In many places around the country, school segregation is worse today than it was in the 1970s. New York Times Magazine reporter and MacArthur fellow (otherwise known as a MacArthur genius grant) Nikole Hannah-Jones has been researching the issue for more than five years. One of the key insights from her work about the causes of school segregation is that it is a tangible consequence of individual choices—and is not simply limited to segregated communities. Instead, it’s an issue no matter where people live. In avrecent interview with The Atlantic, she said this:
Whether you have integrated communities or segregated communities, we have school segregation. In communities that are gentrifying, the gentrification stops at the schoolhouse door. White communities want neighborhood schools if their neighborhood school is white. If their neighborhood school is black, they want choice. Housing segregation just becomes a convenient excuse. [...]
We have a system where white people control the outcomes. And the outcome that most white Americans want is segregation. And I don’t mean the type of segregation that we saw in 1955. I don't mean complete segregation. I don't think there are very many white Americans who want entirely white schools. What they do want is a limited number of black kids in their schools.
What’s most disturbing from research on school segregation and Hannah-Jones’ work is that poor black and brown children pay a very high price for being in segregated schools. Not only do they fail to get the academic and social tools they need to be successful, but they also have poorer health outcomes and are more likely to be unemployed and underpaid compared to their counterparts who have attended integrated schools. Studies also show that white children benefit from attending integrated schools as well—with benefits including increased critical thinking and problem solving skills as well as becoming more empathetic and less prejudiced.
Hannah-Jones’s work offers us much to reflect on, particularly now in the age of Trump when we have a Secretary of Education who wishes to gut the public school system and boost enrollment in private, parochial, and charter schools. It also gives us powerful questions to ask about the overall impact of gentrification on communities and, in particular, poor children of color.
How can we ever get to a more just, equitable country for people of color if we don’t do the work to address white Americans racism, fear of “the other,” and how it translates into poor educational and social outcomes for all?
Watch a brief interview with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Soledad O’Brien below.
And if you are a fan of podcasts and enjoy great storytelling, you’ll love her multi-part story “The Problem We All Live With” on This American Life about school integration in Normandy, Missouri, a district on the border of Ferguson.