Monday, December 21, 2009

U.S. Schools Are More Segregated Today Than in the 1950s!

I am quite sure that this is not the dream that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted for America and America's black people. Nevertheless, America's schools are more segregated today than they were in the 1950s.

Schools in the United States are more segregated today than they have been in more than four decades. Millions of non-white students are locked into “dropout factory” high schools, where huge percentages do not graduate, and few are well prepared for college or a future in the US economy.

According to a new Civil Rights report published at the University of California, Los Angeles, schools in the US are 44 percent non-white, and minorities are rapidly emerging as the majority of public school students in the US. Latinos and blacks, the two largest minority groups, attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights movement forty years ago. In Latino and African American populations, two of every five students attend intensely segregated schools. For Latinos this increase in segregation reflects growing residential segregation. For blacks a significant part of the reversal reflects the ending of desegregation plans in public schools throughout the nation. In the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, the US Supreme Court concluded that the Southern standard of “separate but equal” was “inherently unequal,” and did “irreversible” harm to black students. It later extended that ruling to Latinos.

If you want to read the full report, click HERE.

Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society

Source: Project Censored

Report Source: Orfield, G., Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge, Los Angeles, CA: The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA


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