Education

Race Still Matters

By Anthony Rebora — November 06, 2008 1 min read
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Skoolboy, filling in for eduwonkette, runs some numbers and warns against thinking that Obama’s election means we suddenly live in a post-racial society in which educational inequalities no longer persist:

The odds of completing high school are twice as high for whites as for blacks, and the odds of obtaining a bachelor’s degree conditional on graduating from high school are also twice as high for whites as for blacks. ...
The election of Barack Obama to the Presidency is a signal event, and the consequences of his breaking the color barrier will reverberate for many years to come. Although our President-Elect is a singular, charismatic individual who is the right man at the right time, the social, economic and political forces that shape the educational opportunities of African-Americans in U.S. society are deeply entrenched. Sadly, the scourge of race will not be easy to overcome.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Blogboard blog.