PROGRESS? WHAT PROGRESS?

just like old times
Harvard's Civil Rights Project released a report yesterday outlining how American schools in many states, especially California, have resegregated in the years since Brown vs. the Board of Education. This is not "new" news - scholars and activists alike have been ringing the alarm on this trend for years now - but the Harvard study does provide a long view on what's happened as well as a few ideas on why.

Some key points and findings:

"In large measure, landmark Supreme Court decisions in the last decade have steadily eroded the progress in educational integration made in the past thirty years. Author Gary Orfield commented: "Anyone who thinks that the Supreme Court does not make a difference should look at the quarter century of decline in the segregation of Southern schools though the late l980s, the continual, year-by-year growth in segregation since the Court authorized ending desegregation plans in 1991, as well as the impact of the Court's 5-4 decision against city-suburban desegregation in 1974."

Geographically, the most dramatic trends in resegregation are seen in the South and the Border states for black students and increasing segregation for Latinos in the West. From 1991-2003, the number of black students attending majority nonwhite schools rose sharply across all regions. In the South, this percentage increased from 61% to 71%. Latinos constitute the largest minority and are increasingly segregated in regions where they are concentrated. Asians are the least segregated group of students and are most likely to attend multiracial schools... Since the 1990s, the percentage of students of every race in multiracial groups has increased. Segregation is no longer black and white but increasingly multiracial.

While South and Border regions are resegregating, black students in the South and Border states still have among the highest levels of exposure to white students. Nationally, Asians are more likely than students of other races to attend multiracial schools. Conversely, white students are the least likely to attend these schools. Despite an increase in diversity, white students remain the most isolated group.

More than three quarters of intensely segregated schools are also high poverty schools."

That last point seems particularly relevant today since, as many know, at the end of Dr. King's life, he was working to combine his traditional civil rights work around racial integration with a blossoming belief that an anti-poverty campaign was integral to any social justice efforts. The study acknowledges this with its sobering opening:

"Were he alive today, Dr. King would doubtless be concerned about the increasing isolation of children whose only chance lies in a good education from the nation’s stronger schools and the profoundly multiracial composition of today’s schools."

--O.W.