Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence, and the Struggle for Educational Equality (American Crossroads) (Volume 47)

Strategies of Segregation: Race, Residence, and the Struggle for Educational Equality is a wonderful addition to any library, especially the library of educators and those working toward and for liberation in general, education liberation in particular.García does a fantastic job of telling the narrative of how legal housing covenants restricting certain areas to only those of European heritage (white folks) woven together with attitudes about non-White peoples and education worked to create segregated schooling in Oxnard, California. The book is well written, well researched, and reads very easy. The author’s passion for the topic is evident, yet does not at any point lean toward seeking to serve any agenda other than highlighting how strategically designed events created space for segregation to take root in the Oxnard community, and to share the impacts and legacies of such work.This book is important on many levels, some of them being:1. It highlights that segregation happened outside of the south2. It brings to light the need to open up our conversations beyond the dualistic Black—White racial history on the soil of the United States of America. Not to supplant, but to widen the conversation and understanding of history, historical harms and traumas, and the impacts and legacies so that we can truly start working to heal and transform them3. It aids in showing that in order to truly understand where we are, we must understand where we’ve been. Our educational system and its lack of justly serving young scholars of color did not happen overnight.4. This book brings together the history of the area and the history of housing to begin unpacking the history of education in Oxnard, CA, showing that if we are truly wanting to understand things, we must investigate and interrogate them from many angles as all of our systems impact each other—they do not operate in bubbles/silos.Overall, a truly fabulous book.

I am a graduate student focusing on the history of education and it is books like this one that help demonstrate how public schools in America were created and why they are the way they currently are. However one draw back of the book is how fast the timeline moves due to necessities of publication and thus readers may find that certain topics are rushed and not as detailed as others.