Racial, Socioeconomic Segregation Still Rampant in Schools

The impact and history of racial segregation in America is well documented. It has moved in theory from the 1896, the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court case that determined that "separate but equal" was constitutional, to the 1954 landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson and ruled that segregation was "inherently unequal." Although segregation is no longer the law, it is still a very real part of America, in particular in education where the Brown v. Board of Education decision was supposed to obviate such practices.


A new study based on a new analysis of Department of Education data shows that whites are still largely concentrated in schools with other whites and that black and Latino students tend to be in class rooms mostly with other black and Latinos. The report was authored by Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. Orefield suggest that “Extreme segregation is becoming more common” in America.

The reported noted that across the nation, 43 percent of Latinos and 38 percent of blacks attend schools where fewer than 10 percent of their classmates are white. , according to the report, released last, findings suggest that blacks and Latinos are twice as likely as white or Asian students to attend schools with a substantial majority of poor children. In fact, more than one in seven black and Latino students attend schools where fewer than 1 percent of their classmates are white based on enrollment data from 2009-2010.

States such as California, New York, Georgia and Texas, and cities including include Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia and Washington demonstrated the most defined patters of racial segregation.

The report’s authors are critical of the Obama administration failure to pursue integration policies, and noted that the Administration’s support of charter schools was helping create “the most segregated sector of schools for black students.”

Fifty Percent Unemployment for Blacks in New York – may become national norm

With the growing troubles of the Eurozone economic crisis, most recently as it pertains to Greece, massive bailouts for Italy and Spain and a recent request for European Central Bank support for more loans for Cyprus, the US economy continues to stall with projections of stagnant growth and perpetual unemployment above 8 percent. Now, with major banks being downgraded across the nation, it is clear again that blacks will bear the brunt of the economic downturn.
Historically, blacks always suffer disproportionately in times of economic hardship. Today it may be even worse than past decades, in particular in urban areas. According to a new study conducted by Dr. James Parrott, chief economist for the Fiscal Policy Institute, more than half of all of African-Americans in New York city who were old enough to work had no job at all in the past year based on an analysis of employment data compiled by the federal Labor Department.

Dr. Parrott’s results indicate that 49.2 percent of all black women of working age in the city had jobs in the year that ended in May – a figure approximately equal to the rate for black men in the same period, as well as in the first four months of 2012. New York is just a microcosm of the nation. Real unemployment (when you included those incarcerated, who have dropped out of the job market or in college full-time) for African Americans is in excess of 40 percent in May urban areas including Memphis, Detroit, Chicago and Detroit among others.

Many factors contribute to these outside of racism and included, low literacy and graduation rates, lower numbers of African Americans attending college, and very few blacks involved or interested in math and science of which most employment opportunities currently exist. Regardless, if the trend continues, 50 percent unemployment in urban areas for African Americans may become the norm.

it is easy to love

Since the fourth of July is coming up, I was initially gonna post Fredrick Douglas Speech he made on July 4, 1853 in Rochester, New York. However, since I know the folks who have read my blog may have as I have, read it an inordinate amount of times, I decided to write about what I heard in church on Sunday – not that I go all the time but I do listen.

The pastor spoke of two things that stuck out. The first was it is easy to love and the second dealt with passion and commitment. He said it was easy to love and in another voice said but to do so, requires passion. He defined passion as an extreme emotional desire for something. He also said that passion was the trait of being intensely emotional and that such was a good thing. Not purses, shoes, weed, or sports, but factors that tend to the heart. He said without passion, they can never be commitment. For commitment is the act of binding yourself (intellectually or emotionally) to a course of action. It is the act of dedicating or the state of being dedicated and an ardent, often selfless affection and dedication, as to a person or principle. Without neither, one cannot love anyone or anything.

It made me think. It is easy to love, however, one cannot love just by saying such. One cannot love if they do not have love for them selves or if their heart is divided. For it requires an individual commitment to the object and individual that love is towards. If the heart is divided, especially for people in the commitment of a relationship, the there will never be any love and thus there is no relationship. For with out passion, one cannot love for they cannot miss, or feel or suffer from the lack of, or commit themselves to another person. To say so without action is a farce.

I only went to church because I told my daughter’s grandmother that I would take her sometimes. I’m glad I went and listened to what I practiced in my actions daily and all the time.