There’s one aspect of Joshua Davis’ Spare
Parts that’s kinda hard to grasp.
The school in which all of this takes place
is underfunded, when just forty years back,
Carl Hayden students could brag about having
an off-site equestrian program and a rodeo
ring.
At the time of the story, however, not so
much.
In the case of Carl Hayden, a major demographic
shift took place, transforming from being
an almost all white school to over 90 percent
Hispanic.
And as much as we like to say that school
segregation no longer exists, it really does,
and Carl Hayden is just one example of this.
Take California for example.
According to a study by UCLA’s Civil Rights
Project, the average Latino student in 1970
attended schools that were about 46% nonwhite,
but by the 2010s, this increased to 84%, making
California the state with the most Latino
school segregation, which is kinda weird considering
it was the first state to legally end it.
And this presents an issue because research
has shown racial integration in schools to
be a generally good thing, whether it be higher
test scores, higher graduation rates, as well
as enhanced creativity skills, intensified
leadership skills, high investment return
on academic programs, reduced disparities
in facilities and teachers, and you get the
point.
So what’s going on?
There are so many culprits when it comes to
trying to make sense of it, including white
flight, residential segregation, and school
choice, but let’s talk about the court case
that changed history: the implementation of
Brown v. Board, or rather, the lack of it.
After the case ruled school segregation illegal,
courts ordered racial integration through
busing in many cities such as Cleveland, Detroit,
San Francisco, and Boston, where the infamous
anti-busing riots occurred.
Despite this, Americans seem to agree that
racial integration in schools is beneficial,
and that more work should be done to help
minority students, just not through busing.
In 1999, during the midst of debate and court
rulings in North Carolina and Massachusetts,
a Gallup poll showed that 82% of Americans
would rather have funding be given to local
schools compared to the 15% who favored busing.
This is a topic of debate that still goes
on today; while some studies show that busing
is clearly the better solution, some people
disagree.
The thing is, though, is that some parts of
America, anti-busing sentiment has been overwhelmingly
effective.
And in 1974, the Supreme Court ruled in Milliken
v. Bradley that “without an interdistrict
violation and some interdistrict effect, there
is no constitutional wrong and there is no
constitutional basis for an interdistrict
remedy.”
Busing was impermissible.
These trends have led to busing policies being
relaxed.
Here’s the important thing, though.
Schools are still de facto segregated, and
in many majority minority schools, underfunding
is a huge issue.
The movement of white households to less struggling
areas is intensifying disparities between
schools.
While schools such as Carl Hayden have tried
magnet programs to attract white families,
we see that sometimes that doesn’t work.
Here’s the bottom line.
No matter what your opinion on busing or funding,
school segregation is real and alive.
And we Americans can’t pretend it doesn’t
exist.
