"School choice, largely touted as a system that would ensure underprivileged youth have an equal opportunity in education, has grown in popularity in the past fifteen years. The rhetoric of school choice, however, resembles that of segregationists who closed public schools and funded private institutions to block African American students from integrating with their white peers in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision. In Overturning Brown, Steve Suitts examines the parallels between de facto segregationist policies and the modern school choice movement. He exposes the dangers lying behind the smoke and mirrors of the so-called civil rights policies of Betsy DeVos and the education privatization lobbies. Economic and educational disparities have expanded rather than contracted in the years following Brown, and post-Jim Crow discriminatory policies drive inequality and poverty today. Suitts deftly reveals the risk that America's underprivileged youth face as school voucher programs funnel public education funds into charter schools and predominantly white and wealthy private schools"-- Provided by publisher.

A new era for 'school choice' and vouchers -- Civil rights rhetoric echoes in 'school choice' and vouchers -- Forgotten segregationists -- School choice and vouchers become segregationist tools -- Preserving virtual school segregation through vouchers -- The limits of lawsuits : toppling voucher programs but not segregated schools -- Milton Friedman and 'government schools' -- Challenging tax benefits of segregated private schools -- The 'post-racialist' standards movement -- For God and private schools -- No to 'racial-mixing,'yYes to vouchers -- New token students of choice -- Lingering facets of Jim Crow segregation -- Desegregation's future.