A historical-philosophical case for ethnoracial school integration

Abstract

In Integrations: The Struggle for Racial Equality and Civic Renewal in Public Education, philosopher Lawrence Blum and education historian Zoë Burkholder ambitiously set out to “examine . . . the enduring problem of racial inequality in American public schools through a historical and philosophical analysis”; the book’s central goal is “to help readers better understand racial inequality in the American public education system in order to advocate for more equitable and just forms of schooling” (p. 1). This collaboration argues that, ideally, education should work toward “egalitarian civic integrationist pluralism” because it “provides the strongest foundation for pursuing racial equality in American public schools” (p. 12). Blum and Burkholder have, respectively, spent their scholarly careers exploring questions related to race and education, suggesting their familiarity with these topics. With related research foci that coalesce around social studies education, we offer this assessment as educational humanities scholars, namely, as a Black historian of education and a white, burgeoning philosopher of education. Ultimately, Integrations prescribes a framework of particular educational goods thought to foster egalitarian civic integrationist pluralism; these goods, Integrations posits, ought to constitute the educational goals of which students of Color have been systematically deprived. Blum and Burkholder are to be commended for their collaborative endeavor, as this title is one of few that demonstrates the promise of cross-disciplinary efforts to address an issue that has largely defined much of U.S. education: integration. Perhaps, the book’s main contribution is the concept of integrations in plural form, hence its title; this offering supports their educational goods framework, which revisits claims regularly promoted by proponents of school desegregation and integration. Over the course of the text, Blum and Burkholder explain that integration is a more varied process than typically conceived because the term has so many different definitions and dimensions. The authors’ ideal view of integrations is undergirded by their educational goods framework, and they clarify this connection in asserting that