Segregation vs. integration

SIGNIFICANCE: Segregation is the separation of groups of people, either by law or because of custom or economic disparities. Integration means that all people and groups in a society are considered equal under the law and are allowed to move freely and live without unequal restrictions.

Examples of segregation may be found throughout history, as groups considered inferior or subordinate have been forced to live in specific areas of a city or town. Jewish people in Europe were forced into separate communities, called ghettos, in the Middle Ages by Christians who believed the Jewish people were “unclean” and racially inferior. The caste systems in India and Southeast Asia forced persons born into “inferior” castes to live in separate areas of a community. Some people, considered so unclean that merely breathing the same air they breathed would contaminate a higher caste member’s body, were forced to live outside the walls surrounding many Indian villages. These “untouchables” suffered miserably, but their status was defined by Hindu religious beliefs, and they could do little to improve their living standards. Though the caste system has been outlawed by the Indian government and all citizens are considered equal in the eyes of the law, beliefs die hard, and Indians considered lower caste are still victims of discrimination and segregation. Other examples of segregation include the apartheid system that existed in South Africa and the Jim Crow laws that existed in the southern part of the United States. South Africa officially repudiated its system of separate racial communities in 1992, and, since 1964, discrimination based on race has been illegal in the United States. Yet segregation is still found in both countries. Though legal (or de jure) segregation has largely disappeared, de facto segregation resulting from attitudes and customs, can be found almost everywhere in those two countries.

School Segregation

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education. Separating children by race, the Court found, created a feeling of inferiority among African American students. Segregation made them feel unwanted by the White majority, and this feeling prevented them from getting an equal educational opportunity. The Court ordered school districts to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.” White people reacted, however, which turned to violence in many southern communities, prevented rapid compliance with the Court’s ruling. By 1966, only 15 percent of southern school districts were desegregated. In an effort to push integration forward, the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare began to withhold federal money from segregated districts. These financial sanctions encouraged fuller compliance with the Brown ruling so that by 1973 almost half of the districts in the South had desegregated. In the North and West, on the other hand, where the government did not threaten to withhold money, almost 70 percent of school districts remained highly segregated.

In 1990, racially integrated schools (defined as those with some Black students but with White students in the majority) remained a distant goal. More than 63 percent of African American children attended segregated schools.

Housing Segregation

Housing patterns and neighborhood segregation were the primary reasons for this racial division. Segregation in the American school system has also resulted directly from the attitudes and actions of White parents who refused to send their children to schools attended by Black students.

Many White Americans, according to studies of public opinion, hold beliefs that help prevent integration. Generally, White people say that they believe in equality for all, but when it comes to action that would make that principle possible, they reject any changes. For example, many White Americans fear that once a few Black people move into a neighborhood, more will quickly follow, and the racial change will greatly lower the value of their property. They also fear that crime rates will increase—even if many, or most, of the newcomers are middle class—and that educational quality will decline. White residents flee, and neighborhoods quickly become resegregated. Unlike most White people, a majority of African Americans (more than 70 percent) in the late 1980s supported and said they would choose to live in mixed communities. The ideal neighborhood, according to polls of African Americans, would be 55 percent White people and 45 percent Black people. White people polled, on the other hand, said they would probably move if the Black population reached more than 20 percent.

White Attitudes

Many White Americans do not believe that racism and racial discrimination are major problems. These people believe that integration and affirmative action programs have all but ended inequality and that Black people exaggerate the negative effects of inequality on their educational and employment opportunities. Only 26 percent of White Americans in a national poll in the late 1980s thought that African Americans faced any “significant” discrimination in their daily lives. More than twice as many Black individuals (53 percent) responded that they faced significant amounts of prejudice and discrimination in their day-to-day affairs. A similar poll conducted in 2019 found that found that 78 percent of polled Black Americans felt the United States had not done enough to provide African Americans with equal rights with White people. In contrast, of White Americans polled only 37 percent felt the country had not gone far enough. Many White Americans believe that African Americans deserve the rejection they receive in American society, believing that it is “their” fault they are economically and socially unequal. If “they” simply worked a little harder, drank less, made a greater effort to find better jobs, and took firmer control of their own lives, this argument goes, they would be accepted as equal by White society. Other surveys of White peoples' attitudes, however, show that this belief is not borne out in reality. Many White people want little or no contact with Black individuals and will, in fact, go to great expense and move considerable distances to maintain racial isolation and separation. This type of de facto segregation is the norm in American society, and it is very difficult to change.

Remedial Efforts

Before the Civil War (1961-1865), slavery was the principal system of maintaining White supremacy in the United States. The slave system rigidly segregated African Americans into an inferior status; under the laws of most slave states, enslaved people were not even considered human beings. With the abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the bloodiest war in American history, White southerners constructed a system of legal segregation to maintain White supremacy and keep Black people in an inferior economic and social status. That system of legal segregation, called Jim Crow, in which it was a violation of state law for Black and White Americans to attend school or church together, or to eat together, lasted until the 1960s.

Officially, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred discrimination in education, employment, or housing based on race, religion, ethnicity, or gender. Still, the attitudes of white superiority remained dominant in the minds of most White people, and actual integration in schools, employment, and housing, occurred very slowly, if at all. In the 1980s in Illinois, for example, African Americans composed 18.7 percent of the student population, and 83.2 percent of them attended totally segregated schools. In Mississippi, African Americans totaled 55.5 percent of school enrollments, with 80.3 percent going to segregated classrooms. A 2022 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that about 18.5 million students, more than a third of students, attended a predominantly same-race/ethnicity school in the 2020-2021 school year.  Such numbers reflect the continuing segregation of American society.

Even within integrated schools some observers find an internal system of student segregation. Black students make up about 16 percent of all public school students in the United States but 40 percent of all pupils considered to have a disability or to be deficient. Black students are therefore further segregated by “tracking,” in which students are separated by scores on standardized tests and according to their “potential.” Black students are found in overwhelming numbers in the lowest track. African American children enter school with great disadvantages in socioeconomic backgrounds and cultural opportunities; those two factors, especially the first (which refers to family income), are directly related to doing well in school and on achievement tests. Unless economic opportunities for Black families greatly improve, it is likely that the large gap in educational outcomes will not be significantly reduced. Disparities in family income account for most of the differences among White students on these same tests, so it should not be surprising that, given the large income gap between White and Black families, with median wealth for Black families ($44,900 in 2022) being about 15 percent of White family wealth ($285,000 in 2022), African Americans would not do as well in schools (education and African Americans).

Some American communities have achieved a degree of integration, but usually it requires some restrictions and positive actions on the part of local leaders. In one study in the 1980s, it was noted that the number of Black residents could not be allowed to become more than 16 to 20 percent of any neighborhood, or White residents would begin to move. Citizens interested in integration must take charge of their own communities and not allow real estate interests to take advantage of racial fears through “blockbusting” tactics. Oak Park, Illinois, has shown that a carefully controlled housing market can promote racial integration. It has been shown in this Chicago suburb that White citizens will remain in an integrated community as long as Black residents make up less than half of the population. White anxieties about crime are significantly reduced in these circumstances.

In other areas and communities, desegregation of public schools could be accomplished only by an extensive busing program that took students out of their neighborhoods and transported them to integrated school facilities. Although such programs met with mixed success, they did help to jump start school integration during the 1970s. Other ideas, such as freedom-of-choice plans (whereby students can voluntarily attend any school in the district), and so-called “magnet schools,” offering special programs for selected students, have done little to reduce segregation.

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