Intergration Is Yesterday's Politricks!

Racial segregation in American schools is more pronounced today than it was 40 years ago. Integrated schooling in the U.S. reached a peak in 1990, but has since then taken a steep decline to levels we haven’t seen in decades.

 

In 1988, less than a third of Black and Latino students attended what Gary Orfield, Co-Director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, calls intensely segregated schools: schools with 90-100% minority students. Today, 40% of Blacks and Latinos – and less than 1% of white students – attend these schools. The percentage of white students nationally is only 56%, but on average they attend schools where more than 75% of students are white. At the same time, the percentage of Black and Latino students attending majority white schools has dropped by more than 10 percent.

 

Old and New Barriers to Desegregation

 

Why are we moving backwards when it comes to racial segregation in schools? What stands in the way of sustainable school integration?

 

The aftermath of Brown taught us that law is effective insomuch as there is political and cultural support for change. The 1954 ruling unanimously reversed a century-old precedent, but its impact on segregation was limited.