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PUBLISHED IN 1944, AMID THE MASSIVE destruction and racial genocide of World War II, Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma stood not only as a challenge to America's democratic principles, but as a firm testament to their promise. Myrdal thought of the American race problem as a moral dilemma located at the very heart of this nation's democratic ethos. For him the key to its solution resided in education. Education represented a vehicle for combating racist beliefs as well as a way to improve the living conditions of most blacks. Increased educational opportunities for blacks, Myrdal argued, was an important step toward ending segregation, improving black economic development, and ultimately solving the race problem in America. Fifty years have passed, leaving Myrdal's study to persist as a challenge to and an interrogation of American democracy. This essay revisits Myrdal's classic work and examines trends, issues, progress, problems, and prospects of black education since its publication.
From its very inception, the black quest for educational opportunity in America has been beset with obstacles: outright opposition through racism, well-meaning white paternalism, as well as internal ideological debates over the goals and purposes of education. Fifty years ago, Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma provided the impetus for change in black education and since that time numerous events have changed the face of black education. Despite these events, fundamental ideological issues have yet to be resolved. In order to understand the impact of An American Dilemma on black education, it is first necessary to place this discussion in its proper historical context.
SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL: BLACK EDUCATION AS AN AMERICAN DILEMMA
In 1944 black schools were faced with paternalistic cooperation on one hand and savage inequality on the other. In both the North and the South, the education of blacks was largely controlled by outsiders (i.e., whites), but executed by blacks themselves. From the very beginning, the accountability of black schools to the community or population they served was a hotly contested issue.
Myrdal's chapter on education, entitled "The Negro School," is largely focused on the existing conditions of black education in the South. Myrdal showed that black education in the South was controlled by Southern whites who sought to preserve the racial caste system and by Northern whites who...