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January 17, 2004
By Professor
Gary Orfield and Chungmei
Lee
A half-century after the Supreme Court found that
segregated schools are “inherently unequal,” there is
growing evidence that the Court was correct. Desegregated schools
offer tangible advantages for students of each racial group. Our
new work, however, shows that U.S. schools are becoming more segregated
in all regions for both African American and Latino students. We
are celebrating a victory over segregation at a time when schools
across the nation are becoming increasingly segregated.
This report examines a decade of resegregation from
the time of the Supreme Court’s 1991 Dowell decision, which
authorized a return to neighborhood schools, even if that would
create segregation, through the 2001-2002 school year. It goes beyond
our previous reports to study the impact of resegregation in districts
whose where court orders have been ended and includes new data on
the present situation of the four communities involved in the first
Brown decision a half century ago as well as of a number of districts
whose subsequent cases produced decisive changes in the law of school
desegregation. It also considers the very different desegregation
levels in communities of differing sizes. Finally, it reviews the
broad sweep of segregation changes nationally, regionally, and by
state since the 1954 Brown decision. It shows that the movement
that began with the Supreme Court decision has had an enduring impact
but that we are experiencing the largest backward movement in the
South, where the court decisions and civil rights laws had produced
the most integrated schools in the nation for three decades.
- In many districts where court-ordered desegregation was ended
in the past decade, there has been a major increase in segregation.
The courts assumed that the forces that produced segregation and
inequality had been cured. This report shows they have not been.
- Among the four districts included in the original Brown decision,
the trajectory of educational desegregation and resegregation
varies widely, and it is intriguing that three of the four cases
show considerable long-term success in realizing desegregated
education.
- Rural and small town school districts are, on average, the nation’s
most integrated for both African Americans and Latinos. Central
cities of large metropolitan areas are the epicenter of segregation;
segregation is also severe in smaller central cities and in the
suburban rings of large metros..
- There has been a substantial slippage toward segregation in
most of the states that were highly desegregated in 1991. The
most integrated state for African Americans in 2001 is Kentucky.
The most desegregated states for Latinos are in the Northwest.
However, in some states with very low black populations, school
segregation is soaring as desegregation efforts are abandoned.
- American public schools are now only 60 percent white nationwide
and nearly one fourth of U.S. students are in states with a majority
of nonwhite students. However, except in the South and Southwest,
most white students have little contact with minority students.
- Asians, in contrast, are the most integrated and by far the
most likely to attend multiracial schools with a significant presence
of three or more racial groups. Asian students are in schools
with the smallest concentration of their own racial group.
- The vast majority of intensely segregated
minority schools face conditions of concentrated poverty, which
are powerfully related to unequal educational opportunity. Students
in segregated minority schools face conditions that students in
segregated white schools seldom experience.
- Latinos confront very serious levels of segregation by race
and poverty, and non- English speaking Latinos tend to be segregated
in schools with each other. The data show no substantial gains
in segregated education for Latinos even during the civil rights
era. The increase in Latino segregation is particularly notable
in the West.
- There has been a massive demographic transformation of the West,
which has become the nation’s first predominantly minority
region in terms of total public school enrollment. This has produced
a sharp increase in Latino segregation.
School segregation is not inevitable. We discuss
policies that could reverse these trends. The language in the Supreme
Court’s recent decision on affirmative action and the integration
of higher education offer some real hope for improvement.
To view the COMPLETE REPORT
and study conducted by The Civil Rights Project go to:
Brown
at 50: King's Dream or Plessy's Nightmare?
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