News and Editorials

Of School Desegregation and the Supreme Court

July 2007

Let’s face some facts about school desegregation. The original landmark Supreme Court decisions were designed to do two things:

1. eliminate the systematic and the then legal denial of equal opportunity and rights to students of some groups,
2. redress the inequities in educational opportunity, and consequently in social and economic opportunity.

The law has now gone about as far as it can in attempting to swing the pendulum in the direction of true equality. Some argue that it swung too far over the intervening decades; others that it did not go far enough.

But accomplishing both those objectives did then and STILL DOES require more than simple legal formulaic approaches. That’s because segregation and its societal impact is more than simply a matter of law; it’s mostly a matter of behavior based on attitudes. The law does not address matters of behavior beyond strict legal limits on what cannot be done; it does not address attitude at all!

We have endured the change from legally sanctioned segregation (de jure) to legally permissible segregation (de facto). While most people (not just the aggrieved minorities) have benefited from the removal of the egregious legal barriers to equality, many and maybe even most that were previously deprived have yet to fully realize true equality in the way that they are treated, in the realities of what they are able to access in America today.

The law cannot force your choice of where to live, whom you choose to associate with on your own time (it can in the workplace), what you think of others -- if indeed you think about them at all. That is how de facto segregation has largely replaced de jure segregation in today’s America: because it’s not technically illegal.

The impact over many generations of discrimination and even slavery in America takes decades of work to erase. For Americans of African slave descent, most are barely accessing the basic opportunities that others take for granted. It takes generations of accumulated economic and educational opportunity to build up the equity that European families may have had that time to pass on to their progeny. Forty years (or barely 2 generations in technical terms) is not nearly enough time to accomplish that end.

And if you think that this is simply the old “Black vs. White” racism in the South issue, think again! The history of the US is rife with major legal discrimination, as well as practices that strongly impacted Asian, Native American, immigrant and other groups – with similarly devastating results. These practices continued in various forms through the mid-20th century; it’s not the distant past. If you still doubt that is goes beyond Black-White, consider that some of the more contentious regional disputes have been by and on behalf of Asian-American minority groups here in the West, who feel that their children’s needs are being sacrificed to address the children of other minority groups.

In the meantime, de facto segregation makes it almost certain that children of poorer minority families will be stuck in schools that are clearly not “de-segregated” in any practical terms, based on that new Supreme Court decision. And these schools can be documented to be “un-equal” in opportunity on the whole with schools in affluent areas nearby, even after 40 years of effort. Perhaps even more-so.

So neither of the original intentions of the previous landmark decisions is really going to be advanced in the slightest by the recent Supreme Court decisions, which appear to forbid considering race in the distribution of students among schools. Yes, they are no longer legally segregated; no, they are not legally de-segregated anymore so they’re effectively re-segregated in reality.

Let’s assume you believe that the decision does quite enough to permit removal of the legal barriers to an equal educational access. There’s an argument that can be made for that, however callous it might seem.

However, that second goal will never be met unless we drastically change something in the de facto equation.

It’s true that contact between races on a daily basis, which was essentially mandated in the earlier decisions, does not by itself guarantee attitudinal or behavioral change. The adage about “familiarity breeds contempt” does have some validity. We see the impact of student-based discrimination in both public and private schools in our work every day. If you doubt that, arrange a visit to Camp Everytown to hear it from the kids themselves.

As an aside, SVCCJ does know how to overcome these biases and behaviors very well. (Follow the links to SVCCJ’s “Growing Circle”, “Common Ground” and “Camp Everytown” programs.) We have the technology to do so, but it works only when we are able to arrange contact between groups that ordinarily avoid social contact.

That’s the kicker: There is no way that you can achieve the desired results of equality without starting with ensuring sufficient contact between the races, particularly when attitudes are first formed in the school years.

The more you permit re-segregation, by any means, the less probability we have of achieving equality of opportunity. The less we see and thereby come to know one another, the less likely we are to protect those precious rights to legal equality.

NOBODY wants their children to be stuck in schools that are decrepit, poorly equipped, underperforming, or unsafe! Least of all the preponderance of families whose children are stuck there every day in our unequal system – minority and poor kids.

There is a reasonable case for not being so zealous in ensuring numerical equality that we bus kids for hours to achieve that goal, neither the poor and minority kids from the poorer schools or the better off kids from the richer neighborhoods. The cure, one hopes, would not be worse than the illness!

If all schools were truly equal (and let’s make that equally good), then you might theoretically argume that equality under the law had been reached without consideration of race. It simply isn’t so; de facto segregation between those who have the means and flee the poor districts and those who do not have the means to leave is the way it works.

How we redress this in practical terms is open for discussion and maybe multiple solutions when drawing boundaries around student populations. But that we must consider the impact of de facto segregation seems to me to be an immutable constant in this equation.

The Supreme Court majority has ignored this reality in favor of a dry detached argument. The result is likely to be an effective return to many of the ills the earlier decisions were designed to address. This is clearly not the way to go forward.

The “wisdom of Solomon” was not, as many people misperceive, that he divided the disputed baby in half. The wisdom was that, by suggesting something so ridiculously dangerous, he elicited a more reasonable response to the dispute and was then able to see what truly was needed for “justice”.

Equality is a really tough goal, but the most worthy one we’ve based our nation’s history and our future upon. Where’s our Solomon when we need him?

4 reasons why you should care about school integration – even if you don’t have kids in the public schools:

1. You pay for it. Your taxes go to pay for public education. Whatever the Supreme Court decides impacts the costs of that education, therefore your taxes. Only a few truly escape taxes.
2. Your life actually depends upon it. The overwhelming preponderance of people you will come to depend on in your life will be products of a public school education, including those who ensure your safety. From the utility person who fixes your gas lines to your doctor, the air traffic controller who ensures that your plane is safe as well as the pilot who flies it, your police and soldiers who protect you – almost all will have learned their lessons in the public schools in America. None of us can escape that, and all of us better hope we’ve provided the best education we can for all of them, not just some of them.
3. Our economic future depends upon it. Our economic competitiveness depends directly on how well we find and educate students who can succeed in our schools from every ethnic/racial group, educating the greatest numbers of them that we can, and on preparing them with the confidence and abilities to work together that make for a high performance workforce.
4. This is just the stalking horse for other reversals of integration laws. There are people who sincerely wish for a “color blind” America, other people so conscious of color that they want to separate Americans, and all kinds of people in between who continue to try to reverse 60 years of desegregation and integration laws. If they can succeed through the courts with public education, you should expect more concerted efforts in areas such as workplace, housing, and economic laws.

The odds are good that, if you’re reading SVCCJ’s website, you do care about these issues

• de jure – The legal term referring to something that is based in actual written law or in judicial interpretation of that law. For example, segregated schools were the written law in many states prior to 1954, when the Supreme Court struck down those laws – thus creating a new legal situation. That was “de jure segregation” followed by "de jure integration."
• de facto – The legal term referring to something that is not based in law or legal decision, but is based in reality on the ground. Since the 1960s there has been much documentation of “white flight to the suburbs” away from inner city schools or schools which had been legally mandated by the Supreme Court decisions to integrate minority children. That movement of residence was not a matter of law and is considered “de facto segregation.”

Bart A. Charlow, President
Silicon Valley Conference for Community and Justice