Capitalism will never provide equal education or opportunities for Blacks, Latinos, and other oppressed nationalities, nor a real system of education for all working people. Inequality and oppression are among the foundation stones of the social relations under capitalism, including discrimination in housing, jobs, the court system, and every other aspect of this society. As with Social Security and other measures won as part of the struggles of workers and farmers, the two-party system and capitalist social relations themselves work incessantly to erode, undermine, and reverse the conquests of working people.

The education system under capitalism serves to reinforce the exploitation of the majority by the few. Despite the best intentions of many teachers, schools are institutions of social control that inculcate the dog-eat-dog social values of capitalist competition--the struggle of each against all. Human solidarity is undermined, and students are taught to accept the norms of bourgeois society based on class differentiation.

The erosion of school desegregation plans, including the dismantling of school busing programs across the country, goes hand in hand with the assault by the capitalist rulers on affirmative action. They have dealt serious blows to affirmative action across the country, from California's Proposition 209 banning affirmative action in college admissions and hiring, to the Appeals Court ruling in Texas that also struck down affirmative action in university admissions.

The defeat in the 1960s of the Jim Crow system of legalized segregation in the South opened the road for better education and job opportunities for Blacks and other oppressed people. The mass working-class movement that swept across the southern United States instilled confidence in and strengthened the entire working class. It's no coincidence that the greatest advances in school desegregation were won in the South, which was ground zero in the battle against legalized segregation. That remains the situation today.

The fight for school desegregation is intertwined with the fight for affirmative action, bilingual education, immigrant rights, and other social questions that confront working people. It is through these battles that workers and farmers throw off the self-image and the divisions the capitalist rulers impose on us. Through our collective experience in struggles we can build solidarity and gain confidence that we are capable of taking power away from the exploiters and reorganizing society in our own interests.
 
 
Related article:
Report: schools becoming more segregated  
 
 
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