Troubling the Waters

Based on extensive fieldwork in schools and communities in St. Louis and Atlanta, Troubling the Waters captures the experiences of today’s African American families like no other book. Reframing the debates around urban schooling, Jerome Morris offers an empirically based research foundation for a new approach to quality schooling for African Americans. Morris counters the view set forth by many neoconservatives that racism no longer exists, while simultaneously offering a trenchant critique of the desegregation-only paradigm for achieving Brown’s promises. Essential reading for educators, scholars, and policymakers who are deeply committed to improving the education of Black children, this timely book:

• Situates African Americans’ pursuit of quality education outside the traditional liberal versus conservative dichotomy.
• Revisits the role of African American culture, identity, and institutions in the educational achievement of Black children today.
• Discusses organizational characteristics of schools that constrain or support African American students’ educational experiences and outcomes.
• Examines the implications for urban education and school reform.

Jerome E. Morris is an associate professor in the College of Education, and director of the Race, Class, Place and Outcomes Research Group in the Institute for Behavioral Research at The University of Georgia.

“This is an impressive addition to a growing body of work attesting to the particular power of social capital in the lives of poor children.”
—Charles M. Payne, University of Chicago

“This book will become required reading for those who seek insights into achieving the one Great Ideal, as Du Bois put it—the abolition of the color line.”
—Garrett Albert Duncan, Washington University, St. Louis

“Morris's timely ethnographic study reflects the wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois: ‘The Negro needs neither segregated nor mixed schools. What he needs is education.’”
—Jack Dougherty, Trinity College

"This multisite study of resilience, agency, and community provides a vision reminiscent of the African tradition of Sankofa —to return to the root in order to move forward."
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin-Madison