Why Segregation Survives 60 Years After Brown v. Board of Education

[struggle4progress]

By Richard V. Reeves
10:42 am ET
May 16, 2014

... segregation has survived the ending of legal discrimination. Students are still predominantly assigned to schools in a particular area, so schools look like the neighborhoods they serve. Residential segregation by race remains very high in the United States, and as NYU’s Patrick Sharkey shows, segregation by income is rising.

Zoning laws help to protect the borders of affluent school catchments and the value of the real estate within them. Today, the problem of race discrimination is more complex than in the bad old pre-Brown days. The interaction of income inequality, neighborhood segregation and school quality creates a less tangible barrier to racial equality than the law, but it still must be tackled with equal urgency

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/05/16/why-segregation-survives-60-years-after-brown-v-board-of-education/

[SevenSixtyTwo]

1. What's wrong with going to school in the neighborhood you live in?

My parents were poor. We lived in a working class neighborhood and I went to our neighborhood school. Mr. Brown wanted his daughter to be free to go to their neighborhood school, not be bussed across town because of the color of her skin. He wanted freedom and equality, not even more government mandate based on skin color.

[dembotoz]

2. perhaps it might not have gone to court if the black schools really were equal

but they were not then and they are not now.

[madville]

3. When I was in middle school

In the 80's they would bus us 15 miles from white suburbia into the city to a predominantly black school. We would pass by a very nice school that was only a few years old on the way to an old run-down one.

The neighborhood was terrible, crack was popular and gunshots were heard regularly. There were fights almost daily but most were within the same race. I remember one huge brawl that was black against white that involved over 50 people, several of us climbed on top of a covered walkway to get above the chaos. The school was shut down for about three days after that.

Students self-segregated within the same school, from the cafeteria to the classrooms, to even speaking to one another. There was tremendous hate on both sides between the two races.

Now I can look back and see the bigger picture, how the poverty and racism made life for the black students of that area very difficult. Back then though as a 12 year old thrust into that situation I was absolutely terrified and started avoiding going to school at all costs.

My parents wound up registering me from my grandmother's house to attend a different school and when my brother got that age they sent him to private school.

Now they let people choose what school they want their kids to go to but will only provide bus transportation if it's their actual school district.

[LittleBlue]

4. This is beating a dead horse. We did busing in Seattle

People just put their kids in private schools or moved to the suburbs.

As long as people have freedom to move and use private schools, they'll avoid busing. We quit as it was a total failure.