Those who live or have lived in metropolitan areas that faced court-ordered desegregation of the schools in the latter part of the twentieth century have likely heard a common theory about the connection of those efforts to the state of the relevant city. It goes something like this: Once federal courts ordered city schools to desegregate, many white city dwellers either fled to the suburbs for protection or plucked their kids from city schools and enrolled them in private ones. Under the first scenario, the end of neighborhood schools negatively affected the city, as families in once-vital neighborhoods abandoned desegregating city schools they perceived as problematic for their children's education for virtually lily-white suburban schools thought to be of a higher quality. Under the second scenario, white parents remained in the city of their birth but undermined desegregation efforts by transferring their children to private schools (which were mostly Catholic in the Northeast and Midwest and mostly newly opened in the South). In the end, long-frustrated federal judges and civil rights leaders ultimately succeeded in increasing the levels of interaction between white and black children, but their efforts had significant side effects for those cities as well.

As many know, the story is far more complicated than this commonly told tale, and Charles T. Clotfelter admirably seeks to separate fact from fiction in his sharp analysis of desegregation efforts after the Supreme Court's 1954 decision of Brown v. Board of Education. (Although Clotfelter's focus is on desegregation itself, rather than the connection between desegregation and the state of the nation's cities, his insights are informative for such a discussion as well.) After his introduction and a useful first chapter recounting the history of segregation and desegregation in the schools, he moves to the heart of his analysis. In his second chapter, he assesses the effect of Brown on segregation and interracial contact, employing new tools for understanding changes in the makeup of America's schools. His next chapter considers the importance of “white flight” to the suburbs, providing evidence to support “the white avoidance hypothesis,” namely, “that whites prefer to avoid racially mixed schools” (p. 91). Chapter 4 examines the flight to private schools, substantiating claims that these institutions at times served as a “vehicle of escape” (p. 103) for white students, but also “casting doubt on a simplistic racial motive for private school enrollment” (p. 114). One interesting side note in this chapter is Clotfelter's observation that progressive causes sometimes clashed in the schools and, in turn, disturbed desegregation efforts. As he explains, part of the reason that religious parents may have decided against public education for their children is because the American Civil Liberties Union succeeded in removing prayer from the schools, leaving private schools to fill that spiritual void.

In Chapter 5, Clotfelter focuses on the insides of desegregated schools, allowing him to most fully display the importance of his central focus: interracial contact. In doing so, he notes that school officials—most typically through “some form of academic tracking, by which classes of the same subject are differentiated by academic level”—have limited such contact. As he writes: “The evidence suggests that this bias results at least in part from the efforts by administrators to accommodate the wishes of middle-class parents … hoping to keep [their] children … from leaving their public schools” (pp. 145–46). The story is quite similar with regard to extracurricular activities. In his final two chapters, the author first examines desegregation in higher education and then attempts to answer the “so what” question. In this final chapter, he notes that while interracial contact has increased significantly since the pre-Brown years, the gains “were smaller than they might have otherwise been” (p. 181).

Politics is not central to Clotfelter's story, and this is both the strength and the weakness of the book. It is a strong point because Clotfelter cuts to the chase, telling us in report-like fashion what most mattered when and where and backing up his conclusions with the best available statistical support. On the other hand, he overlooks aspects of desegregation efforts that some readers may find surprising. For example, public law scholars might expect Clotfelter to engage Gerald Rosenberg's argument from The Hollow Hope (1991), where he suggests that courts are not properly equipped to produce social change alone. But Clotfelter does not even cite Rosenberg's book. This is unfortunate because Clotfelter clearly places courts at the center of school desegregation, and further exploration of the political driving force behind these efforts would have been a useful addition to his analysis. For example, as he writes with regard to the desegregation retreat: “The year 1974 was surely a turning point in the federal government's stance on the policy of school desegregation, because in that year the Supreme Court issued the first of a series of decisions that would effectively put the brakes on government efforts to desegregate schools” (p. 30). He then points to Richard Nixon's thinking in selecting one of his four justices who would join the 1974 Milliken v. Bradley majority—the decision that virtually banned interdistrict solutions for integrating de facto segregated schools. Few would doubt that Nixon was pleased with Milliken, but his role and that of his administration in desegregation efforts were more involved than Clotfelter implies. Indeed, as historian Dean Kotlowski suggests in his book Nixon's Civil Rights, it might even be argued that the efforts of Nixon's administration made him “the greatest school desegregator in American history” (2001, 37). The point here is not that Clotfelter should have viewed Nixon in such a light, but rather, in my reading of his account, that courts appear to get both too much credit and too much blame for the “rise and retreat” of school desegregation. This tendency, in turn, prevents the author from fully exploring the political factors that frustrated desegregation (and consequently affected the nation's metropolitan areas).

These points aside, After Brown is an extremely valuable book. Charles Clotfelter has done yeoman's work in providing his readers with the best evidence to date on a subject that continues to attract a great deal of national attention. In turn, it should be read by all those interested in understanding the true state of desegregation and the role of interracial contact in the education of America's children.