RACE IN AMERICA - Mississippi Segregation Persists

"In Southern schools, segregation and inequality aren't just history — they're reality" PBS NewsHour 6/22/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Last month, a Mississippi judge ordered the state's public schools to desegregate, illuminating the ongoing struggle to comply with the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling.  Special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks to Maureen Costello of the Southern Poverty Law Center for insight into how Southern schools can move race relations forward.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  The Justice Department recently hailed a federal court ruling affirming plans to desegregate schools in Cleveland, Mississippi.  Desegregation, the court ruled, allows students to learn, play and thrive together.

As part of her year-long look at solutions to racism, special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks with a teacher on how to successfully teach in integrated settings.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (NewsHour):  The percentage of black and Latino students in what's being called apartheid schools is on the increase, and yet most schools seem ill-prepared to help those students be the best they can be, while reducing prejudice and teaching them to learn to live with each other.

But Maureen Costello of the Southern Poverty Law Center says there are ways to achieve all three.

Maureen Costello, thank you for joining us.

MAUREEN COSTELLO, Southern Poverty Law Center:  Thank you.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT:  The Southern Poverty Law Center has a curriculum that looks at teaching tolerance in schools.  What caused that to happen?

MAUREEN COSTELLO:  Well, before we started this program, we were fighting hate crimes, basically.

Morris Dees, our founder, was bringing civil suits against groups like the Klan, and often the young men who had committed some terrible acts against others were motivated by terrible, terrible hatred, and just complete misunderstanding of what other people were like.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT:  It was mostly race at that point.

MAUREEN COSTELLO:  It was usually race, although, sometimes, it was also ethnicity.

But he was seeing 19- and 20-year-old perpetrators who were going to spend the rest of their lives in prison.  And he said, you know, we have to do something to stop this before it starts.  And he said, we need a school program.

And that really was the beginning of teaching tolerance.  Let's find the best research we can find about how we can reduce prejudice starting at early ages, and let's get it out there to teachers.

One of the issues in American education is that 80 percent of our teachers are white women.

RACE IN AMERICA - Stubborn School Segregation

"How do we solve stubborn segregation in schools?" PBS NewsHour 1/7/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Despite a historic Supreme Court ruling outlawing segregated schools, today huge numbers of students remain in separate and unequal schools, most in inner cities.  Special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks with Pedro Noguera of the University of California, Los Angeles, about the consequences of such inequality and what can be done.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (NewsHour):  Despite an historic Supreme Court ruling some 61 years ago outlawing segregated schools, today, huge numbers of students remain in separate and unequal schools, most in inner cities.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, says Pedro Noguera, director of the Center for Study of School Transformation at UCLA.  I met him in New York, where he was about to speak with a group of educators.

Professor Noguera, thank you so much for joining us.

Sixty-one years after separate and unequal was ruled illegal, you say it’s still happening.  Why?

PEDRO NOGUERA, University of California, Los Angeles:  Well, it’s happening because the courts have basically made it very difficult to continue to pursue integration.

And that’s after we made quite a bit of progress in this country, especially in the South, but now we know that schools in the North and the West are more segregated now than they were 30 years ago.  So, we now find ourselves in a situation where not only are schools increasingly racially separate, but we’re also concentrating the poorest children in schools that have the fewest resources.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT:  Why?

PEDRO NOGUERA:  I would say it’s a combination of lack of investment in schools that serve poor children and the fact that we have no longer the political will.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT:  But you have argued that separate schools play a role in perpetuating inequality, not just in the schools, but in general.

PEDRO NOGUERA:  They do.

They do, because separate has still been unequal in education.  The racially separate schools, even when the schools do a good job, the learning opportunities you have a child will influence the kind of college you go into, the kind of profession you have access to, the kind of income you earn.

And so if we really are interested in creating a society that’s more equal and less characterized by racial divisions, then we need to put more investment in education and leveling the playing field and integrating our schools.

GEORGIA - Jim Crow is Back

"Georgia is Segregating Troublesome Kids in Schools Used During Jim Crow" by Marian Wang, ProPublica 7/29/2015

A Department of Justice investigation found that Georgia is giving thousands of kids with behavioral issues a subpar education and putting them in the same run-down buildings that served black children decades ago.

Georgia has been illegally and unnecessarily segregating thousands of students with behavioral issues and disabilities, isolating them in run-down facilities and providing them with subpar education, according to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Some of the students in the program were schooled in the same inferior buildings that served black children in the days of Jim Crow (laws).  The investigation found that many of the buildings lack gyms, cafeterias, libraries, labs, playgrounds and other amenities.

"It's a warehouse for kids the school system doesn't want or know how to deal with," a parent told the Justice Department of the program.  The Justice Department detailed its findings in a letter earlier this month to Georgia's governor and attorney general.

Federal law mandates that schools educate students with disabilities in the "least restrictive environment" in which they can learn and thrive.  More broadly, public entities must serve people with disabilities in the "most integrated setting."

But what the Justice Department found in Georgia is something that persists across the country:  Schools continue to inappropriately segregate students with a range of behavioral needs and disabilities.

Children are often placed in more restrictive settings because traditional public schools show little flexibility in working with students who may need more support.

In Georgia, schools were quick to move children out of mainstream classrooms, the Justice Department noted.  In some cases, students were recommended for placement after a single incident or a string of minor incidents, such as using inappropriate language with a teacher.  Parents reported feeling pressured into agreeing to the placements.

In fact, many students who were placed in what's called the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS, didn't actually need to be there, the Justice Department said.  Most could have stayed in their neighborhood schools if they'd been given more behavioral or mental-health support.  "Nearly all students in the GNETS Program could receive services in more integrated settings, but do not have the opportunity to do so," the letter said.

What's more, because the state has set up a system that tilts toward providing services in segregated settings, the letter said, Georgia "undermines the availability of these services in more integrated settings."

A spokeswoman for Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal referred questions to the Georgia Department of Education, whose spokesman referred questions to the Attorney General's Office.  Daryl Robinson, counsel to the Georgia Attorney General, told ProPublica, "We don't have any comment at this time."

This isn't the first time that the GNETS has drawn scrutiny.  In 2010, a state audit found that the programs "are not held accountable for student performance" and questioned their cost effectiveness.  Earlier, in 2004, a 13-year-old boy in the program hanged himself while held for hours isolated in a room.

Advocates have long been critical of the quality of services offered by the network.

"We have seen many, many clients whose behavior gets significantly worse in GNETS," said Leslie Lipson, an attorney with the Georgia Advocacy Office.  "We've seen kids who are significantly behind their peers for no other reason than lack of instruction.  We've seen students who are great football players or involved in student government or band who are sent to GNETS and have no opportunities to be part of their community."

The Justice Department threatened the state with a lawsuit if the problems are not corrected.  It called on the state to redirect services, training and resources to move students with behavioral challenges back into general-education schools.

In particular, it suggested increasing access to mental health services by locating mental health clinics "at or near schools" to provide services to students who would otherwise be at risk of being referred to more restrictive, segregated settings.

SELMA - 50th Anniversary

"What challenges remain for Selma 50 years since march?" PBS NewsHour 3/9/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Over the weekend, visitors like President Obama and nearly 100 members of Congress flocked to Selma, Alabama, to celebrate the anniversary of a civil rights milestone.  But 50 years since protesters defiantly crossed the city's iconic Edmund Pettus bridge, Selma remains a deeply divided city with many challenges.  Gwen Ifill reports.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the voting rights march across Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge that was an epic turning point in the civil rights and voting rights movements.

The entire 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery is being reenacted beginning today.  But this weekend was all about Selma, then and now.

Terri Sewell spent the weekend pinching herself.  She shared a stage with the President.

REP. TERRI SEWELL, (D) Alabama:  Good afternoon, America.  Welcome to my hometown of Selma.

GWEN IFILL:  And she visited her old haunts.

REP. TERRI SEWELL:  That’s my home church, Brown Chapel.  And while I think the world comes in just for a weekend, just for one day to walk across the bridge, but the people of this city are amazing people.

GWEN IFILL:  Once Selma High School’s first black valedictorian and now a member of Congress now, by way of Princeton and Oxford, Sewell represents the modern-day divide in her iconic hometown.

REP. TERRI SEWELL:  I’m-second generation Selmian.  My dad grew up in the ’40s, and he grew up in a segregated Selma public school system.  I grew up in the ’80s.  I grew up in an integrated public school system.  And now, 35 years later, it’s re-segregated again.

GWEN IFILL:  The visitors flocked to Selma from around the nation and the world for a weekend of celebration.  Two Presidents, nearly 100 members of Congress and more than 100,000 people crowded into the small Alabama city over two days.

"Finding hope and reality in Obama’s speech at Selma" PBS NewsHour 3/9/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Gwen Ifill talks to Nia-Malika Henderson of The Washington Post and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report about President Obama’s speech at the 50th anniversary of the bloody protest at Selma, Alabama, and how the 2016 Presidential race could be impacted by the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s personal email use.

HISTORY - Brown v. Board 60th Anniversary

"60 years after Brown v. Board, school segregation isn’t yet American history" PBS NewsHour 5/16/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Saturday marks 60 years since the landmark Supreme Court decision that declared separate schools for black and white students are unconstitutional.

Gwen Ifill recorded a conversation about the anniversary earlier this week, but, first, some background.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  The case was named for Linda Brown, a third-grader in Topeka, Kansas, forced to travel more than an hour each day to an all-black elementary school, rather than attend the all-white school located just blocks from her home.

Government-sanctioned racial discrimination was the law of the land in 1954.  The Supreme Court’s Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling half-a-century earlier had ruled that, as long as separate facilities were considered equal, segregation itself wasn’t a violation the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

But the Browns, Linda and her two sisters, who were joined by families of students in four states and the District of Columbia, said no.  Their class-action suit eventually reached the Supreme Court.

Retired Baltimore public school principal John Stokes was one of the original plaintiffs in the Virginia case included in the Brown litigation.

JOHN STOKES, Plaintiff, Brown v. Board of Education:  It was separate, though it was never equal.

GWEN IFILL:  He describes the conditions at his overcrowded all-black high school in Farmville, Virginia, as deplorable, with no running water or indoor plumbing, and a potbelly stove that leaked soot into the classroom.

JOHN STOKES:  We knew we were being programmed for failure.  It was very obvious.  We could not only see it.  We could smell it, and when that soot fell down from that flue, we could taste it.  We could actually taste it.  So we knew we had to do something to make a change.

Significant Question:

SHERYLL CASHIN, Georgetown University Law School:  There are also innovations that you can do in terms of changing the finance system.  Why is it?  We haven’t — we haven’t really tried this many places, but why is it that states require schools to be funded based on property taxes?

Poorer neighborhoods mean lower property tax collected for education, leading to lower school funding.

AMERICA - Living in Economic Segregated Neighborhoods

"More Americans Live in Economically Segregated Neighborhoods Than 30 Years Ago" PBS Newshour 8/1/2012

Excerpt

SUMMARY: Racial segregation in U.S. neighborhoods is on the decline, but income level is increasingly an indicator of where people live. Gwen Ifill talks to Pew Research Center's Paul Taylor about a recently released study on the connections between income inequality and neighborhood segregation.