Opinion | Who's afraid of integration? A lot of people, actually. (2023)

In 1999, Robert D. Potter, a federal judge protégé of Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina,cleanThe Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District abandoned the desegregation bus program that had been part of its public school system for three decades. Potter stated that the school district had "eliminated, as far as possible, traces of past discrimination in traditional areas of school operations".

Indeed, when the Potter order was carried out in the summer of 2002, both black and white students were abruptly transferred from integrated schools to neighborhood schools with much higher levels of segregation. His decision triggered what social scientists call a natural experiment: the opportunity to determine who wins and who loses in response to changes in public policy and what the consequences are.

three economists,Esteban billingfrom the University of Colorado,david demingda Harvard Kennedy School eJonas Rockofffrom Columbia Business School, used a gold mine of data in 2012 to write "School segregation, school success and crime: Evidence for the End of Buses in Charlotte-Mecklenburg”.

What did you think?

First, they wrote that “school segregation has widened the inequality of outcomes between whites and minorities. We estimate that all students, black and white, score lower on high school tests when they attend schools with more minority students.” Furthermore, "a 10 percentage point increase in the proportion of minorities in a student's assigned school reduces high school test scores by approximately 0.014 standard deviations."

Billings, Deming, and Rockoff wrote that white students were "less likely to graduate from high school or attend a four-year college when enrolled in schools with more minority students", but "given increased segregation between people of the same race, this implies that white students had higher graduation and attendance rates after the policy change.

What about crime rates?

"The rezoning of Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools led to large, statistically significant increases in crime among minority males," they wrote. Increases in crime, according to the authors, "are driven entirely by poor minority men who are enrolled in schools with a higher proportion of poor minority students."

Billings, the lead author of the article, has written extensively about the complex and often unintended consequences of policy initiatives governing school suspensions ("Proving the School-to-Prison Pipeline"), failed schools ("Gentrification and failed schools:The unintended consequences of school choice under the No Child Left Behind Act") and lottery-based school choice ("Does school choice increase crime?”).

I asked Billings to assess the conclusions he has drawn in the decade since the original paper appeared.

Answered by email:

In all the research I have done, there is strong evidence that minority children are often the “losers” of these educational policies. This same demographic is over-represented in the criminal justice system, and past educational experiences can have stigmatizing effects on later life outcomes. School assignment policies (e.g., school choice lotteries, no child left behind) that allow children to opt out of neighborhood school assignments tend to lead to patterns of segregation that are likely to worsen minority outcomes and benefit white families.

Policies that address poverty and racial inequality, Billings continued, "often involve taking resources away from wealthier, typically white families, which has generated some resentment among those groups and fueled the popularity" of politicians like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.

In summary, Billings wrote,

The United States has improved on many dimensions in addressing the problems of poverty; more often than not, we become more aware of the systemic problems related to race and poverty. We have also seen a rise in inequality that has led to a shrinking middle class in terms of affordability. In essence, I think we as a society have a better understanding of the issues of poverty and race, but politically we've become more polarized about how to address these issues. We seem to know more about how society is failing, but we seem to agree less on how to fix it.

The issues raised by the abandonment of bus transport by desegregation in Charlotte-Mecklenburg clearly resonate in 2023 policy, but there is surprisingly little data to determine how things stand.

I askedashley jardin, political scientist at George Mason University and author of “white identity politics", the next question:

Yes, like the Harvard economistRaj Chettyand others related toMoving to opportunity projectthey argue, school integration and housing policies improve job prospects, improve incomes, and increase the likelihood of marriage among minorities, why is there such intransigent opposition among whites?

Jardina responded via email that "the work on the racial composition of schools and performance outcomes is really out of my league," but "what's interesting is that on the public opinion side, we don't ask white Americans their opinion about the issues". such as buses, school integration, and neighborhood diversity in our national polls over decades. It's almost as if the social sciences have assumed that public opinion on these matters has taken hold."

Indeed, Jardina continued, “I suspect that school choice and neighborhood makeup is where the rubber meets the road for many liberal white Americans who simultaneously consider themselves racially progressive and support many policies that would promote racial equality, except those that could threaten their own home equity or local public school test scores.”

Indeed, black and white views on the deeply divisive issues of performance gaps, school discipline, and promotion requirements are difficult issues to explore.

Laura Meckler in The Washington Post and Debra Kamin have reported and written two illuminating articles on the school system in Shaker Heights, Ohio, an affluent Cleveland suburb that has sought to be an exception to the nearly universal story of white flight. in the Times.

In October 2019, Shaker Heights Schools graduate Meckler posted “This pioneering suburb has been trying to handle the race for 60 years. What if trying isn't enough?”

In the 1950s, Meckler wrote, as whites from other communities fled and black families began to move in, "in Shaker, white families knocked on doors and met their new neighbors."

Shaker Heights, founded as a wealthy white privileged enclave, continued,

reinvented. Through it all, the schools built and maintained a reputation for excellence, sending large numbers of students to elite universities and developing Advanced Placement and, later, International Baccalaureate programs. The theater and art programs are top notch. Students can take classes in French, Spanish, German, Latin or Greek, in addition to Mandarin, which is taught to all elementary school students. Last year, the school sponsored seven international student trips.

But, Meckler warned, racial tensions began to rise nearly three decades ago and continue to play a central role.

“By the mid-1990s,” he wrote, “integration was well established in Shaker Heights, but there was also a troubling racial performance gap that the district was not talking about. Then came Project Achieve, a biracial committee of parents, teachers and community members formed to dissect the district."

The committee issued its report in March 1997, noting that

whites made up about half of all students, but 93% of the top 20%. Black students made up 82% of those who failed at least part of a state proficiency test. Of all the grades obtained in the basic classes of high school by black students, about 40% were D or F.

Once the report was released, “Black students and parents were outraged. Some felt they were being portrayed as academic losers,” Meckler wrote, describing the wave of anger and resentment that became commonplace at community meetings.

The Times ran Kamin's article "Could Black Flight change an integration model?" in January. I found a new dynamic, the migration of black families from Shaker Heights:

“Shaker Heights was no longer the first choice for many black families, and an increasing exodus of black families to neighboring towns was beginning to take shape,” wrote Kamin. She added:

In Shaker Heights, it's the black families that are leaving. Many of them point to initiatives implemented over the past decade to combat systemic racism in the classroom: well-meaning people who feel they've done more harm than good to their children's school performance.

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From 2010 to 2021, the black portion of the Shaker Heights populationit fellto 35.9 percent from 37.1 percent. Kamin noticed that

While the drop in Shaker Heights' black population has been small, the change is noticeable in the public school system. In 2012, black students represented just over half of students; they now make up about 45% of the population. Over the same period, the white student population grew slightly from around 37% to nearly 39%.

In dozens of interviews, Kamin wrote:

Black and white residents of Shaker Heights said the same thing: Shaker Heights appears to be integrated, but within its schools, where gifted and honors classes have long been predominantly white, the opposite is true. Data from the school district's 2020-21 Strategic Plan Annual Report reveals that 31% of black students did not meet grade 10 language arts proficiency requirements, compared to 1.95% of white students; When it comes to eighth grade algebra proficiency, 60% of Black students did not meet the standard compared to 5.45% of White students.

Integration, in other words, is an exceptionally complicated process for blacks and whites alike, even for a liberal (2020 Votes:15,482 for Joe Biden, 1,965 for Trump), wealthy (average annual household income:$ 92.463) suburb with relatively low crime rates (violent crime: 1.73 per 1,000 residents, compared to 3.36 for the entire state of Ohio).

I askedryan enos, a political scientist at Harvard who has studied the complexities of race relations, I asked Jardina the same question: If school integration and housing policies “improve job prospects and increase the likelihood of marriage among minorities, why is there opposition? so intransigent among whites? ? people?"

He responded via email that as the demographics of neighborhoods and communities change,

the integration is unstable. This instability is repeated time and time again in American history, where one neighborhood is dominated by one group, and when another group arrives, the neighborhood briefly blends in and then tilts toward the other group. This is particularly the case in the United States, where the abundance of land and cheap housing meant that cities could always expand outwards, at least for people who had the means to expand.

Enos pointed to Los Angeles:

You've seen it with places like Watts and Crenshaw becoming these famous black parts of the metropolis, but once almost entirely white. However, one thing that many people don't know is that both places are now mostly Hispanic, but the black population has largely remained, making them mixed areas.

Why didn't they segregate? Enos wrote:

One answer is that many blacks who lived there were neither able nor willing to move, unlike white Anglo-Saxons who fled when blacks began to move into the areas. So the places where we see mixed neighborhoods are usually places where people are not white and/or places where people are poor. When we focus on wealthy white Anglo-Saxons (many of whom are now very liberal) we see segregation again and again.

He wrote that, overall, “inclusion isn’t just good for minorities, it’s good for everyone because it can lead to more diverse neighborhoods, businesses, and institutions, and the science behind this is clear: diversity makes us smarter and richer.” . ” ”.

Why, then, is residential integration so difficult to achieve?

Enos wrote:

A primary, but certainly not exclusive, reason is that it presents a classic social dilemma in which a person's individual incentives, which might be things like the quality of their children's school or the price of their home, don't align with the greaters. obtained social benefits. individual actions to achieve, in this case, this action is a willingness to remain in an inclusive neighborhood.

Take the case, wrote Enos, “of an individual white homeowner when a community is integrating. Do they want to stay in that community to reap the long-term benefits of diversity when they might be concerned about the short-term costs of the quality of their school or the price of their home?” He called this choice "the liberal dilemma, where the things liberals collectively value are not things liberals are willing individually to pay the costs of achieving."

From 2000 to 2020, there have been modest reductions in levels of segregation between whites and blacks and between whites and Hispanics.

Guillermo Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution,calculatedthe rate of national integration, using what is called the segregation index ordissimilarity index, which measures the extent to which two groups (such as black and white populations) are unevenly distributed across neighborhoods in a single metropolitan area. The index ranges from zero (complete integration) to 100 (complete segregation).

The segregation rate between blacks and whites dropped from 62 in 2000 to 59 in 2010 and 57 in 2020, Frey found. During the same period, the segregation ratio between whites and Hispanics fell from 47 to 46 to 44.

In a separate 2021 study, “Neighborhood segregation persists for Black, Latino/Hispanic, and Asian Americans”, Frey emphasized that “white people still live in white-majority neighborhoods” where “long-standing patterns of segregation persist”. From 2015 to 2019, noted Frey, "the white share of the neighborhood where the average white person resides" was 71% in large metro areas and was "even higher in smaller metro areas and outside metro areas: 79% and 85% whites."

Despite all the obstacles described above, there has been substantial progress in tackling racial inequalities since the Supreme Court ordered the end of segregation in the public schools ofBrown v. Board of Educationem 1954.

David Deming, author of the article I mentioned at the beginning of this column, emailed me to say that "the story of American education over the past 30 years has been one of constant progress."

More specifically, Deming pointed out that

since 1990, the national high school completion rate has increased from 78% to 91%. The baccalaureate completion rate nearly doubled, from 21% to 38%. The gap between blacks and whites in high school completion was 15 percentage points in 1990, but today it is just 4 percentage points. Gaps in performance between blacks and whites narrowed slightly, as did gaps in parental education.

Furthermore, the black poverty rateit fellfrom 41.8 percent in 1966 to 19.1 percent in 2021. From 1967 to 2021, Black annualmake "per capita, in inflation-adjusted dollars, went from $9,971 to $28,648.

Hepercentage of law students of colorin US schools accredited by the American Bar Association, it was 11.23% in 1987; 20.57% in 2000 and 31.01% in 2019. In 2019, 13.4% masters and 9.2% doctorateswere awardedto African Americans. In 2021, according to the Census Bureau, 13.6% of the US population was black.

In other words, the big picture isn't bleak; there has been good news and bad news, and the good news signals impressive progress.

Despite these achievements, Deming wrote that it is

much more concerned about the next 30 years. I am concerned about budgetary pressures, demographic hurdles and the unacceptably high cost of education, especially higher education. The economy demands ever higher levels of education and people are living longer. There will be increasing demands for some form of education and training, not just in childhood and early adulthood, but throughout working life.

In a 2017 essay, “Why death stalks black lives,”douglas s. Massey, a Princeton sociologist, addressed “the consequences of segregation,” arguing that

The spatial concentration of disadvantage, in turn, predicts a myriad of ills, including high rates of violence, crime, infant mortality, and homicide, and low levels of life expectancy, public trust, interpersonal connectedness, and political effectiveness. Furthermore, black neighborhoods are much more likely to contain toxic environmental hazards than other areas. By systematically exposing them to exceptionally high levels of disorder, violence, and toxicity, racial segregation works malevolently to irritate African Americans and compromise health and well-being through a series of increasingly familiar biosocial pathways.

“A growing body of evidence,” concluded Massey,

suggests that black and white Americans experience very different health and mortality outcomes over their lifetimes, outcomes that occur not just because blacks have lower levels of education, income, and wealth than whites, but because they experience different circumstances. radically disadvantaged neighborhoods, regardless of socioeconomic status. status they achieve. Due to persistently high levels of black segregation in the United States, neighborhood disadvantage remains the critical link through which black poverty is transmitted and reproduced throughout life and across generations.

Assuming Massey is right that segregation is the vehicle "through which black poverty is transmitted and reproduced," policymakers of goodwill face the daunting and perhaps insurmountable task of restoring integration to center stage, avoiding somehow the political and logistical errors that characterized bus transport, and in the affirmative. action in the past.

Although there is light at the end of the tunnel, there are still miles to go.

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