My Dad's Quest For Desegregation: Reflections On Brown V. Board Of Education

In the 1960s, my Dad, William Wellington Archibald, worked with a group of lay Catholics in Rochester, N.Y. (with diocesan support) to purchase homes on behalf of black people in "red-lined" neighborhoods.

Mortgage Red-lining

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

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The Daily Show: NC Republican Official Don Yelton Reveals Bone-Deep Republican Racism
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/dxhtvk/suppressing-the-vote

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Housing segregation is holding back the promise of Brown v. Board: "It's that much harder to integrate classrooms when the communities where children live are still so segregated. Since the Civil Rights Era, residential racial segregation across the U.S. has steadily declined. But segregation among school-aged children has startlingly lagged behind this progress. In the communities where they live, black and white children -- as well as the poor and non-poor -- are more isolated from each other than adults in the U.S. population at large." Emily Badger in The Washington Post.

White House puts discrimination at the fore. "Nearly six years after the United States elected its first black president, the signposts of the latest discussion have appeared across the cultural landscape....These high-profile, racially charged controversies have coincided with what the administration, and many others, hoped would be a moment of celebration surrounding the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which ended -- legally, at least -- racial segregation in public education." Scott Wilson and Sari Horwitz in The Washington Post.

De jure integrated, de facto still segregrated. "The 1954 ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education opened the door to the civil rights revolution of the following decades as legalized segregation was ended. But according to a recent study...segregation of schools based on race and poverty remains after decades of efforts....Today there are a variety of other factors that make for segregated schools. For example, birthrates among whites have stabilized while Latino birthrates have surged. School enrollment often depends on housing patterns, which in turn depend on affordability and job opportunities. Black and Latino students tend to be in schools with substantial majorities of poor children." Michael Muskal in the Los Angeles Times.

Primary source: The UCLA study.

Explainers:

5 myths about the Brown decision. Imani Perry in The Washington Post.

Brown decision at 60: A look at education inequity. Kimberly Hefling and Jesse J. Holland in the Associated Press.

Long read: Segregation now: The resegregation of America's schools. Nikole Hannah-Jones in ProPublica.

Still, minorities faring better than pre-Brown. "Just before Brown, only about one in seven African-Americans, compared with more than one in three whites, held a high school degree. Today...the share of all African-American adults holding high school degrees (85 percent) nearly equals the share of whites (89 percent); blacks have slightly passed whites on that measure among young adults ages 25 to 29. Before Brown, only about one in 40 African-Americans earned a college degree. Now more than one in five hold one. Educational advances have also keyed other gains, including the growth of a substantial black middle-class and health gains.... Yet many other disparities remain." Ronald Brownstein in The Atlantic.

How charter schools are shaking up the debate. "About 5% of U.S. students attend charter schools, which began as a late 20th-century attempt by educators and entrepreneurs to create what they believed to be higher quality, more innovative alternatives to public schools. With the Obama administration's blessing and start-up money behind it, charters are poised for further exponential growth. The problem with that, critics say, is that charter systems pay more attention to student achievement than to racial diversity when both are important. Charter advocates counter by listing a number of limitations on their recruitment." Heidi Hall inUSA Today.

How the administration is taking on desegregation. "The Obama administration has revived a federal interest in desegregation issues. In a few places, it has managed to leverage the court orders or federal agreements to fight inequities that otherwise would be hard to remedy -- though plenty would fault the Obama White House for not doing enough to fight resegregation and the lack of opportunity afforded to many students. The federal government can intervene in districts with court orders so long as it can prove that minority children are at a disadvantage. Building a case is much harder in other places." Nirvi Shah and Maggie Severns in Politico.

Holder to grads: Focus on subtle but discriminatory policies, not racial rants. "Attorney General Eric Holder weighed in Saturday on recent racial controversies, saying Americans should worry less about racist outbursts that make headlines, and instead focus on policies that discriminate subtly against minorities in schools, voting booths and prisons....In the speech, Mr. Holder cited the 60th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education, a landmark Supreme Court ruling that decreed unconstitutional the 'separate but equal' doctrine that had allowed segregation." Devlin Barrett in The Wall Street Journal.