Majority-minority Educational Success Sans Integration: A Comparative-International View

• Published in: The Review of Black political economy 2023-06, Vol.50 (2), p.194-221
• Main Authors: Merry, Michael S., Agirdag, Orhan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Educational inequality; Racial differences; Racial justice; Resources; School desegregation; Schools; Segregation; Success
• ISSN: 0034-6446; 1936-4814
• DOI: 10.1177/00346446221120825

Strategies for tackling educational inequality take many forms, though perhaps the argument most often invoked is school integration. Yet whatever the promise of integration may be, its realization continues to be hobbled by numerous difficulties. In this paper we examine what many of these difficulties are. Yet in contrast to how many empirical researchers frame these issues, we argue that while educational success in majority-minority schools will depend on a variety of material and non-material resources, the presence of these resources does not require school integration; indeed sometimes the most crucial resources are easier to foster in its absence. To that end, we briefly canvass the evidence from the United States on high performing majority-minority schools serving poor and minority students. Yet because these debates are so contentious in the American context, we pivot away from the U.S. to consider a different country, the Netherlands. We invite the reader to consider an analogous case where racial injustice and educational inequality are just as serious, yet where differences in the state school system might prove instructive concerning how some majority-minority schools choose to respond to existing segregation, but more importantly how educational success can occur in the absence of integration.