Institutionalized Racism

What does it say about the part the Montclair Board of Education played in Montclair’s history when it describes the three-decade struggle to integrate the public schools as “implemented originally as a voluntary desegregation plan in 1977.”

This is a misleading sanitized version of events that hides the institutionalized racism that permeates the Montclair Public Schools since the beginning of the twentyieth century.

The truth is quite different than the BOE’s brief website summary “Historical Perspective” leads readers to believe.

My grandson is the fifth generation of an African American family that has lived in Montclair since the 1930’s, so I may have more of a vested interest than other community members to understand the history of racism in Montclair. But I hope that many will read my study, Corruption in the Montclair Public Schools, and come away with an appreciation of the risks that expungement of history presents to democracy.