Court Ordered Segregation

Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court – by a 5 to 4 majority - declared unconstitutional voluntary programs that assigned students by race to individual schools to racially balance the public school districts of Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky. The high Court’s decision was split along ideological lines, with Justice Clarence Thomas siding with the conservative majority. While not completely shutting the door on the historic 1954 Brown decision, the Roberts Court threatens to restore a climate of de facto segregation in public education, shielded by law

The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, unanimously ruled public school segregation to be unconstitutional in Brown v Board of Education. The Court held that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”

Judicial Cover

The federal courts, once a place where proponents of school integration could find relief, have undermined the Brown case in recent years. Rulings by a more conservative judiciary have fostered the resegregation of schools. This latest Supreme Court decision provides the ultimate judicial cover to continue these efforts.

The ruling in Brown has been eroded over time by a shift away from the tenets of the Warren Court. Tragically, the very arguments that were used against Jim Crow in public education by the Court in 1954 were used by the current conservative majority to strike down the Seattle and Louisville plans.

Fifty years after Brown 70 percent of Black students across the country attend schools that have a majority of minority students. One out of three is in a school with at least 90 percent students of color. Over the years, school segregation has become the major divide in American society driven in part by housing patterns, discriminatory zoning and state school finance systems that have denied adequate funding to urban school districts.

In some areas, notably New York State, Latino segregation is higher than Black segregation – 86 percent of Latino students in New York State attend schools with a majority of minority students.

. There is a direct link between segregated public schools and the quality of education afforded nonwhite students. The impact on Black children in southern states was understood by the Warren Court when it determined in Brown that “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Segregation and Poverty

Just as there is a direct link between school segregation and inequality, there is also a connection between school segregation and poverty. In many large cities today, wealthier residents – Black and white - send their children to private schools. New York City’s public school students are overwhelmingly Black and Latino – and poor. Over 80 percent of city students in grades K-6 qualify for the free or subsidized school lunch program.

The result of white flight is a school system starved for resources. Inequitable state funding has cost the city over $1 billion annually in school aid. This situation existed for decades, primarily because New Yorkers of color and their elected representatives lacked the political strength to demand and get their fair share of funding.

In describing racially segregated schools 50 years after Brown vs. the Board of Education, a report from the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University states: “These schools have less qualified, less experienced teachers, lower levels of peer group competition, more limited curricula taught at less challenging levels, more serious health problems, much more turnover of enrollment.” If it added being severely and continually underfinanced, the report could be describing the New York City school system and many other urban school districts across the nation.

The success of the lawsuit brought by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity beginning in 1993 has finally resulted in more state aid for city schools. Funds have been so scarce that textbooks are routinely out of date and libraries and science laboratories are often closed. But this new level of funding cannot compensate for the generations of students who have been shortchanged by the system.

The city’s own numbers show that just over half of the students entering our public high schools graduate. Of those who do graduate, less than 10 percent of Black and Latino students leave with a Regents diploma, the academic certificate for public high school students.

Struggle is
far from over

In our society, poverty – and joblessness – can always be traced to a substandard education. The crisis in Black male joblessness, which has been documented by several reports by the Community Service Society, is directly related to the substandard education offered by the city’s public schools. This level of joblessness also helps to explain why nearly 40 percent of the city’s residents live near or below the federal poverty level.

Because of the overriding importance of education, the Brown decision was the beginning of judicial protection of fundamental rights for all people. It was also one of the few times that a court took the lead in affecting social change on a mass level. While efforts to desegregate public education came with great difficulty and, at times, regressed, it gave hope that this nation would redeem its stated principle of equality of opportunity.

The struggle for school integration is far from over. Some school districts are already using socioeconomic status as a controlling factor to ensure racial diversity. Also, the strategic location of new schools could help integration. There continues to be a need for diversity to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society. No court decision can change that truth.

From the New York Amsterdam News
July 12 - 18, 2007