Modern Day Segregation
On Tuesday, April 30th, 2019, 65 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-VA), Chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor concluded: “After four decades without federal support for desegregation, we are right back where we started,” with schools that are increasingly separate and unequal.
Research shows that integration works. The multitude of cognitive and social benefits that integration provides scale from increased test scores and college enrollment rates to enhancing leadership skills and long-term employment. Diverse schools prepare students of all backgrounds and races for the real world and reduce racial bias, while giving students the tools they need to succeed in a global economy. Segregation limits all parties’ chances for achievement, college success, and continued growth while isolating low-income students, feeding into the cycle of systemic oppression.
A recent Vox article described the wide-reaching effects of these biases and segregation.
“Racially segregated schools were and are inherently separate and unequal. They also were and are unequal in resources. In affluent, largely white suburbs, public schools are new and modern, with advanced facilities and courses and good teachers. In low-income, minority neighborhoods, schools tend to be old and dilapidated, with less experienced teachers, fewer resources and fewer advanced courses.”
What they are describing is the cumulative effect of white flight following Brown vs. Board of Education (federally mandated integration). During this time, white middle-class families who could afford to move left their urban environments and moved to the suburbs. There, they were able to send their children to private or suburban public schools. These newly formed suburbs needed to draw school district lines, which they formed to encompass their neighborhoods in order to prevent urban students from being allowed to attend. Without the extra income tax of the families that moved out of the city, a significant amount of funding was lost and many public school systems quickly fell apart. The fallout of this continues to affect those districts to this day.
The systematic segregation of failing public schools has forced low-income students of color to stay in institutions that do not meet state or national standards. Keeping the poor poor, separating middle and upper classes from the lower and separating people of color from whites. In the US, low-income populations have unequal access to education, which perpetuates the statistical inequalities of people of color being homeless, unemployed, and uneducated. This is not a situation of perpetuated stereotypes. They are living in a system of oppression that has worked to keep them from receiving the same opportunities as others.
These invisible barriers, known as school districts, mandate where you are allowed to go to school. Which means if the schools in your district are not accredited and have unqualified teachers, outdated books, walls that are caving in, or are notorious for low test scores, you’re still stuck attending that school as long as you live in that same place. Unless you can afford to send your child far away or pay private school tuition, the transportation costs to get to such a school, along with uniforms and supplies, you’re stuck. These zoning laws aren’t specifically saying black and brown kids aren’t allowed to go to white schools. Instead, they’re drawing lines around county lines which often have strong demographic patterns themselves.
In recent years, how we understand those demographic patterns, even in the suburbs, has shifted, as Anjali Enjeti discusses in her account of the transformation of a suburb outside of Atlanta, “Historically, residential segregation has occurred within cities with individual racial communities divided by parks, roads, or other landscape markers. This type of intra-city segregation has been decreasing in recent years in favor of a new strain of segregation that occurs outside of city centers: segregation between suburbs.” Enjeti goes on to note that, “For several of the largest cities in the U.S., ethnic minorities now make up the majority suburban population. In 1980, 1.2 million Asians, just under 5 million Hispanics and 6 million blacks lived in the suburbs. Today, 8.3 million Asians, 23 million Hispanics, and 16 million blacks live in the suburbs…One might believe, based on these statistics, that suburbs are becoming more inclusive. The reality is that they are undergoing a “massive white depopulation” and are increasingly more segregated than ever.”
Today, we can see the most obvious modern day segregation in the south and along the US border. New York, Illinois, Maryland, California, Michigan, New Jersey, and Texas are the top 7 segregated states in the US. The rates of residential and educational segregation are on the rise. This increase in segregated living directly affects the segregation of schools. As we talked about before, where you live dictates where you go to school.
Segregated living is also a result of affordable housing and cost of living. The best schools are in the best neighborhoods, where the price of living is not cheap, but also is reflected in those districts’ financials. EdBuild, a nonprofit fighting for equal education, has created FundEd a tool for determining how each state funds their schools, “We’ve created and maintained a system of schools segregated by class and bolstered by arbitrary borders that, in effect, serve as the new status quo for separate but unequal. America’s neighborhoods are all too segregated by race and class — and our school district borders mirror, and entrench, these divides.” EdBuild and groups like them are working to change the way we draw school districts and give students who live in public housing easier access to a quality education. But while this issue is monumental and wide-reaching, there are things parents, teachers, and your community can do to make an impact, and it starts with your local school board.
If you can, attend local School Board meetings. School districts are independent municipalities run by a superintendent and the school board. When it comes time to discuss allowing transfer students, dividing funding, and tracing bus routes, be there and advocate for the schools that need your support. Mary Kate Leahy at Law Street wrote, “For example, rather than funding schools based on local property taxes a state could collect property taxes, pool them together, and divide the resources based on the number of students and student need as opposed to the accident of their geography.” You can also lobby your local and state government officials and express the need for a redrawing of school district lines.
It has been 65 years since the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. The tagline of many movements fighting to implement effective integration is “Still segregated. Still unequal.” We need definitive action, but until a federal mandate issues a national integration policy, our individual efforts can go a long way.
