Segregation in This Country Is Here To Stay

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It’s all bad news for the blacks. The great crusade for integration culminated in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act. The aftermath of that national groundswell for equality carried on for several decades. It established itself in statute, regulation, ordinance, corporate practice and affirmative action. Enthusiasm has waned. Other segregating social forces have gained in prominence.

Dominant among these is money. White median family income is $50,000 per year; black median income, $30,000. The segregating implications of that disparity are huge: home ownership, neighborhood, health care, school quality, education level, playmates, savings and net worth. These impinge on the ability of blacks, and to a lesser degree Latinos, to compete in America’s white-designed economic race. For example, if the home mortgage system is stacked against you, it is very hard to build a family base of wealth.

To make matters worse, historically the working class mostly rose to the middle class through manufacturing jobs, now largely lost overseas. Workers in the ‘50s and ‘60s used that income to climb to the owning class with FHA and VA mortgages, largely denied to blacks. The lingering effects of such prejudice, much like the effects of slavery, still today make it very hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

Impeding self-help has been the steady erosion of Pell Grants, originally designed to bolster the poor through college. Their decline matches a steady rise in tuition.Nor is racial equality enhanced by uneven law enforcement, especially for drugs. Suspicion, enforcement and sentencing are all heavily weighted against blacks.

The Supreme Court is being asked to further consolidate the racial separation our forefathers visited upon us 10 generations ago. The Bible may have to be rewritten to increase its estimate of the length of our punishment. Ten generations may be a drop in the bucket.

town lines and are consequently small, concerned white folks in a mixed town can simply move across the border to escape blacks. But if the court rules for the plaintiffs, even that little move may no longer be necessary. Busing for integration would be outlawed, so towns could internally segregate themselves even more than they do today, simply by use of zoning and differential housing prices. Neighborhood schools would be the rule.

In states with bigger (countywide) school districts, the impact would be greater. Major busing often goes on in those places, so that today’s fleeing whites often have to move long distances to escape black faces. No more. Most could then stay right in their old neighborhoods and let the schools resegregate themselves as God intended.

One big loser in such a realignment, however, would be private schools. A hefty percentage of their enrollment now, especially in the South, derives from folks who want segregated education but don’t want to bother moving. Thus with towns no longer able to bus for integration, the public schools would gradually resegregate themselves to an acceptable level, and parents could save a bundle by not having to move. That’s the bad news for private schools.

u u u

But it’s all bad news for the blacks. The great crusade for integration culminated in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act. The aftermath of that national groundswell for equality carried on for several decades. It established itself in statute, regulation, ordinance, corporate practice and affirmative action. But that enthusiasm for integration has waned, and other segregating social forces have gained in prominence.

Dominant among these is money. White median family income is $50,000 per year; black median income, $30,000. The segregating implications of that disparity are huge: home ownership, neighborhood, health care, school quality, education level, playmates, savings and net worth. All these impinge on the ability of blacks, and to a lesser degree Latinos, to compete in America’s white-designed economic race. For example, if the home mortgage system is stacked against you, it is very hard to build a family base of wealth.

To make matters worse, historically the working class mostly rose to the middle class through manufacturing jobs, now largely lost overseas. Workers in the ‘50s and ‘60s used that steady income to climb to the owning class with FHA and VA mortgages, then largely denied to blacks. The lingering effects of such prejudice, much like the lingering effects of slavery itself, still today make it very hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

Also, impeding self-help has been the steady erosion of Pell Grants, originally designed to bolster the poor through college. Their decline matches a devastating steady rise in tuition.

Nor is racial equality enhanced by uneven law enforcement, especially for drugs. Suspicion, enforcement and sentencing are all heavily weighted against blacks. Unless they have a great jump shot.

So now, the Supreme Court is being asked to further consolidate the racial separation that our forefathers visited upon us 10 generations ago. As yet, no end is in sight. Thus, it seems that the Bible may have to be rewritten to increase its estimate of the length of our punishment. Ten generations may just be a drop in the bucket.