It is equally plain they are not squarely facing the myths that have grown up around desegregation. The first and most insidious myth is that white children are somehow hurt by integration. Although critics of racial mixing in schools assume that white students will suffer as a result of desegregation, there is no evidence to support such conclusions. Dozens of studies of white achievement from the 1960s through the 1990s have consistently shown that whites perform equally well in integrated settings as they do in all-white schools by every academic measure. The answer, increasingly, is yes.
Integration is a proven tool for stopping the cycle of racial segregation and animosity.
Incidents as recent as the 1992 Los Angeles riots, last year's O.J. Simpson verdict and Million Man March and last month's Texaco race discrimination suit paint a picture of a society with a major race problem. Researchers confirm the common-sense observation that cycles of segregation grow deeper between the races as people age. If you are black and go to a segregated school, you are more likely to work in a segregated workplace and live in a segregated neighborhood. The same is true if you are white. As a result of that separation, whites and blacks grow less understanding and more fearful of each other.