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A Fine Line
- How Most American Kids Are Kept Out of the Best Public Schools
- Narrated by: Tim DeRoche
- Length: 4 hrs and 38 mins
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Publisher's summary
WHICH SIDE OF THE LINE DO YOU LIVE ON?
In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that little Linda Brown couldn't be excluded from a public school because of her race. In that landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the court famously declared that public education must be available to all on equal terms. But 66 years later, many of the best public schools remain closed to all but the most privileged families. Empowered by little-known state laws, school districts draw attendance zones around their best schools, indicating who is, and who isn't, allowed to enroll. In many American cities, this means that living on one side of the street or the other will determine whether you leave eighth grade on a track for future success or barely able to read.
In A Fine Line, best-selling author Tim DeRoche takes a close look at the laws and policies that dictate which kids are allowed to go to which schools. And he finds surprising parallels between current education policies and the redlining practices of the New Deal era in which minority families were often denied mortgages and government housing assistance because they didn't live within certain desirable zones of the city.
It is an extraordinary story of American democracy gone wrong, and it will make you question everything you think you know about our public education system.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Story
Most Americans still see Brown v. Board of Education as a triumph - but was it? James T. Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case. A wide range of characters animates the story, from the little-known African-Americans who dared to challenge Jim Crow with lawsuits; to Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Justice himself; to Earl Warren, who shepherded a fractured Court to a unanimous decision.
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The Fight Against Inequality
- By Marcus on 03-05-15
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When Affirmative Action Was White
- An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America
- By: Ira Katznelson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In this "penetrating new analysis" ( New York Times Book Review), Ira Katznelson fundamentally recasts our understanding of 20th century American history and demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. Through mechanisms designed by southern democrats that specifically excluded maids and farm workers, the gap between blacks and whites actually widened despite postwar prosperity.
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Absolute Must Read
- By Andrew on 01-02-18
By: Ira Katznelson
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Savage Inequalities
- Children in America's Schools
- By: Jonathan Kozol
- Narrated by: Mark Winston
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Jonathan Kozol traveled from the most blighted neighborhoods of Chicago to the urban wreckage of Camden, New Jersey; from the ghetto suburbs of Detroit to inner-city San Antonio; East St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. Everywhere, he discovered separate systems of public schools, with the children of America's poor condemned to schools that are underfunded, understaffed, physically crumbling, and imbued with despair.
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Excellent book for budding education professionals
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-17
By: Jonathan Kozol
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This Noble Land
- My Vision For America
- By: James A. Michener
- Narrated by: Arthur Addison
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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This Noble Land is Michener's most personal statement about America, an examination of the issues that threaten to fragment and undermine the nation - racial conflict, the widening gulf between rich and poor, the decline of education, the inadequacies of our health care system - as well as a thought-provoking prescription for sustaining our "outstanding success". First published shortly before Michener's death, This Noble Land stands as a wake-up call for a troubled era, infused with the wisdom and passion of a lifetime.
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A startling realization
- By Amazon Customer on 08-15-15
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Inventing Latinos
- A New Story of American Racism
- By: Laura E. Gómez
- Narrated by: Joana Garcia
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture‚ yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. In Inventing Latinos‚ Laura Gomez illuminates the fascinating race-making‚ unmaking‚ and remaking of Latino identity that has spanned centuries‚ leaving a permanent imprint on how race operates in the United States today.
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mixed reaction
- By david on 09-24-21
By: Laura E. Gómez
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The South Side
- A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation
- By: Natalie Y. Moore
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation on the South Side of Chicago through reported essays, showing the lives of these communities through the stories of people who live in them. The South Side shows the important impact of Chicago's historic segregation and the ongoing policies that keep it that way.
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Eyeopening!
- By Ladybug on 09-07-16
By: Natalie Y. Moore
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Disintegration
- The Splintering of Black America
- By: Eugene Robinson
- Narrated by: Alan Bomar Jones
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The African American population in the United States has always been seen as a single entity: a "Black America" with unified interests and needs. In his groundbreaking book Disintegration, longtime Washington Post journalist Eugene Robinson argues that, through decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of Black America has shattered.
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Written for Popular Consumption
- By Catherine S. Read on 06-03-11
By: Eugene Robinson
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Automating Inequality
- How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor
- By: Virginia Eubanks
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Since the dawn of the digital age, decision-making in finance, politics, health, and human services has undergone revolutionary change. Today, automated systems control which neighborhoods get policed, which families attain needed resources, and who is investigated for fraud. While we all live under this new regime of data, the most invasive and punitive systems are aimed at the poor. In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America.
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Outstanding, Through, Well Researched Book!
- By LISA on 07-11-24
By: Virginia Eubanks
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American Dreams
- Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone
- By: Marco Rubio
- Narrated by: Ricardo Suri
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Marco Rubio's parents came to the United States in 1956. The country they found was truly a land of opportunity, where hardworking people with grade school educations could afford a home, a car, and college for their kids. A country where maids and bartenders could raise doctors, lawyers, small-business owners, and maybe even a US senator. That was the American Dream - our country's central promise to its people.
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Comprehensive and compelling path for renewal.
- By gary on 06-03-15
By: Marco Rubio
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Sundown Towns
- A Hidden Dimension of American Racism
- By: James Loewen
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 26 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Sundown Towns examines thousands of all-white American towns that were - and still are, in some instances - racially exclusive by design.
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Honest Reportage on American Racial's Shame
- By Anonymous User on 12-26-08
By: James Loewen