via email from Asst. Prof. of English at Texas A&M, Elias Dominguez-
Barajas.
The recent Harvard study describing the resegration of U.S. schools has been
mentioned in several different contexts, and I’m sure that many … have not only heard of it but have
actually perused the full report. Despite the latter, I considered it pertinent to pass the information
along in case somebody who hasn’t heard of it wants the actual source for research purposes or
personal information.
[More summary below. Get the link at “Web Links” Module (the
menu at the upper left) under “National Resources.]
Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee began to
circulate their preliminary findings several years ago (starting circa 1997). Those findings have been
confirmed
in their final report, which includes the following points among
others:
There has been a substantial slippage toward segregation in most of the states
that were highly desegregated in 1991. The most integrated state
for African Americans in 2001 is
Kentucky. The most desegregated states for Latinos are in the Northwest.
However, in
some states with very low black
populations, school segregation is soaring as desegregation efforts
are abandoned.
American public schools are now only 60 percent white nationwide and
nearly one fourth of U.S. students are in states with a majority of nonwhite
students. However,
except in the South and Southwest, most white students have little contact with minority
students.
Asians, in contrast, are the most integrated and by far the most likely to
attend multiracial schools with a significant presence of three or more racial groups. Asian students
are in schools with the smallest
concentration of their own racial group.
The vast
majority of intensely segregated minority schools face conditions of concentrated poverty, which are
powerfully related to unequal educational
opportunity. Students in segregated minority schools face
conditions that students in segregated white schools seldom experience.
Latinos confront
very serious levels of segregation by race and poverty, and non-English speaking Latinos tend to be
segregated in schools with each other. The data show no substantial gains in segregated education for
Latinos even during the civil rights era. The increase in Latino segregation is particularly notable in
the West.
Texas Civil Rights Review 