Summary

On Overcivilization opens with a description of Ruby Bridges, the first Black student to attend the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. She was in first grade, and did not fully comprehend the gravity of her actions. Parents, however, began to remove their children and there was only one teacher who agreed to teach Bridges. The difference between Ruby Bridges and Black people today is that some people today are “choosing their segregation, as a token of their own self-empowerment” (89). At Williams College, for example, Black students who claimed difficulties in “acclimating themselves to the white institution” advocated for dorms that would only accept Black students (89). They claimed that this segregation was a matter of “community safety,” and this argument, Owens points out, seems similar to those made in favor of Jim Crow laws (90). This new development is what Owens describes...