ARP Links
Facing South blog reports: School segregation in the U.S. continues to rise
More than fifty years after the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision, blacks and Latinos in U.S. schools are more segregated than they have been in more than four decades, according to a new report from the Civil Rights Project at the University of California.
Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge illustrates that race still impacts U.S. education and that the nation is far from the “post-racial” society media and pundits are claiming it to be. The report finds that the U.S. continues to move backward toward increasing minority segregation in highly unequal schools; the job situation remains especially bleak for American blacks, and Latinos have a college completion rate that is shockingly low. At the same time, very little is being done to address large scale challenges such as continuing discrimination in the housing and home finance markets, among other differences across racial lines.
According the report although large progress was made during the civil rights era, it is slipping away year by year. Since the Supreme Court reversed course in 1991 and authorized return to segregated neighborhood schools, there has been an increase in segregation every year, particularly for black and Latino students — 40% of Latinos and 39% of blacks now attend intensely segregated schools. The average black and Latino student is now in a school that has nearly 60% of students from families who are near or below the poverty line. Read more…
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
dersk wrote:
“the nation is far from the “post-racial” society media and pundits are claiming it to be”
So I just did a bit of googling – the only people I’ve been able to find claiming that we’re post-racial are Lou Dobbs and some nimrod on a (really) conservative blog.
I have found a huge number of constructions like “the media and pundits are claiming that it’s post-racial”, always in the context that we’re *not* in a post-racial society. What’s going on here? Are we as anti-racists keeping a meme alive just to counter it?
Posted 30 Dec 2009 at 12:11 pm ¶
Tami Winfrey Harris wrote:
Dersk,
I think the problem is that you are looking for the word construction “post-racial America,” which you can Google, and not the idea that Obama’s election means that racism is a thing of the past, which can’t really be Googled.
When we rail against the idea of post-racial America” on anti-racism blogs, we are arguing against the idea that President Obama is proof of racism’s demise–an idea that IS frequently expressed (Gosh, in the days following election day, the TV talking heads couldn’t get enough of this idea) even if the specific words “post-racial America” are not used.
You’re focusing on the semantics and not the idea.
Posted 30 Dec 2009 at 12:53 pm ¶
Deesha wrote:
Ha! Not even in the “days” following the election. The moment the election was called on CNN and they asked the pundits on set for reaction, Bill Bennett said blacks no longer have any excuses.
Posted 30 Dec 2009 at 3:30 pm ¶
dersk wrote:
@Tami – well, I don’t really watch news shows with American talking heads over here, so honestly hadn’t seen them.
I’d begun to suspect the meme was like being PC (I first heard the term back in ‘86 after my sister’s freshman year at Oberlin). Even then, it was being used as a straw man concept to justify being politically incorrect (i.e., a jerk).
Hope everyone has a safe and happy evening! I’ll be watching amateur fireworks over the Amstel with my Anglo-Jamaican-Canadian wife, her Vietnamese-French-Dutch colleague, and a narcoleptic American friend of ours. Sounds like the setup for a sitcom…
Posted 31 Dec 2009 at 8:15 am ¶