Week 7 Post

The traditional view that racial discrimination was solely a regional problem in the South is a narrow perspective that overlooks the Civil Rights Movement’s full scope and complexity. The civil rights struggles in New York City and Boston’s schools challenge this view by highlighting the pervasiveness of racism and the struggle for equality beyond the South.In New York City, the Civil Rights Movement focused on issues such as housing discrimination, police brutality, and school segregation. The city’s housing policies often enforced racial segregation, with African Americans and other minorities relegated to crowded, substandard living conditions in segregated neighborhoods. The police department also had a reputation for targeting minorities with discriminatory practices, such as stop-and-frisk searches. In the 1960s, African American students organized protests and boycotts to demand equal access to education and an end to segregation in New York City’s public schools. In the 1970s, the city’s public schools were deeply segregated, with white students attending schools in predominantly white neighborhoods and African American and other minority students relegated to overcrowded, underfunded schools in segregated neighborhoods. The desegregation of Boston’s schools was a contentious and often violent process, marked by protests, riots, and court battles. The city’s African American and white communities were deeply divided, and many white parents opposed the integration of schools, leading to clashes with police and violence against African American students.These civil rights struggles in New York City and Boston demonstrate that racial discrimination and inequality were not limited to the South. When reading the article is was very shocking to me that this was happening all around, because we are use to hearing that segregation was only in the south and that the North was good. Reading about how this was going on in New York and then reading the quote “WHAT DO YOU DO ABOUT THE POOR CHILDREN RIGHT HERE.” Then right after over 460,000 students and teachers refused to go to school and protest foRather, they were pervasive throughout the United States, with different forms of discrimination and oppression in different regions. By challenging the traditional view of the Civil Rights Movement as solely a Southern problem, these struggles help to broaden our understanding of the movement’s goals and its ongoing legacy.White liberals in the North often used coded language to avoid accusations of racism, particularly in the context of the Civil Rights Movement. This language included terms such as “urban renewal,” “neighborhood revitalization,” and “law and order,” which were used to justify policies that often had discriminatory effects on African American communities. The Civil Rights Movement brought issues of racial injustice to the forefront of public discourse, forcing many white liberals to confront their own biases and complicity in systems of discrimination. The use of coded language was a way for some of these individuals to distance themselves from overtly racist language and policies while still maintaining their power and privilege.