US marshals escort six-year-old Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Los Angeles, in this Nov. 1960 file photo.
American civil rights pioneer Ruby Bridges has described the
United States as a country that is again suffering from racial segregation.
The 60-year-old activist, who is known for being the first black
child to attend an all-white elementary school in the American South, says that
her country is very much similar to the world she helped break apart 54 years
ago.
"You almost feel like you're back in the '60s," Bridges
said in an interview published on Friday, which marked the 54th anniversary of
the day she entered William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans.
"The conversation across the country, and it doesn't leave
out New Orleans, is that schools are reverting back" to being segregated
racially, she said. "We all know that there are schools being segregated
again."
She cited events in Ferguson, Missouri, racist comments made by
owners in the National Basketball Association as well as many US schools’
failure to offer education to all races as some of telltale signs of
segregation in the United States.
The activist also said that racism existed in the US before
President Barack Obama took office; however, the president has made the
situation even worse.
She said, during her school years, white students began studying
at William Frantz which made the school integrated, adding she herself went to
integrated middle and high schools in New Orleans.
However, school data shows that the school, which is in the
William Frantz building, is 97 percent black.
After integration, whites living in New Orleans generally sent
their children to private or parochial schools and that preference still
continues today.
"How did we integrate schools back in the 1960s? If those
people did it back then, I can't understand why we can't do it today for the
betterment of a community or for a society," she noted.
According to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil
Rights, racial disparities not only exist, but are significant across the
public education system, and it starts as early as preschool -- kids four and
under.
In March, a study by the US Department of Education showed that
inequality and discrimination in the US education system is widespread for
minority students.
Source: Press TV
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