Having a roommate that is an education major, I have come home from many of our morning class discussions and lectures talking about the progress that was made in the 50's and 60's, excited by the idea MLK reinforces that "the universe in some form is on the side of justice"[1]. Religious or not, this rationale that Martin Luther King, Jr talks about is more positive than just about anything you can read in the news today. Yet, as I am coming home from this class discussion, my roommate is coming home from her internship with a local elementary school, where she is the only white person in the small classroom of 32 fifth graders. She fakes a smile and then says that segregation is just as alive today as it was back then. A sometimes guilty member of the "Rhodes bubble," I never have experienced the segregation and lack of integration in public schools that she talks about. Is this nation more integrated now, particularly within the school system, than it was 50 and 60 years ago? In 1960, after the Brown vs Board of Education decision declared segregation unconstitutional, MLK notes that it would still take 92 years to integrate public schools, seeing that only 7.8 % of black students in 1960 attended integrated schools. Today is still under the 92 year mark, but how much progress are we making? An article in Quartz looks at US schools where the student body is 90-100% nonwhite. As of 2013, the number of these intensely segregated schools has tripled from 6% in 1988 to almost 20% [2]. The article gives a few reasons for this increase, including less effort from the federal government towards desegregation programs and decreases in white enrollment. The article notes that "white students in general are getting more exposure to minorities, (but) minority students are getting less exposure to white students" [3]. The problem here then comes not from segregation of skin color, but of what some researchers are calling "double segregation." Exposure to low-income classmates is the main thing that is shrinking, and then minority students get hit with this segregation the most, leading to a double segregation. The problem of inequality in the US is just magnified here, with poor, minority kids receiving fewer opportunities from poor and poorly funded, segregated schools. Another report posted in 2013 looked at the stats, noting that while only 4% of white children live in high-poverty neighborhoods, 28% of black children live in these same high-poverty neighborhoods. This article looks at the large achievement gap between white and black students, stressing integration as the "most important goal of education improvement" [4]. Diving deeper into this, the problem comes from the funding that goes into the schools. While the federal government typically gives about 8-9% of school budgets, the rest is given by the state and district. Thus, poorer districts of course are going to mean poorer schools, furthering the gap of inequality. Districts with high-poverty rates spend on average 15.6% less per student than low-poverty districts [5]. Thus, the perpetuation of inequality and segregation, considering both race and income, comes from the top down. Knowing all of the success that was gained during the Civil Rights Movement that we discuss each day, how do we look at this obvious segregation present today and say that we are all still equal under the eyes of God and in the eyes of our nation?
[1] Martin Luther King, Jr, "The Power of Nonviolence," in I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World, (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1960): 32.
[2] Ana Campoy. "US schools are more segregated than they were in the 1990's," Quartz, 15 January 2018.
[3] Ibid
[4] Richard Rhothstein. "For Public Schools, Segregation Then, Segregation Since," Economic Policy Institute. 27 August 2013.
[5] Alana Semuels. "Good School, Rich School; Bad School, Poor School," The Atlantic, 25 August 2016.
MLK in context - an exploration of King's life and work from an historical perspective
Going off of this post, i think that schools now are slightly more intergrated than in the 1960s just because of the high media presence this time presents and more laws passed to integrate schools. Although, not much increase has happen due to laws and rules in cities and states with high poverty. for example, memphis school system is very segregated.Most of the white people stay in areas like cordova, houston, germantown, bartlett and the black people stay in areas like whitehaven, south memphis, north memphis, and westwood. The city has zoning rules that stay that you have to go to a school in the area you live in. the only way you can go to a school out of your zone is if you apply for the optional program. Therefore, grouping black and white students into separate schools. And even when these zones were integrated, the schools in the areas where white people lived in succeeded from the school system to form their own school system. This shows that there is not much progress being made. The only difference now is that segregation is covered in a blanket of innocent.
ReplyDeleteI think that this is a really interesting post. While there are many schools and school districts that choose to inforce integration, because of housing segregation and self-segregation many public schools still tend to be segregated. Whites tend to self-segregate into predominantly white neighborhoods, creating predominantly white public schools, and therefore segregation in schools is still prevalent around the country. I think that it's also interesting to think about segregation within schools. At a large public school in my area segregation is still a very real problem within the school despite its integration. All the people of color will sit on one side of the cafeteria, and all the white students on the other. I think that so long as people continue to associate with people that only look like them or think like them, problems like segregation will still be relevant. Therefore, we should address the problem early specifically targeting young students.
ReplyDeleteI can relate 100% to your roommate. I work at an elementary school in Hollywood and I am the only white person in the classroom. It did not phase me at first, but a few weeks into working with the class they were going over human physical characteristics and one of them was freckles. The whole class being African American they did not know what freckles were so I have to explain to them and they asked why I didn't have them. I had to explain that not everyone has them. Also, the achievement gap we were talking about in my eduation class a few days ago and how subjective it is. All the test we take in school are made for white priviledged children. There is a different way African Americans talk at home and different ways they learn compared to whites. Standardized testing test on how start indiviudals are in terms of being a white priviledged kid. Our class try to think of ways to change it so we could test and teach properly to accomadate every child, but we could not think of one. It will be challenging trying to figure out a way to teach to every child's need, but the education system is going to be awful until we do.
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