posted on January 31, 2004 02:55:34 PM newU.S. School Segregation Now at 1969 Level
Study Shows 15-Year Decline; Hispanics Less Integrated Than African Americans By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 18, 2004
Half a century after the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of American education, schools are almost as segregated as they were when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, according to a report released today by Harvard University researchers.
The study by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, shows that progress toward school desegregation peaked in the late 1980s as courts concluded that the goals of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education had largely been achieved. Over the past 15 years, the trend has been in the opposite direction, and most white students now have "little contact" with minority students in many areas of the country, according to the report.
"We are celebrating a victory over segregation at a time when schools across the nation are becoming increasingly segregated," noted the report, which was issued on the eve of the holiday celebrating King's birthday.
Triggered by a civil rights case in Topeka, Kan., the Brown decision marked the start of three decades of intensive efforts by the federal government to integrate public schools, first through court orders that opened white schools to minority students and later through busing. Its most dramatic impact was in southern states, where the percentage of blacks attending predominantly white schools increased from zero in 1954 to 43 percent in 1988.
By 2001, according to the Harvard data, the figure had fallen to 30 percent, or about the level in 1969, the year after King's assassination.
"We are losing many of the gains of desegregation," said Harvard professor Gary Orfield, the primary author of the report. "We are not back to where we were before Brown, but we are back to when King was assassinated."
The Harvard study suggests that Hispanic students are even more segregated than African American students, while Asian Americans are the most integrated ethnic group in the country. The increase in Latino segregation has been particularly marked in western states, where more than 80 percent of Latinos attend predominantly minority schools, compared with 42 percent in 1968.
Despite the national trend toward resegregation, there are significant differences among states and regions, Orfield said. Maryland is one of the most "rapidly resegregating states" in the country, he said, partly because of the phasing out of court-ordered busing in Prince George's and Baltimore counties and partly because of migration patterns.
The District of Columbia has long been one of the most segregated school districts in the nation, a trend accentuated in recent years by the exodus of white middle-class families.
The most segregated states for black students are New York and Illinois; the most integrated are Kentucky and Washington. For Latinos, the most segregated states are New York and California; the most integrated states are Wyoming and Ohio. Virginia ranks somewhere in the middle for both African Americans and Hispanics.
According to Orfield and other researchers, the resegregation trend picked up momentum as a result of a 1991 Supreme Court decision that authorized a return to neighborhood schools instead of busing, even if such a step would lead to segregation. The consequences were particularly dramatic in school districts such as Prince George's County's that were declared "unitary" by the courts, meaning that they had made a good-faith effort at integration.
According to the Harvard data, the average black student in Prince George's County attends schools with 12 percent fewer white students than a decade ago. In Charlotte, black exposure to white students has dropped by 16 percent, and in DeKalb County, Ga., it has declined by 72 percent.
"Most schools in this country are overwhelmingly black or overwhelmingly white," said Elise Boddie, head of the education department of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., which litigates civil rights cases. "We have still not committed ourselves as a country to the mandate of Brown versus Board of Education. If these trends are not reversed, we could easily find ourselves back to 1954."
The report said that a massive migration of black and Latino families toward the suburbs is producing "hundreds of new segregated and unequal schools and frustrating the dream of middle-class minority families for access to the most competitive schools." It predicted that the suburbs soon could be threatened with the problems of "ghettoization" that have already affected big urban areas.
Such a development, the report warned, would bring the nation closer to the "nightmare" of "two school systems" and "two housing markets" mentioned by King in one of his last public appearances.
"There have been considerable gains in some areas, such as the number of [minority] students attending college," said John Jackson, education director for the NAACP. "But you still find many school districts across the country that are segregated and unequal. The implications are the same as in the '50s: Minority students in high poverty areas are not getting a quality education."
posted on January 31, 2004 05:33:50 PM new
It's a tough problem. As long as there is economic inequality between races, schools, like neighborhoods will be segregated.
posted on January 31, 2004 05:34:01 PM new
Probably true. Here I see the kids come out of school and they are mixed. They ride in their cars and eat in the restaurants mixed too so it is socialization not just in class. But if the neighborhood is not mixed the school won't be.
What can you do? Offer financial incentives to diversify housing?
posted on January 31, 2004 06:37:49 PM new
Wish it could be that simple. This topic is hotter than religion with a solution involving equal distribution of funds and brains among three races.
posted on January 31, 2004 07:40:50 PM new
Just like water, people seek their own level...
Just proves that no one other than a few diehard lefties give a rats ass about this...
The main reason for desegregation was because it was believed that Black students had poorer education than whites... in this day and age to say a black teacher is less than a white is nothing more than racist...
and to it seems to me that your racist undertones on this subject are shining through there plsmith...
posted on January 31, 2004 07:55:38 PM new
Twelvepole -- or shall I address you as Gnatpole from now on? -- or perhaps, Gnatbrain? -- or shall I simply redirect you to the article above and suggest that your reading comprehension skills, along with your inept wheedling, leave much to be desired...
posted on February 1, 2004 07:36:36 AM new
You have my permission to address me however you wish... but from now on my address to you will be "racist" plsmith...
People like you stir the pot but offer no solutions or even an attempt to do anything other than to cause trouble... you really have no clue about anything other then your front door, see that handle... use it, it you may learn something about the world...
But as I have said in the past you are one of the best board trolls to pass through here in some time... even though your posts are quite offensive.
posted on February 1, 2004 09:55:22 AM new
I'm honestly trying to understand how middle class blacks moving to the suburbs will produce ghettoization as this article says. Maybe it works different in other cities. The black people we have here in the Detroit suburbs are not going to let their house or their neighborhood become like Detroit. That is what they left and were fleeing just as much as the whites that fled Detroit in the last wave of flight to the suburbs in the previous generation.
There is nowhere left to flee to except to move so far from the city center that it is too far out to commute to the jobs the big companies provide in the metro area.
Anybody want to explain that line of reasoning to me?
The people left down in Detroit are not able to afford to move to the suburbs. About 60% of the people in Detroit depend on some form of public assistance for their basic living.
They announce every year how the city is going to be revitalized yada, yada, yad. But every year the population goes down the government provides less services and the cost to work or live there for those poor services gets higher than the surburbs. The corruption means it is hard to get the permits and so forth to start a new business. I knew a fellow that said he could not afford to live out here yet every week he came in saying his garage had been broken into or his house vandalized or his tires slashed or his window broken out. How much does that cost over the course of a year? And he had to pay higher insurance and a seperate city income tax on top of everything, No thanks.
posted on February 1, 2004 11:04:57 AM new
Segregation, will always exist to some extent, due in-part to the fact some fail to embrace a language different than their native tongue. Those who don't speak the predominate language of any one society are forced to congregate and live in communities that facilitate their previous culture and language.
In our neighborhood, there is a widening gap between the poor and the wealthy with a disappearing middle-class. While the middle-class is disappearing, the poor are becoming poorer and the neighborhood schools reflect that poverty. We have schools in Potomac, Md. that are among the best in the country.The remaining schools are generally equal to each other but inferior to the Potomac and Bethesda standard.
As poverty increases and the schools become inferior, some middle-class families move out of the state or in other cases, they join the ranks of the poor. Few are able to move within the state to a better school district.
posted on February 1, 2004 12:18:37 PM new
That does seem to be the pervasive trend in America today, the voucher system is not the solution, just a convenient way to garner some votes.
posted on February 1, 2004 01:05:40 PM new
The point Gravid initially made speaks most clearly to the benefits of school integration, imo. He pointed out that an integrated neighborhood begets integrated schools.
The socialization process both the kids and the adults -- but especially the kids -- encounter in such a setting refutes, on a real-life experiential level, the ill-logic of bigotry and racist stereotyping, imo. But you can't legislate integrated neighborhoods; it's one thing to remove the arcane stipulations attached to title deeds ( No blacks, Jews, etc. allowed) , but there is no preventing "white flight" or, more broadly, the mass exodus of middle-class people of any race when they perceive their property value diminishing due to an influx of Section 8 or other low-income housing in their neighborhood.
Where I live in California is hardly representative of the country at-large; neighborhood/school integration has been a reality for decades. Twelvepole is right about one thing: I have "no solutions" to offer regarding the resegregation of America's schools. No one does. Why integration has worked as well as it has in my town probably says more about the people themselves than a concept we consciously embraced; we were willing to live side-by-side, we tried it, we liked it, and we recommend it...
posted on February 1, 2004 02:21:52 PM new
I have seen several neighborhoods that initial start out with a few scattered section 8 and other subsidized housing projects in predominately white neighborhoods. The white's start selling out, then the selling price of a home in that area drops, thus allowing more blacks to move into the community and enjoy home ownership. So eventually, all that is accomplished is you have moved a population to new area without any actual integration to speak of. Now the white people that decided to flee from the white neighborhoods undergoing black integration are now less than receptive to the notion of integration after taking a substantial loss on their home sale, and so it continues.
posted on February 1, 2004 03:09:02 PM new
Sideways to your comments, KC, I'm recalling a particular episode of "All In The Family". One of Archie Bunker's white neighbors was selling his house. Archie circulated a petition up and down the block demanding that the neighbor's house be sold to whites. Then Archie learns that a Peurto Rican couple has made an offer for the property and he's livid. He and black Mr. Jefferson (who also wants the house) conspire to keep the "PR's" out. It's a classic episode; view it should it ever come your way...
I don't know if the "white flight" phenomenon has been replaced by multi-racial "middle-class" flight or not; I do know that the perception of subsidized housing includes a fear of increased crime, and that no one who can afford to escape such a prospect will reject doing so in favor of expanding "race relations".
Decent people come in all colors, shapes, and sizes; it is entirely worthwhile and right to cultivate their society. It is equally worhtwhile and right to eschew the presence of criminal elements in one's town -- whatever race they be.
As you allude to in your post, there seems to be a lingering belief that integration in any form equals something unsavory. From my own vantage point as a "liberal Californian" (heh) all I can say is that it's not so much a matter of race anymore but one of class.
(And the class structure we're developing in this country is worthy of a thread all its own, imo... )
