Education serves as a backdrop and a disguise, masking the transformation of this country from an industrialized blue-collar dependent system to a technocratic system dependent upon fewer, but highly educated workers. This movement has tremendous implications for race relations in this country. An in-depth study of the history of school reform reveals that past reforms have produced very little in important social and economic benefits for the masses, and this is especially true for the poor. Instead of encouraging change, this whole dynamic helps to legitimatize a class-structured, hierarchical social system, based upon race and class--a plantation model. A gentrification process permits lighter-skinned persons who live in the United States to melt into the acceptable culture once they have acquired the mannerisms and symbols of the middle and upper classes. This dynamic does not occur among darker-skinned citizens. The current educational reform disguises the calculated and extreme process of reduction in black professional educators so that established procedures will assure that the chief executive officers/managers in all settings will be of white ethnic hues and that the aides and lower-ranking professionals with minimal educational backgrounds will be of other ethnic origins. Examples of recent incidents indicative of racial disharmony are included. (BZ)