© Josh Sager – August 2015
According to most American history books, the fight over segregation in the United States was a long, brutal, struggle, but it was one that the civil rights activists won decades ago. Starting with the decision of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 (which declared segregated schools unconstitutional) and progressing through the civil rights fights of the 1960s, there were numerous iconic and important advances in ensuring equality and racial integration in schools.
Unfortunately, it is now apparent that the public victories in the fight against segregation have been undermined by a series of little-known losses. In fact, recent studies have found that the United States educational system is actually more segregated today than at any point since 1968, and is on a trend towards even more segregation.
Put simply, this decline in school integration is disgraceful. Segregated schools establish a system of unequal opportunities and cripple the ability of children to advance their economic and social wellbeing. Denying a child a proper education harms them for the rest of their life and is one of the most damaging forms of racism in the long term—in addition to harming the child, it puts their children at risk, as parents with more education are more likely to give their children better educational opportunities.
There are several major drivers for the increase in school segregation during the post-civil rights era:
White Flight: When segregation was a major issue in the public eye and the federal government started taking an active interest in forcing integration, many whites voluntarily left areas with high concentrations of minorities. This “white flight” created the suburbs, where middle and upper class whites established their enclaves that were soft-segregated (they don’t overtly ban minorities, but make it hard for many minority families to afford to live in the community) and established schools that were predominantly white. Because these suburbs tended to be in areas with higher than average property tax revenues, schools in these areas tended to have far more resources than areas with higher minority populations.
Over the decades since desegregation, white flight has progressed and is currently at a highly advanced stage.
Economic Segregation: Race and class are connected at a deep level, and systemic racism creates massive class disparities by denying minorities access to economic opportunity. According to a Pew Research study, the average white family has a net worth ten times greater than the average Hispanic family and thirteen times greater than the average black family. These inequalities create class disparities based upon racial lines and make it possible for wealthy, primarily white, communities to exclude a vast majority of racial minority families.
The simple fact that white families tend to be wealthier than black or Hispanic families is an extremely powerful driver of segregation. Even if they are not overtly racist, wealthier individuals rarely want their kids in schools that have large numbers of poor children, if only because they believe that associating with the “wrong type of kid” will harm their child’s chances at advancement. This creates a powerful rationalization for people who don’t consider themselves to be racist and don’t want to be tarred with that label—instead of justifying segregation based upon race, they use economic language to justify their choices and simply ignore the racially discriminatory effects of their actions (they think: “I’m not a racist; I just want my kid to have the best education possible and ‘those people’ may reduce his chances of success”).
Privatization: While some tout privatizing and voucherizing schools as a solution to poor public school performance, the inescapable fact is that school privatization is a major driver of resegregation. According to a study by the Civil Rights Project, private schools tend to be highly segregated, both in terms of race and class.
Wealthy families can afford high-quality private schools (who tend to be white, as previously discussed) and this is only enhanced by voucher programs. Conversely, poorer families are unable to afford high-quality private schools, thus are shunted into for-profit, low-quality, and religious private schools, or left in the defunded and ignored public school system.
The inequality created through school privatization is not an unintended side effect of a well-meaning policy—it is, in fact, a planned way of getting around desegregation efforts. While there are many well-meaning school privatization advocates, large portions of the privatization movement are connected with the “school choice” and “neighborhood schools” movements that formed in white communities in response to integration. When public schools started to integrate, white elites decided to abandon them and start their own institutions where they can control who is allowed to mix with their children.
Conclusion
There is simply no silver bullet to stop the resegregation of American schools. It is a process that involves a complex series of societal and economic factors that developed over decades. That said, this is a fight that MUST be taken on by mainstream political figures. It is an issue that is commonly ignored by major political candidates and advocates of reform should force our politicians to directly address these issues during campaigns.
The Progressive Cynic 
Interesting post, as usual. There a couple other factors that need to be considered as well. You may want to reference the 1968(or 1969) Kerner Commission report which was a study of the causes of the race riots and the future of segregation. One of the recommendations they made was that low income federal housing should NOT be lumped together in poor areas. it should be spread out throughout the suburbs and cities and rural areas. They predicted that the concentration of low income housing would only increase segregation. They also predicted that if some positive measures were not taken eventually the US would become a highly segregated society. As in all reports by experts this was was also filed under “forget it” by the powers that be. Not politically popular. My point? This segregation was predictable.
A second point stems from my own personal experience. As a youngster our home was in a medium size town in a “border” area. Black folks lived a few blocks away but our neighborhood was solidly working class white. Then a black family moved in down the street. We moved out the next year.
In later years, as an adult , I asked my dad why we moved. Was it the black family. (He had never demonstrated any racial prejudice, never used the “N” word and if we had we would have faced the Lifebouy.).
He told me that our furnace had broken and needed to be replaced.They had no money so they needed a loan to buy a new furnace. He said the bank refused to give them a loan (even though they had good credit and always paid their bills) for a new furnace in THAT neighborhood. However, the bank would give them a much larger loan to buy a house in ANOTHER neighborhood. So, that is what we did.
Needless to say, in a few years white flight had turned my old neighborhood into a poor, black one
I realize that this is just a family anecdote, but it illustrates what I think is and was the larger problem. The banking industry, which has total control over housing financing, has been instrumental in downgrading neighborhoods and encouraging (or demanding) white flight. Don’t underestimate the power of the banking industry.
The current segregation is NOT accidental. It is intentional and backed up by the most important financial institutions in the US. The government (in placing housing for the poor in areas already segregated) and banks (through lending practices) have worked together to bring about the “black city-white suburb” residency pattern we now have.
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You family’s situation is actually not anecdotal. “Red lining” was a major problem that enforced the ghettoization of many black areas. Similarly, black soldiers who were denied GI benefits also suffered from this discrimination. I didn’t include these issues in this article, simply because both were made illegal in the early 70s, thus aren’t really modern drivers of disparities. I thought about adding in something about differential lending practices in the pre-2008 mortgage boom, but this is a little arcane and didn’t really lead to increased economic segregation until after the crash of sub-prime assets.
Thanks for reading.
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There are millions of federal dollars available for neighborhood schools right now, they aren’t being used. While I am not suggesting segregation is a good thing, I am also not suggesting we should allow schools to be closed, downgraded and allowed to crumble simply because they are in the ‘wrong’ part of town. There is a fight right now in Chicago to save neighborhood school(s) from closure and privatization. Cincinnati on the other hand is a model of what can be done if communities work together and with the federal government.
As always, fabulous information.
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I agree with you about Chicago and the need to keep some neighborhood schools, but we need to be really careful with this where the neighborhood has been segregated into a ghetto of poor minorities through decades of systemic racism. As a stop-gap, I would do a full revenue-sharing program, where all property taxes are collected at the state level, pooled, then redistributed to the local schools based upon a per-student and need basis. This would at least mitigate some of them effects of segregation until it can be addressed over time (it takes years to fix).
Sometimes, closing schools is necessary. Physical school building are expensive to keep open and sometimes demographic shifts make it necessary to shut down schools. In the Midwest, this was a major problem after the rusting of the industrial belt.
Thanks for reading.
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