Battle over ‘resegregation’ not over in NC
OPINION - As a nation, we should remember that racial discrimination, in the form of separate and unequal education, is illegal...
Raleigh, North Carolina is perceived by many as one of the more progressive cities in the nation. However, recent events have challenged that perception. In a recent 5-4 vote, the Wake County School Board ended its busing policy, which had been in place since the 1970s, in favor of a neighborhood-based education plan that would resegregate education and leave African American and Latino children in substandard schools.
According to Rev. William Barber II, NAACP State Conference President and lead protester against the resegregation of education, the policy change is more about a pedagogical challenge to the value of socioeconomic diversity than it is about busing. Busing was a means to an end, a strategy to ensure that children, who were likely to live in segregated residential areas, would have an opportunity to learn in diverse environments.
“Diversity is one of our seven components of school excellence,” Rev. Barber said. “If we don’t challenge this, we’ll see the creation of high poverty, racially identifiable schools.”
I thought we settled this already. In the U.S. Supreme Court’s1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, it was clear that separate was inherently unequal and unconstitutional, and that any effort to segregate education is a violation of civil rights. In the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, the nation’s highest court reiterated that, “student body diversity is a compelling state interest.” However, the Wake County School Board, by returning to “neighborhood schools” has essentially elected to ignore these decisions.
WATCH ‘ED SHOW’ COVERAGE OF THE NORTH CAROLINA BUSING BATTLE:
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Unfortunately, they are not alone. School districts across the nation are challenging the policies and practices that have been used to enforce policies developed in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement. In North Carolina, it is the return to “neighborhood schools.” In San Francisco and other cities across the nation, it looks like challenges to consent decrees developed to ensure student body diversity. In Texas, it takes the form of rewriting textbooks to refashion history so as to undermine the importance of the civil rights movement and its contributions to our democracy. On the West Coast, it’s ending diversity admissions policies. Across the country, the integrity of our promise of democracy is in question.
As a nation, we should remember that racial discrimination, in the form of separate and unequal education, is illegal. Though recent challenges to voluntary desegregation programs have been growing among anti-affirmative action advocates, the truth is that without policies to enforce desegregation, all of our children would have a substandard educational experience—void of the richness that diversity brings to academic achievement and social progress. As seen in other school districts, ensuring successful school diversity takes ongoing work. When desegregation programs are dismantled because they’ve “achieved” their stated diversity goals, schools often quickly return to their prior segregated status.
There are many variables associated with high performance in education, but segregated learning environments—and the disparities in teacher quality and resources that often accompany that segregation—is not the answer. It wasn’t the answer in the mid-20th Century, and it is certainly an antiquated notion in our increasingly global society and economy. Given what research has found regarding the improved educational and socioeconomic outcomes of children who learn in multi-cultural environments, to deny our children these opportunities today is not only unconscionable, it is also terribly irresponsible.
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