Beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, nationwide efforts to dismantle segregation and integrate schools through anti-discrimination lawsuits, although modestly successful on occasion, have ultimately foundered, producing neither
dramatic racial integration nor significant improvements in academic outcomes for black students.
Thinking more broadly, if desegregation and
integration were really such a disaster in terms of American race relations, how is one to explain the plethora of statistical and anecdotal evidence suggesting a
dramatic liberalization in
racial attitudes during the past four decades?