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**South Africa is trying to overcome the past injustices....**
=Shall we?=

We haven't yet...
There is still racial segregation in the United States. Many communities in America continue to be divided by race. Though we as a society have come a long way. There is much more that we can all do right here at home to end the apartheid, the racial divide that exists here in the U.S.

This Site talks about South African apartheid at length, but what about our own history in our own back yard? Here is a pictoral journey through the Civil Rights movement, and the strugles that our own fellow countrymen struggled through...

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Click on the map to visit an interactive map done by the University of Michigan. It shows the racial divide that exists all over the United States. Notice the concentration of African Americans in the inner cities, and the whites on the outskirts of these major metropolitan areas.



Critical Essay:
Below is a critical essay written by me concerning a study by Kriztina Tihani published in the [|International Journal of Inclusive Education]. She discusses the difference between the Desegregation of Apartheid in South African the 1990's, and the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. in the 1960's

Education and Apartheid:
A Review of Comparative Education Between the U.S. and South Africa

In Kriztina Tihani's Article "Racial Integration in the USA and South Africa: lessons in comparative perspective" published in the International Journal of Inclusive Education (Vol. 11, No. 2, March 2007, p.p. 177-197), the differences on integration of the public school systems in South Africa at the end of apartheid in the 1990's is compared to the integration of schools in the U.S, during the 1960's and 1970's. Tihani attempts to compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages that each place faced incorporating the economic, social, and political factors that both helped and hindered the end of segregation.

Tihani begins by discussing the role that race played in education initially. She explains that the U.S. because of Plessy v. Ferguson began the de jure segregation that allowed segregated schools to flourish all over the U.S. and it was not until Brown v. Board of Education, nearly fifty-eight years later that the "separate but equal" doctrine was abolished. Due to initial resistance in The South, the federal government forced segregation and the attention was given to that region; however, as a result, the North while attempting to desegregate did not do so as effectively as the South did.

In South Africa, children were divided into four separate racial groups: African, Coloured, Indian, and White. Each of these ethnic groups had their own ministry of education that oversaw each group's curriculum. As apartheid ended, the government solution to giving equal education among such disparate schools was to allow fees from schools to be charged on a "sliding scale" as a result the better schools became over logged with applicants allowing the schools to charge more for admission and still only providing the richest families with the best education.

An important difference in the U.S. versus South Africa was the amount of population that was affected by the change. In the U.S., integration of schools, only dealt with the minority black population, a small twelve percent of the overall population, while South Africa had to fairly integrate the black population which was an overwhelming majority of the overall population, making efforts much more difficult. Tihani also points out that there was an economic boom in the U.S. at the time of desegregation that allowed politicians to be more willing to share the economic wealth through equal education, this was not however the situation in South Africa. In fact, Tihani even refers to South Africa as "a third world country with its foot in the first world". She points out that both the U.S. and South Africa use segregated neighborhoods as a means to maintain segregation. It was much more difficult to desegregate in South Africa because while the U.S. only had the task of desegregating schools which later lead to changes in race relations in other realms, the end of apartheid forced the South African government to desegregate the entire nation in everyway simultaneously on a minute budget.

The unintended consequence of the attempt to make the black students rise to the same level of education as the whites in both the U.S. and South Africa was that the "white lifestyle" became the desirable status goal, and thus, black culture was made to seem substandard to the whites, a condition that existed since colonization in South Africa and slavery in the U.S. South Africa did have an advantage in desegregation that the U.S. did not. As a result of the U.S.'s disconjoined local control of school curriculum, there was no universal ideology taught within schools to teach the evils of racism and segregation; this was not the case in South Africa. There, the curriculum to follow the government initiative to end apartheid unified its school curriculum to change the mind of the populace as a whole, a luxury that the U.S. is not able to do within its federalist confines.

Tihani points out that out of desegregation, there is more racial conflict now in the U.S. than in South Africa because South Africa has begun to divide more among socio-economic lines than racial lines at this point. The reason for this is simple; in the U.S. equal access to public education causes both a racial and class conflict to arise simultaneously, which causes greater racial tensions. In South Africa, not that apartheid has ended, new racial groups are becoming a part of the new economic classes. As a result, these more affluent families move to better neighborhoods and send their children to better schools. As a result the South African system has managed to maintain a harmony among socio-economic groups in a stronger bond than the former racial ties that existed under apartheid.

A more important point made in this article deals with the motivations behind desegregation. In the U.S. the mandate came from the Courts and as a result, the American population was "forced" to conform to the desegregation that was occurring, and in a way, stifling the discourse concerning race relations. This unintended consequence caused many regions of the U.S. to experience a long- term animosity that in many places of the U.S., exist to this day. In South Africa, while the order for desegregation did come from legal channels, the intention was not forced as it was in the U.S. Instead, there was a moral imperative that the majority of the people to receive equal treatment under the law.

In conclusion, Tihani finds that because the black population in South Africa (after apartheid) has more access to political rights than their U.S. counterparts due to their larger percent of total population, they were better able to control the changes that occurred, and as a result, have a system that is more suitable to their needs. She finds the change in the U.S. to be much less organic than in South Africa. In her comparison, Tihani, found serious problems within both systems that arose from the same source. Both states education systems are built on a denial of the social and economic circumstances that have arisen as a result of the racism that occurred. As a result the attempt to "soldier onward" leaves serious social issues buried that could possibly lead to an enlightenment that would assist both states in becoming more integrated, both socially and economically. While this analysis, does bring some interesting questions to the table in discussing the apartheid that existed in both places and the consequences that have arisen through the attempt to rectify it, I feel the research methods within this paper are not equally derived for each country. Tihani admits from the beginning of her paper that her information from South Africa comes from personal research that she did while teaching in South Africa, first hand, while her research concerning the U.S. came from second hand. As a result, her paper seems very unevenly written. Often times her anecdotal style and biased opinions seems to discredit her research and turn her paper into nothing more than an editorial on race relations, and while I am compelled to believe her analysis of the situations, and feel that an interesting mental analysis of the subject was pursued, I do not feel that this topic was adequately researched or at least presented professionally enough to be considered a reliable source on the topic. This paper is a template of ideas that can be used as a springboard into more research on a fascinating topic, but nothing more. While Tihani often presents her own criticisms within the paper as to its weaknesses, and even refers to criticisms that she has received from colleagues in revising the paper for publication, I feel that the paper is still a work in progress, and that the twenty-two pages of this paper do not scratch the surface of a comparative topic of this breath. This paper was simply a brief overview, rather than a comprehensive comparative study. It would take an entire book to comprehensively cover this topic with any sort of justice. However, Tihani's incite into the connections that occur between such different places in such different circumstances, that still result in very similar outcomes in which both places have unrealized potential is skillful and encourages the reader to further explore the topic. As an American reading this paper, am compelled to believe that we have much further to go in improving race relations than South Africa has despite the fact that our desegregation began nearly forty years before South Africa because the political will to change is still not as strong in the U.S. as it is and continues to be in South Africa. African-Americans in this country are still not givin the voice that blacks are given in South Africa. South Africa and the U.S. both share an embarrassing past, one more recent than the other. Coming to terms with the after effects and developing effective solutions to equal the educational playing field is a start, but South Africa is much further along than the U.S. in the effort to change the hearts of the people to eliminate racism through public education and government policy.