Is there a way to desegregate society?

“If I had that answer, I wouldn’t be making documentaries,” filmmaker Whitney Dow said.

But just the same, Dow and fellow director and producer Marco Williams asked the question in Evanston with their film “I Sit Where I Want: The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.” And at a screening Thursday at Evanston Township High School, 1600 Dodge Ave., a crowd of more than 300 students, parents and teachers from about 10 schools added their own questions.

The event was offered by the international organization Facing Our History and Ourselves.

The film followed the struggles of a diverse group of Buffalo, N.Y., high school students as they tried to stop the self-inflicted segregation in their lunchroom. Meanwhile, they fought against their own prejudices while trying to track down the roots of the problem.

The audience laughed at the stiff expressions of one of the white students when he visited a black student’s home.

But silence fell as the pair began to fight about racism.

As the film progressed, it raised more questions. In the end, the students couldn’t desegregate the lunchroom.

“I had wanted to originally end the film with (the student) Steve who said, ‘It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s just the way it is,” Dow said. Instead the film ended with comments from students about what they learned about themselves and their partners during the project.

After the credits rolled, more than 50 students lined up to ask questions of the two directors, and the line kept growing. Looking around, the crowd noticed they sat grouped by race.

“Mix it up,” echoed through the room, leading the entire crowd to stand and switch seats.

“They’re actually applying what they saw,” said Kimyatta Lawrence, the mother of a seventh-grade girl attending with her classmates.

Kelsey Wax, a white junior at Highland Park High School met a black student from another school after the rearrangement.

Both of the girls addressed the directors. Wax noted the crowd’s own, unintended prejudice when a white student in the film visited the home of a wealthier black student.

“We heard a reaction from the audience,” she said. “People were surprised. People thought that should be reversed because it goes against society.”

Other students in the crowd questioned why people say certain people act “white” or “black.” Some wondered why people don’t take the time to get to know a culture to overcome their discomfort with another race. But repeatedly, directors Dow and Williams said they have no solutions, just steps toward understanding.

Thirty-eight middle and high school students, three parents and two teachers came from Perspectives Charter School in the South Loop for the event.

“I’m hoping they’ll reconsider their own relation ships at school and in their neighborhoods,” said Andrew Johnson, a history teacher at the charter school.

Timothy Pawlowski, a senior at the Chicago magnet high school Whitney Young, said the biggest obstacle to integration is a lack of understanding.

“Ignorance is our only segregation,” he said.

Discussion didn’t end when students worked their way toward the post-program desserts. As the crowd of students spread out in the cafeteria, with a few exceptions clusters of students began to separate by race.

Students started as they looked around after renewed calls of “mingle” and “mix it up.”

Reach Elizabeth Gibson at [email protected].