Housing and School Segregation

Desegregation: Some History

• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): segregated schools were equal

• Brown v. the Board of Education (1954): segregated schools were unequal

Thurgood Marshall and two other lawyers who argued for Brown, 1954

Desegregation: Some History

• Segregated school system in the South remained intact a full decade after the Brown decision

• In the North, schools remained segregated until the mid-1970s

• Because of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, passed by US Congress, the South was more desegregated than any other region in the country by 1970

Paring Back Desegregation

• Milliken v. Bradley (1974): Supreme Court ruled against desegregation plan in Detroit that included both the city and surrounding suburbs

• Courts have continued to roll back desegregation orders (1991-1995)

• June 2007: The Supreme Court forbade most existing voluntary local efforts to integrate schools

“Schools Resegregate, Study Finds”New York Times 21 January 2003

• Charlotte, North Carolina

Ethnicity of Public School-age Population (2006-2007)

Whites 57%

Blacks 17%

Latinos 21%

Asian-Americans 5%

Native Americans 1%

Racial Composition of School Attended by Average: (2003-2004) Orfield and Lee, 2006, p. 9

Percentage race in each School

White Black Latino Asian Native American

% White 78 30 28 45 44

% Black 9 53 12 12 7

% Latino 9 13 55 20 11

% Asian 3 3 5 22 3

% N. Am. 1 1 1 1 35

New Jersey is the seventh most segregated state for Black

students and the sixth most segregated state for Latino

students.

This has not changed much over time because like other states in the

Northeast and Midwest, New Jersey never effectively desegregated.

Why?

• One reason New Jersey has such segregated schools is because it has so many small and highly fragmented school districts (N= 616)

• Not by county, but townships • Also a matter of diversity• Orfield and Lee advocate for

desegregation plans that involve metropolitan areas—cities and suburbs—not just for the city itself

Desegregation: Progress?

• Blacks and Latino students are more segregated now than they were in 1970.

These disparities are clustered according to class and race. While these are distinct processes, there is

also some relationship between them.

18% of children live in poverty* but they tend to live in areas and go to schools where poor children are in the majority.

*Federal poverty threshold = $19,350 for family of four in 2005; Orfield is using reduced or free lunch as the indicator of family poverty, which goes up to $22,290 for family of four (2005-2006)

National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University, “Low-Income Children in the United States,” January 2006.

Orfield and Lee, Table 14, page 31

What is the effect of concentrated poverty in a school population on school achievement?

Relationship between Concentrated Poverty & School Achievement

• Loss of successful role models: Adults that a child sees are unemployed or working low-paying jobs

• Loss of access to networks to get jobs• Loss of resources to support high-quality

schools• Schools with many poor children need even

more services (language training, special education, social work and counseling) but generally are more poorly funded than schools serving middle-class students

What Is At Stake

• Giving African-American and Latino students access to the resources White students have, which can lead to higher aspirations, academic achievement, and life chances

• Changes in attitudes of all students towards living and working in multiracial settings and an increased sense of civic engagement

The underlying problem is neighborhood segregation,

by class and race.

Schools reflect that segregation,

but do not create it.

Neighborhoods

Provide and determine:• education• recreational facilities• insurance rates• employment• transportation• safety• health

What happens when poor people are concentrated together?

• Loss of businesses: grocery stores, banks, etc

• Loss of political power: environmental discrimination (waste processing facilities and chemical plants)

• Lower property values: deteriorating buildings and and unsavory facilities (jails)

• Loss of medical facilities and clinics

• Loss of revenue for public schools

Massey, Douglas S. 1990. “American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. American Journal of Sociology 96(2): 329-357

While the majority of poor people are white, they are less likely than poor

African-Americans and Latinos to live in neighborhoods of concentrated

poverty.

Racial discrimination combines with class segregation for African-Americans and Latinos to produce “hyper-segregation,” particularly in old industrial areas of the

Midwest and Northeast.

Three-quarters of African-Americans live in highly

segregated neighborhoods today, whereas 90-100%

of other groups experience only moderate levels of

segregation.

Massey, Douglas S. and Mary J. Fischer. 2000. “How Segregation

Concentrates Poverty.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 23(4): 670-691.

Why do many African-Americans live in neighborhoods of

concentrated poverty and racial segregation?

Racial Discrimination

• Individual prejudice and feelings of comfort/discomfort

• Discrimination in real estate and banking industries

• Government policies increasing racial and class-based housing segregation

Detroit, Michigan, 1942

1992 Detroit Survey on Neighborhood Preference

• Neighborhood that is 20% black: One-third of whites uncomfortable and unwilling to live there.

• Neighborhood where one-third of the residents are black: 59% of whites would be unwilling to live there, 44% would be uncomfortable, and 29% would seek to leave.

• Neighborhood that is 50-50 black and white: becomes unacceptable to all but a small minority of whites.

1992 Detroit Survey on Neighborhood Preference

For African-Americans:

• The most popular choice is a neighborhood that is half black and half white.

• 87% willing to live in a neighborhood that is 20% black.

Neighborhood Turnover

• In a neighborhood that is 20% black, whites begin to not move in because they are uncomfortable, blacks move in because they comfortable with that balance.

• The balance tips towards a mix of 70% white, 30% black, and now some whites begin to sell their houses in order to move out.

Neighborhood Turnover

• When the neighborhood is 50-50, blacks begin to move in because the neighborhood is ideal; the majority of whites want to sell their houses

• Soon the neighborhood is entirely black

African-American family moving into their new home, Detroit 1942

Neighborhood Turnover

• This is what happened in central cities during the 1980s and 1990s, in which white people for the most part abandoned cities and fled to the suburbs

• However, now, the same thing is happening with the inner ring of suburbs so that segregation is maintained even in the suburbs (e.g., Pennsauken, Darby)

How does one decide where to live?

• Closeness to family and friends?

• Accessibility to work?

• Affordability?

• Quality of schools and services?

• Home-buyers: ability to maintain or gain wealth?

Jennifer Holme. 2002. “Buying Homes, Buying Schools,” Harvard Educational

Review 72(2): 177-205

• Her study of the home-buying habits of mostly white upper-middle class parents in California found that they chose the neighborhood/school based not on the quality of the school (test scores, etc) but on the class and race of the children attending that school.

Holme (2002)

• The parents in the study obtained little firsthand information about the schools they chose or rejected before deciding to move “for the schools,” relying instead on their social networks (other parents) for school information.

• Through those networks, parents felt that schools serving whiter, wealthier students were, in fact, better schools.

Discrimination in the Real Estate Industry

• HUD report (November 2002) compared the experiences of 4,600 black, white, and Hispanic testers who posed as apartment-seekers and home-buyers in 20 US metropolitan areas (including Philadelphia)

• Financial backgrounds, job histories, and other factors were the same

HUD Report (2002)

Measures of Discrimination:• advertised or comparable units available

to white and minority testers• whether units could be inspected• whether agents encouraged or

discouraged the testers• whether agents provided equal information

about financing

HUD Report (2002)

Those who faced discrimination:

• 25% of Hispanic renters

• 20% of Hispanic home-buyers

• 22% of Black renters• 17% of Black home

buyers

“Compared to white customers, African-Americans and Hispanics

are less likely to be given information about housing units,

receive fewer opportunities to inspect housing, receive less

help with financing, and are less likely to be shown homes in predominantly white or non-Hispanic neighborhoods.”

This study showed progress from the last HUD study done in 1989, in which bias against

blacks and Hispanics was down roughly 25%.

Federal Policy

• For the past 40 years, the federal government has supported and furthered residential segregation by creating public housing units within majority poor and black neighborhoods

• Currently, Housing Choice vouchers (formerly, Section 8) aim to disperse poor people to more middle-class communities (but do not always do so)

Robert Taylor Homes, Chicago

Three routes that activists and the courts have taken to remedy disparities

between school districts:

• Busing and school desegregation

• Equal funding between districts

• Affordable housing

Facing the State Capitol, Wendell Harris of Philadelphia Home and School Council addressed hundreds of Philadelphians who rallied for school funding May 5, 2003.