By Zoe Huber-Weiss ’13, Staff Writer

In my AP United States History class, we are currently studying the origin and practice of the “Jim Crow” laws, which legally segregated the United States. Given that I am the daughter of a civil rights lawyer, my growing knowledge of our country’s past blatant racist legal practices disturbed me. It was preposterous for me to think of forcefully ejecting a black man from a train for sitting in a “white” car, as was the basis for the famous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case. In this case, the court made a “separate but equal” ruling that became the basis for legal segregation.

Segregation would be unthinkable in today’s society and is thought of, by most Americans, as a dark point in our nation’s history. However, as I ranted about the outrageousness of the idea in class, I realized that my righteous condemnation of nineteenth and twentieth century America might not be well-founded. Now, this is not to say that I or anyone I know are on the same level as those who made and upheld the laws of segregation, and I certainly do not mean to imply that nor to offend anyone. That being said, it must be acknowledged that our society today is not 100% integrated.

Not only is Newark Academy (and other private schools similar to it) predominantly white, but races are separated within the school itself. Many of the people who I consider to be friends are African-American, and yet, I never sit with them at lunch. Especially among girls, friend groups are racially divided in a way that makes me cringe. In the sophomore class, comprising of one hundred and six people, there are only nine African-American students; already, this must create a feeling of difference, of standing outside of the norm.

The fact that this difference is accented by the social workings of our school, simply a microcosm of society, reveals a major flaw in our society. This is not to say that our school as an entity is bad, because I am sure that this phenomenon is mirrored in other independent and public schools in our area.  The negative economic effects of subjugating Black people in the past are undisputed, so it stands to reason that these effects be evident in the admittedly affluent world of private school.  This means that there is all the more reason to try to stop the racial divide in related social situations.

Again, I am not accusing anyone of racism, and I admit that I do not know the cause of or the solution to this problem. However, our community must become aware of this situation if we are to move as far away as possible from segregation, a significant blight on our country’s historical record.