Resegregation, Ignored

UPDATED: April 22, 2014, at 8:35 p.m.

African-American children in the South now have a 12 percent likelihood of attending an “apartheid school”—a school where white students make up fewer than 1 percent of attendees. Recent reporting from The Atlantic and ProPublica reveals that American schools districts now face the problem of resegregation, as federal judges lift desegregation mandates instituted to integrate black and white schools. From Tuscaloosa, Ala., to New York City, public schools are increasingly racially and socioeconomically homogenous. A Stanford study found that even within 10 years of lifted mandates, school districts had undone much of the integration achieved under court order. Although segregation is no longer the law of the land, the United States is once again plunged into the midst of a civil rights issue thought to be solved just a generation ago.

The current trend toward segregated school demographics and the emerging judicial behavior have left the Department of Justice powerless to hold school districts accountable for policies that reinforce segregation. The Warren Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling struck institutionalized segregation at its core, stating explicitly that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” But 60 years later, many schools look as though Brown v. Board never occurred.

The Supreme Court abrogated efforts to promote racial integration in its 2007 “Parents Involved” decision. In a landmark ruling that ushered in the modern era of judicial neglect for segregation issues, the divided court barred school districts in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., from considering individual students’ racial identities in school assignment, a practice used to promote diverse classrooms and to hinder resegregation. The plurality, led by Chief Justice Roberts, invalidated consideration of race aimed at “racial balancing”—enrollment criteria aimed at a range of demographic percentages. In defense of integration efforts, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his harsh dissent, “No Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision.” The deciding vote, Justice Kennedy, conceded that a diverse student body is a compelling state interest, but that the means employed by Brown v. Board are too mechanical to ameliorate de facto segregation.

However, proponents of integration point to government practices that reinforce de jure resegregation. In Tuscaloosa, for example, white neighborhoods near “apartheid schools” have been gerrymandered into the zones of schools with primarily white enrollees. Class issues have emerged, revealing that apartheid schools are increasingly homogenized in terms of socioeconomic status, rather than just race. Perhaps Brown v. Board is unable to tackle the modern issue, which emerges from a mixture of government practices and social phenomena, rather than from the clearly discriminatory laws of the 1960s. In any case, segregation, institutionalized or not, should not be ignored.

Confronting de facto racial segregation in schools will require an understanding of the issue’s complex causes. The intersectionality of race with other dimensions of social inequality—including localized funding for schools—complicates an already fraught issue. While the government may no longer be directly responsible for segregation, it should be responsible for keeping education integrated.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: April 22, 2014

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Brown v. Board of Education was in 1964. In fact, the case was decided in 1954.