Under the Radar

We think we've come so far since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's. Not so fast. Yes, we do have an African American President, a Latina woman on the Supreme Court, and a large percentage of minority students that become doctors, dentists, lawyers, scientists and PHD's. But public education in America is more segrated now than it was four decades ago.

I recently discovered a web site called Project Censored (www.projectcensored.org). These are stories that I say have slid "under the radar". They are largely ignored by mainstream media. If you don't dig deep, you won't hear anything about most of these issues. From time to time I will write about them.

Most of this information comes from a new study called The Civil Rights Project, done by UCLA. According to the study, public schools in the U.S. are 44% non-white, and minorities are rapidly emerging as the majority of students. Latinos and blacks, the two largest minority groups, attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights movement. In Latino and African American populations, two of every five students attend intensely segregated schools. For Latinos this increase in segregation reflects growing residential segregation. For blacks a significant part of the reversal reflects the ending of desegregation plans in public schools throughout the nation. In the 1954 case Brown vs. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the Southern standard of "separate but equal" was "inherently unequal" and did irreversible harm to black students. It later extended that rulng to Latinos.

The study showed that the most severe segregation is in the Western states, including California-not in the South, as many people believe. Unequal education leads to diminished access to college and future jobs. Most none-white schools are segregated by poverty as well as race. Most of the nation's dropouts occur in non-white public schools, leading to large numbers of virtually unemployable young people of color.

Schools in low-income communities remain highly unequal in terms of funding, qualified teachers and curriculum. The report indicates that schools with high levels of poverty have weaker staffs, fewer high-achieving peers, health and nutrition problems, residential instability, and high exposure to crime and gangs.

So even though we may pat ourselves on the back and talk about all the accomplishments that people of color have made, we still have a long way to go. Unfortunately, because of the economic crisis and two wars, education reform has been put on the back burners. Hopefully our leaders will someday learn that the way out of poverty and joblessness is EDUCATION and make the appropriate steps to make sure that everyone in America has an equal opportunity to succeed. I know, I'm dreaming.