in a gated community if my kids go to school and get poor all over them?

Atlanta's a good example of a city that's quite sprawling, where there's a sharp division between where blacks and whites live, between where low-income and high-income families live.

Let's concede that we have decided to let our children grow up in two separate nations, and lead two separate kinds of lives. If, on the other hand, we have the courage to rise to this challenge to name what's happening within our inner-city schools, then we also need the courage to be activist and go out and fight like hell to change it.

I'm not knocking private schools, but I owe it to my kids to let them grow up in a place where private school isn't required. They're only in school 6-8 hours a day; they have to live in their neighborhood 24 hours a day. I didn't want them growing up in a place where anybody with the means had abandoned their public schools.

Federal, state and municipal policies have isolated many children, especially in urban districts, into schools that are segregated by race, class and income.

Ensuring preschool education for all and investing more in public schools is essential if the U.S. is to avoid becoming a neo-feudal country where advantages and disadvantages are passed on from one generation to the next.

On the surface, public schools can seem egalitarian, especially with their websites' emphasis on words such as 'connection,' 'community,' and 'choice.' Yet despite this democratic vocabulary, money makes a big difference.

Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, it's time for us to take a hard look at the separate and unequal conditions that still exist in our schools and our communities and rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the promise of equal opportunity for all.

I grew up in the era of the desegregation program. I actually got bussed to a predominately white high school. I didn't have a choice.

From closing the digital divide to after-school activities and eating well, we cannot afford to ignore the link between deprivation and underachievement.

I've never believed the charter movement was exclusively for socially and economically disadvantaged kids.

Millennials easily connect the dots between good education and good opportunities, and they also understand that it isn't just hard work that determines how well a child will be educated - it also depends on where they live and the resources their parents commit to their education.

I grew up in Haughton, Louisiana. I go to my white grandparents' house, and then I cross the railroad tracks and hang out with my black grandma. We have English teachers on my white side. My grandpa is a principal. And then you go to the other side, and people have been in jail.

All boys and girls should have the opportunity to receive a high-quality education, no matter what part of the country they live in and irrespective of whether their parents are rich or poor. It is the state's duty to make sufficient money available for the establishment of good public schools. A well-educated youth is crucial so that Chile can continue to grow economically.

I just cannot understand why we can't have better schools. That private schools are the only option for the kind of high-net-worth crowd, I think, is ridiculous. It should be a major initiative. It should be something we're all working on. We have to get our head out of the clouds.