Friday marks the 65th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, which determined that segregating schools on the basis of race was “inherently unequal” and thus, unconstitutional.
Yet, a new report by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA finds that decades of programs have been phased out, and new policies haven't taken their place, leaving America's schools more segregated than ever.
"Let's be clear about desegregation and integration: We have never reached the status of integration," Rev. Emmett Price said in an interview with Boston Public Radio on Monday. "So when you have desegregation, there are a number of folks around the nation who continue to remain clear that they do not want 'them' with 'ours.'"
The research suggests that efforts to desegregate schools have been undermined by residential segregation, among other factors.
“Since 1988, the share of intensely segregated minority schools—schools that enroll 90-100% non-white students, has more than tripled,” the report authors note.
Rev. Irene Monroe touched on the housing segregation issue during the segment, and noted that patterns of gentrification and homelessness maintain a "mobility but instability" for the student population.
"Resources are already limited when you start in public schools, and it gets exacerbated," due to those patterns, she said. "To talk about educational parity, you have to have a sort of housing policy affixed to it. We need to be honest, we really don't integrate."
So how should society work to integrate schools, as the authors of the report argue is so vital to ensure an equal education to all students?
The great experiment after Brown vs. Board of Education was to bus inner city students into suburban neighborhoods, which led to riots across the nation, including in Boston.
According to Price, that's not an equitable option.
"Equity would mean that you would bus those wonderful suburban kids into the inner city. If we were trying to create equity, then you'd have a school system on both ends that were thriving so you have cross-busing so you could get the cultural experience, and the experience of differential of what it means to live in urban city versus suburban," he said. "But we send the urban kids into the suburbs because we know that the thing is set up such that suburban kids have better access and better opportunity. That's not equitable."
Monroe, who went through busing herself during her school days in Brooklyn, remained firmly anti-busing altogether.
"This is what I surmised when you're bused out of your neighborhood at any age: You feel that your neighborhood is not like, of course, other neighborhoods; that your schooling is inferior; that they think we are an inferior people; you feel like, 'Oh I'm very lucky to be by chance to be chosen by this experiment of busing.' It doesn't strengthen public schools, it actually weakens schools across the board," she said.
The report offered some recommendations for re-upping desegregation in schools: Train staff to respond to growing racial, economic and linguistic diversity; hire more diverse educators and leaders; and ensure school choice plans include equity policies.
Irene Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist, the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, and a Visiting Researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University’s School of Theology. Emmett G. Price III is a Professor and Founding Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
