Articles Contained in SIRS Enduring Issues 2005.

Originally Published: Mixed Messages, April 14, 2004; pp. 36-40.

"It's 10 minutes into lunch at Wakefield High School, and the cafeteria is crowded and smelling of french fries. At a long, narrow table in the middle of the room, four girls set down their trays. Chatting in Spanish about classes and boyfriends, they lean close to one another to hear over the din. Over near the big window, a white boy and a black boy laugh and poke each other, knocking their crumpled brown lunch bags to the floor. An Asian girl and a Latino boy wait silently in the lunch line together, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her waist. This scene would have been impossible here 50 years ago [1954], as the U.S. Supreme Court prepared to hand down its decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, outlawing systems of racially segregated public schools. Back then, every student in this cafeteria was white, a truly bizarre notion to these teenagers so accustomed to racial and ethnic diversity. But as colorblind as these young people claim to be, as comfortable as many are with a rich cross-racial and cross-ethnic mixture, the truth about race in this close-in Virginia suburb of Washington, a half-century after Brown, is double-edged. In some ways, it doesn't matter at all. And in many others, it matters. A lot." (EDUCATION WEEK) This article examines the attitudes students have about issues of race and ethnic origin at a diverse high school in Arlington, Virginia, in 2004.

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