Black History Month in the United States is a time to highlight and celebrate the history of Black Americans. However, as I approach the age of 70,th On the May anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, this year's commemoration will take a deeper look at the influence of history on the present and its impact on Black Americans and society at large. It is necessary to consider this. The best way to do this is to focus on the intersection of racism in education and housing.
In the Brown decision, the Supreme Court declared legal segregation in education unconstitutional. But 70 years later, schools across America remain stubbornly segregated.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) 2022 report states: “While the student population in K-12 public schools has become significantly more diverse, schools across the United States remain segregated along racial, ethnic, and economic lines, with more than one-third of students ( approximately 18.5 million students) attended schools primarily of the same race/ethnicity, where more than 75 percent of the student population is of a single race/ethnicity.… GAO also found that 14 percent of students , also found that more than 90 percent of students attended schools of a single race/ethnicity.”
Even in New York, long considered a reliably liberal state, school segregation remains a prominent reality. According to a 2023 research report titled “Inequality in the Empire State” by ERASE Racism, a civil rights organization that I lead, one in three students of color in New York He said he attends a school district with over 90% of children. It has been called a “school district with concentrated segregation of students of color.''
The report identified 36 school districts across nine counties that severely segregated students of color, including 15 school districts in New York City, 11 on Long Island, and five in Westchester County. Inequitable and historic underfunding exacerbates racism and puts students' futures in jeopardy.
It is no coincidence that these highly segregated school districts largely reflect historic government discriminatory housing policies, which are deeply embedded in modern practices through exclusionary zoning decisions. These decisions are often made possible through local control of zoning. At first glance, this may seem benign, but upon closer inspection we see that it functions to support and maintain historical separation.
The effect is literally structural racism.
As the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health reports, “Decades of redlining, a long-standing banking practice that prevents people of color from obtaining mortgages, have led to racial injustice in the San Francisco Bay Area and across the country. …The practice has been illegal since 1968, but studies show that more than 50 years later, the harmful legacy of redlining still affects non-white communities. shows that the world is suffering from air pollution, reproductive health problems and declining urban amenities.”
Current banking practices continue to stand in the way of racial equity in homeownership. In October 2023, an analysis of recent mortgage data by the New York State Attorney General's Office found that “racial disparities exist at every stage of the purchase mortgage financing process. These disparities remained even when we adjusted for various underwriting criteria, such as credit scores and debt-to-income ratios, to reflect the actual barriers to homeownership experienced. It’s most pronounced not only regionally, but also among Black and Latinx individual borrowers.”
These racist housing practices perpetuate the segregation of public schools because they affect school district boundaries and therefore which students can attend those schools. Housing controls continue school segregation, affect per-student spending, determine student outcomes, and maintain unequal opportunities in life. In reality, a child's zip code still determines whether or not they have access to quality education, quality affordable housing, and family-supporting careers.
The overall impact is not just the perpetuation of racist housing and education practices. It also disproportionately burdens low-income neighborhoods with the social needs of people who have been and continue to be discriminated against. These communities must meet greater needs with fewer resources.
Reversing these catalytic forces will require three important policy changes nationally, statewide, and locally.
First, the link between racial segregation in housing and public education should be recognized, and policies that perpetuate racial segregation in housing should be eliminated.
Second, inequitable funding of public school districts must end. Being fair includes recognizing that students with greater needs require more funding to overcome them.
Third, because these needs are often the enduring legacy of decades of race-based discrimination and inequitable funding, public policy must compensate for government-sanctioned structural racism. need to do it. Why aren't governments accountable for their actions?
New York state has recently attempted to make school funding more equitable. But they have done little to address the enduring legacy of discrimination.
Black History Month provides an opportunity to reflect on our past as a means of informing our future. 70th The anniversary of the Brown decision gives us an opportunity to reflect on the progress we have made and recognize how far our country must go to make this decision a reality. To secure a better future for our country, we must use our past to make the changes we need now.
laura harding is presidents of erase racismcivil rights An organization based in New York.
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