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Howell S. Baum - Brown in Baltimore - 9780801476525 - V9780801476525
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Brown in Baltimore

€ 34.17
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Description for Brown in Baltimore paperback. Num Pages: 296 pages, 5. BIC Classification: 1KBBFM; 3JJP; JNFR. Category: (UP) Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly. Dimension: 235 x 156 x 19. Weight in Grams: 457.

In the first book to present the history of Baltimore school desegregation, Howell S. Baum shows how good intentions got stuck on what Gunnar Myrdal called the "American Dilemma." Immediately after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the city's liberal school board voted to desegregate and adopted a free choice policy that made integration voluntary. Baltimore's school desegregation proceeded peacefully, without the resistance or violence that occurred elsewhere. However, few whites chose to attend school with blacks, and after a few years of modest desegregation, schools resegregated and became increasingly segregated. The school board never changed its policy. ... Read more

Baum finds that American liberalism is the key to explaining how this happened. Myrdal observed that many whites believed in equality in the abstract but considered blacks inferior and treated them unequally. School officials were classical liberals who saw the world in terms of individuals, not races. They adopted a desegregation policy that explicitly ignored students' race and asserted that all students were equal in freedom to choose schools, while their policy let whites who disliked blacks avoid integration. School officials' liberal thinking hindered them from understanding or talking about the city's history of racial segregation, continuing barriers to desegregation, and realistic change strategies. From the classroom to city hall, Baum examines how Baltimore's distinct identity as a border city between North and South shaped local conversations about the national conflict over race and equality. The city's history of wrestling with the legacy of Brown reveals Americans' preferred way of dealing with racial issues: not talking about race. This avoidance, Baum concludes, allows segregation to continue.

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Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
2010
Publisher
Cornell University Press United States
Number of pages
296
Condition
New
Number of Pages
296
Place of Publication
Ithaca, United States
ISBN
9780801476525
SKU
V9780801476525
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1

About Howell S. Baum
Howell S. Baum is Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Maryland. He is the author most recently of Community Action for School Reform and The Organization of Hope: Communities Planning Themselves.

Reviews for Brown in Baltimore
Baum captures as no other historian has Baltimore city leaders' abiding faith in the power of liberalism to promote civic equality.... Their 'raceless attack on segregation,' Baum argues, was doomed to failure.... His book successfully indicts liberalism on its own terms, laying bare the devastating if unintended consequences of free-choice public schooling.
Robert S. Wolff
Journal of American ... Read more

Goodreads reviews for Brown in Baltimore


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