Racism: The Role Of Segregation In Public Schools

The deep rooted racism that effects African American students today. I know in 2017 that sentence sounds crazy. How do African American’s still experience racism, especially in schools, segregation is against the law? African Americans have the same access to the same types of education as anyone else. While at face value both statements are true, with a more in depth look they are false. While segregation is illegal it is still taking place legally by the segregation of school zoning. Public schools are zoned according to the layout of housing within the district in order to control the number of students at each school and maintain a low transportation budget. In doing this all of the low income students go to school together and the privileged go to school together. If a district rezones and more low income families get assigned to a school with more privileged families, the privileged families end up moving. While they are not moving schools strictly due to race more African Americans are considered low income than privileged. The 2013 Census showed that 40 percent of African American children live in poverty while only 10 percent of Caucasian American children did. While it is against the law for educational institutions to turn down students based on the color of their skin they can raise the

School suspensions have slowly risen over time due to the behavioral problems that stem from low income homes and the assumption made by teachers that African Americans in general, are more hostile and aggressive than other people. NPR produced an article on this subject highlighting the same behaviors that African American children are getting suspended over, are being exhibited by other children who are receiving less harsh punishments. This article also states that African American students are 3.6 more times likely to get suspended than Caucasian American