Racism and Public Education

Abstract

This essay argues that the U.S. public school system is structured along racial and social class lines determined by powerful political and economic forces, and that there is a racial and class tracking system in public education that reproduces the race and class structure of the society. Further, it describes how schools play a principal role in perpetuating ideological racism through a social studies curriculum that is designed to promote white supremacy by distorting American history in such a way that it portrays whites as agents of progress and builders of civilizations and Blacks as insignificant objects or deficient characters.