Marking the
60th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v Board of
Education, the UCLA’s
Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles (CRP) assessed the nation's progress
in addressing school segregation in it’s new report, Brown at 60: Great Progress, a Long Retreat and an Uncertain Future, and found that the vast transformation of the nation’s school population
since the civil rights era includes an almost 30% drop in white students and close
to quintupling of Latino students.
Brown at
60 shows that the
nation’s two largest regions, the South and West, now have a majority of what were
called “minority” students. Whites are only the second largest group in the West.
The South, always the home of most black students, now has more Latinos than blacks
and is a profoundly tri-racial region.
The Brown
decision in 1954 challenged
the legitimacy of the entire "separate but equal" educational system of
the South, and initiated strides toward racial and social equality in schools across
the nation. Desegregation progress was very substantial for Southern blacks, in
particular, says the report, and occurred from the mid-1960s to the late l980s.
The authors
state that, contrary to many claims, the South has not gone back to the level of
segregation before Brown. It has, however, lost all of the additional progress made after l967,
but is still the least segregated region for black students.
Since the
1990s, the Supreme Court has fundamentally changed desegregation law, states the
report, and many major desegregation plans have ended. CRP’s statistical analysis
shows that segregation increased substantially after desegregation plans were terminated
in many large districts including Charlotte, NC; Pinellas County, FL; and Henrico
County, VA.
“Brown
was a major accomplishment
and we should rightfully be proud. But a real celebration should also involve thinking
seriously about why the country has turned away from the goal of Brown and accepted deepening polarization
and inequality in our schools,” said Gary Orfield, co-author of the study and co-director
of the Civil Rights Project. “It is time to stop celebrating a version of history
that ignores our last quarter century of retreat and begin to make new history by
finding ways to apply the vision of Brown in a transformed, multiracial society in another century.”
This new research
affirms that the growth of segregation coincides with the demographic surge in the
Latino population. Segregation has been most dramatic for Latino students, particularly
in the West, where there was substantial integration in the l960s but segregation
has soared since.
The report
stresses that segregation occurs simultaneously across race and poverty. The report
details a half-century of desegregation research showing the major costs of segregation,
particularly for students of color and poor students, and, conversely, the variety
of benefits offered by schools with student enrollment of all races.
Among the
key findings of the research are:
• Black and Latino students are an increasingly large
percentage of suburban enrollment, particularly in larger metropolitan areas, and
are moving to schools with relatively few white students.
•
Segregation for blacks is the highest in the Northeast, a region with extremely
high district fragmentation.
• Latinos are now significantly more segregated
than blacks in suburban America.
• Black and
Latino students tend to be in schools with a substantial majority of poor children,
while white and Asian students typically attend middle class schools.
•
Segregation is by far the most serious in the central cities of the largest metropolitan
areas; the states of New York, Illinois and California are the top three worst for
isolating black students.
•
California is the state in which Latino students are most segregated.
The report
concludes with recommendations about how the nation might pursue making the promise
of Brown a reality
in the 21st century,
providing equal opportunity to all students regardless of race or economic background.
“
http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/brown-at-60-great-progress-a-long-retreat-and-an-uncertain-future
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